Match.com, Yahoo accused of 'date bait'
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10098349/

NEW YORK - It's not easy finding love in cyberspace, and now some frustrated online daters say they were victims of fraud by two top Internet matchmaking services and have taken their complaints to court.

Match.com, a unit of IAC/Interactive Corp. , is accused in a federal lawsuit of goading members into renewing their subscriptions through bogus romantic e-mails sent out by company employees. In some instances, the suit contends, people on the Match payroll even went on sham dates with subscribers as a marketing ploy.

"This is a grossly fraudulent practice that Match.com is engaged in," said H. Scott Leviant, a lawyer at Los Angeles law firm Arias, Ozzello & Gignac LLP, which brought the suit.

Match "promotes the policies of integrity to protect members, and yet they themselves, we allege, are misleading their entire customer base," he said.

The company said it does not comment on pending litigation. But Match spokeswoman Kristin Kelly said the company "absolutely does not" employ people to go on dates with subscribers or to send members misleading e-mails professing romantic interest. The company has about 15 million members worldwide and 250 employees, she said.

In a separate suit, Yahoo Inc.'s personals service is accused of posting profiles of fictitious potential dating partners on its Web site to make it look as though many more singles subscribe to the service than actually do.

Yahoo did respond to requests for comment.

The suits, which both seek class-action status, came as growth in the online dating industry has slowed, although Web matchmaking still remains a big business.

U.S. consumers spent $245.2 million on online personals and dating services in the first half of 2005, up 7.6 percent from a year earlier, according to the Online Publishers Association. That's a slower growth rate compared with several years ago.

At the same time, competition among online dating services is fierce, with some sites offering newfangled features such as extensive compatibility surveys to match up people with similar temperaments and outlooks.

Allegations of 'date bait'
The Match lawsuit was filed earlier this month in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles by plaintiff Matthew Evans, who contends he went out with a woman he met through the site who turned out to be nothing more than "date bait" working for the company.

The relationship went nowhere, according to his suit. Evans says Match set up the date for him because it wanted to keep him from pulling the plug on his subscription and was hoping he'd tell other potential members about the attractive woman he met through the service, according to Leviant.

His lawyers said Evans, of Orange County, California, was not available to comment, but described him as a working professional in his 30s.

Leviant said his client found out about the alleged scam after the woman he dated confessed she was employed by Match. The lawsuit also claims the company violated the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act, a law best known for being used in prosecuting organized crime.

The Yahoo suit was filed last month by Robert Anthony, of Broward County, Florida. The suit, brought in U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, accuses the company of breach of contract, fraud and unfair trade practices.

lol, alot of programs on this board should have been first for that

I don't see a problem with this. Is anything you read on the net true?

no kidding

Heaven forbid people make money in the intarweb. Shame on them.

not at all surprised.

Date bait, match.com went far to keep their members

That's because posts whores have no brains :thumbsup

wow.... thats wild

wow. The emails aren't that big of a secret but getting employees to actually go on dates is a bit much.

Is there really any "dating site" that doesnt pay people to make fake profiles all day long?

i mean come on, no one believes that they dont.

seems to me its all fake shit.

Oh come on.. Everything is real on the internet. All the girls are REAL girls.

Just like GFY. All the girls promoting their websites are real. I mean, the FANSIGNS are real. They can't be some fat webmasters creating a fake girl account. No. Impossible.

I have a buddy who gets laid off Match all the time.
I guess it doesn't work for everyone

These people are being told that it is a real dating service.

Does he work there? :1orglaugh

That doesn't sound real at all ( about the guy going on a date with a match.com employee ) ..

It doesn't make any sense why they would send an employee out on a date with a customer. How would that make match.com any money ? they cant charge THAT much money for a monthly membership , a date would cost at least $50, hardly worth the effort just to keep a member.

I'm involved in the operation of one of the larger mostly mainstream dating sites. We're not quite on the scale of Match or Yahoo but probably in the tier under them. I'm not going to mention which site, since that's not really relevent to the point I want to make.

Once a dating site reaches a certain critical mass, making fake profiles is a waste of time and might actually be detrimental to retaining paying subscriptions. That's not to say that dating sites aren't loaded with fake profiles, they certainly are, but they're made by third parties (atleast in my experience) which fall into the following five categories:

1. Financial scammers (usually from Nigeria or Ghana and to a lesser degree Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia) who then contact other members with various offers of riches, matrimony, etc in hopes of scamming a few hundred bucks.

2. Profiles with commercial purposes: escorts, cam-girls, spam harvestors, porn-site redirectors, translation services, etc.

3. People who don't think they're attractive/successful/interesting enough so they make up fake personas and post fake pictures.

4. Men pretending to be women to have cybersex or trade nude pictures with lesbians (who are also usually men pretending to be women).

5. People who are "just curious" about checking out the site and who don't want to put down any real information for fear of being spammed by the site or identified by their friends. These profiles are rarely very active so they're not much of a problem.

The financial scammers and the commercial profiles are definitely problems and we do all we can prevent them from harassing the other members. We don't view the other three types as harmful and thus don't remove them unless they're disgustingly obviously fake (ie celebrity photo) or other members complain about them.

I seriously doubt that Match paid for a woman to date some guy just to keep him from cancelling. If you do it on a small scale it wouldn't be cost effective and if you do it on a large scale you'd need to advertise pretty heavily for professional daters. My guess is that the woman lied about being employed by Match either as an excuse for not going on a repeat date or to put the guy down (ie You're so stupid/ugly/boring/etc I'm only dating you because they paid me).

:thumbsup

He prob asked for a second date and when she said no he kept pressuring her to give him a reason , so she says " match.com hired me to date you give it up buddy"

Jeez that's fuckin scandalous.

sure they are. its all the "rogue" affiliates... :sleep

imagine the adult dating industry, these are like standards lol

How much would those fuckers have to charge to give the members hookers to go on dates with?

What a load of crap......

Hmm, Netrodent's post tells em there's a lot of dangerous shit going on with these dating services.

Internet, real world, print, television, whatever... there is a legal responsilbity to have your product match (no pun intended) your promotion. The spam mails "73% of members get laid" misrepresent the product. Misleading or dishonest advertising is a crime, pretty much in every 1st world country in the world.

Building a dating site shell and stuffing thousands of bogus profiles into it to get started is misleading. There are plenty of discussions here about trading "profile lists" and whatnot, so you know there are tons of profiles out there that are either totally fake or the person in them has no clue that they are listed on other sites... and they probably have no real way to be contacted.

Fraud is fraud, and too many people around here think they can get away with anything because we are on the intraweb / world wide whatever. Sorry people, but sooner or later the scams will bite you in the ass.

When you cross the line into people's real lives.... reality sets in.

Alex

I wonder if "alternative" sites like alt.com will ever see legal actions like this.

Really, who would want to add their name to a class action and testify about the fake email they got from a fake strapon assfucking mistress?

"Date for Warranted sex!"

I get about 20 of these sort of spam per day, they always end up linking to one or the other of the major programs.

Your product is being marketted with false promises and untenable assurances.

Programs would be smart to start looking at where their traffic is coming from and take clear and confirmable action against false advertisers.

Alex