Leading online matchmaker sued for bogus dating scam

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AFP
Leading online matchmaker sued for bogus dating scam

Sat Nov 19, 6:24 PM ET

NEW YORK (AFP) - Match.com, one of the top Internet dating websites, has been accused of hiring people as "date bait" to date some of their one million customers to encourage them to keep paying for the service.

A Los Angeles racketeering lawsuit said the lonely hearts website secretly recruited people to send enticing emails to its customers and to go out on dates with them as a way of getting them to keep up their 30 dollars monthly subscription.

The company's ringers, branded "date bait", went on as many as 100 dates a month -- three per day -- with Match.com customers, who use the site to search for boyfriends, girlfriends, and possible husbands and wives.

"Hiding behind Match.com's portrait of online success is a very big, very dirty secret ... Not everyone you meet and date through Match.com is just another Match.com member," said the lawsuit, filed in a Los Angeles court on November 10.

Kristin Kelly, a spokesperson for Match.com -- which has an estimated one million paid subscribers and 15 million members -- denied the charges, saying the lawsuit is "completely without merit" and would be "vigorously" challenged.

The lawsuit was filed by Matthew Evans, a Match.com customer who hopes it will draw support from enough other customers to turn into a much stronger class action suit.

Evan's lawyers said he went on several dates with an attractive woman named Autumn Marzec before she allegedly confessed that she was paid by the company to meet him.

Such ringers are given access to customers' emails to familiarize themselves with the customer, allowing them to feign interest and compatibility, the suit claimed.

"The paid Match.com employee then goes on a date with the subscriber, gives the deceptive appearance of having a lot in common with the subscriber ... with the intent of luring the subscriber into re-signing with Match.com," the suit alleges.

The suit charges as well that when a customer's subscription was expiring, Match.com produced fake responses to customers, suggesting another person had an interest in meeting them, in order to prod them to resubscribe.

The Los Angeles suit represented growing reports of disappointment among the tens of millions of customers of the online matchmaking industry, which is led by Yahoo! Personals, Match.com, and EHarmony.

The industry enjoyed an estimated 245 million dollars in turnover during the first half of 2005.

While the industry advertises its success stories -- customers who meet online and eventually get married -- some disappointments have raised questions of industry practices.

Earlier this year Californian James Hunt complained that for the nearly 3,000 dollars he paid to matchmaker Together Inc., he didn't receive the guaranteed nine introductions of "nearly compatible" women. The company disputed his claim.

In New York, the Great Expectations dating service was recently ordered by a judge to refund money to two women who said they never got any dates after paying up to 1,000 dollars for a six month subscription.

"I just wanted to go out for coffee and have nice conversations with a couple of people. Instead, I got not a single introduction," said a disappointed 43 year old who identified herself only as Jennifer. "

"I think I'll stick to meeting people at bus stops and the elevator," she said.

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Anyone who puts any trust or credence into these "lonely hearts" scams, imo, deserves to get scammed. I'm surprised the whole thing is even legal. People who use these "services" must be truly desperate.

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Gee, RP and I met through the personals. What does that say about us?

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Merry, when people who are 40-50 get divorced they have already settled into a lifestyle, and already met most of the people that they would bump into around their hobbies, work, and area. It's not easy to meet new people and very common to use online dating programs, I know a lot of people who have done this who aren't wierd.

Lonely people deserve to get scammed? Okay...

Services set up to allow people to talk online should be illegal? Okay...

Very interesting ideas you have there, Merry..

Anyway, I find this pretty shocking!

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So they used a little date bait....what's the big deal? It got some otherwise lonely discontented with life people out of themselves and helped build up their self image.

I met a woman a few years back who got her husband through the want ads in a penny saver paper. She and he seem very happy and have a fine young son. Wkithout the penny saver she might have ended up living all alone in the woods with nobody to talk to.

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Re: Leading online matchmaker sued for bogus dating scam

bobsmythhawk wrote:

The company's ringers, branded "date bait", went on as many as 100 dates a month -- three per day -- with Match.com customers, who use the site to search for boyfriends, girlfriends, and possible husbands and wives.

regardless of the lawsuit's merit, this has to be a wild exaggeration. 3 dates per day even on weekdays???

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It happens Yitwail...

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well, depends on the definition of date, i suppose.

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I suppose I had better say something in my defense, having posted that first response without giving it much thought. The fact that I thus posted it, of course, indicates that this must be a gut-feeling I have regarding dating services. Ah, well.

Jes, I'm very glad that things worked out so well for you and RP after meeting through such a service. Truly. I have a feeling, however, that your experience is not exactly typical.

I have a friend who tried the Boston Globe dating service once (does the Globe still have that?). He called the 900 number (from my phone, in fact) and got set up with a date in Newton, MA. He told me afterwards that all through the dinner, his date had talked about her teen-age daughter and how she (the mother) needed a man to help support the two of them. When Gary suggested he'd like to meet the woman's daughter, she acted shocked, as though he'd suggested a menage-a-trois. That was in her mind, not his.

I've gotten the impression -- perhaps unfair -- that most women who post on these matchup sites are looking for a sugar daddy. And most men are looking for...well, what men are so often looking for. That impression is only reinforced by those ads which sometimes run on the right flank of this site, with bikini-clad bimbos as come-ons. I'm sure there are the occasional exceptions, e.g. Jespah and Region, but they are not the norm.

Stuh, I was divorced before I was 40 and did not get married again until age 56. It never once occurred to me to waste my money on a dating service during those years. I could find surer ways to waste my money. The story Bob quotes above indicates that there's a $30/month membership fee in this particular club. I admit I overstated the case, however, when I suggested these services should be illegal. My bad. And, of course, nobody deserves to get scammed. But, I wonder how much of a scam it really is? I mean, the customer got exactly what he was looking for -- a date. The fact that the date was an employee of the dating service doesn't seem relevant to me.

As Sturgis has already said, "What's the big deal?"

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The worst thing about a scam is not the quantifiable damage that it incurs, but the demeaning of another human being. In this case, people are being taken advantage of for being lonely which is even more despicable.

You say that these dating services are just about women who want to get financial support and men who just want to get laid...but your own example doesn't even support this, because your friend wasn't just looking to get laid.

Obviously, not everyone in the service is going to be a "good catch" but who are you to judge....there ARE a lot of genuine people on there, and there already exist internet sites for hooking up sexually so why would people use Match where they are likely to find women who aren't into that when they could use a swinger site?

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stuh505 wrote:

The worst thing about a scam is not the quantifiable damage that it incurs, but the demeaning of another human being. In this case, people are being taken advantage of for being lonely which is even more despicable.

You say that these dating services are just about women who want to get financial support and men who just want to get laid...but your own example doesn't even support this, because your friend wasn't just looking to get laid.

Obviously, not everyone in the service is going to be a "good catch" but who are you to judge....there ARE a lot of genuine people on there, and there already exist internet sites for hooking up sexually so why would people use Match where they are likely to find women who aren't into that when they could use a swinger site?

Bingo.

We are not the only couple who have met through personals, personal ads or dating services. Essentially, it's a means of being able to direct who you meet. College is a place to meet people, for sure, and lots of folks couple up then. But for those of us who don't, there has to be another forum for such things.

As for your friend and the woman and her daughter, the bottom line is that it's kinda silly, when you think about it, to judge it all by one bad experience. I went on, I kid you not, about 40 - 50 dates before meeting RP. Most of them went no further than one date although a couple of them went as far as a third date. I met, I recall, one guy who really just wanted one thing. The others, I suppose some of them were interested in such things but no more than any guy I would have met through any other means. It wasn't, like, hello, let's do it. And a lot of those guys were dating other women through the personals (RP did, too, once or twice, I think, before we got together), and so far as I am aware, none of them were paired with anyone looking for a sugar daddy.

Oh, there was one guy who was clearly looking for a mom for his two daughters. He spent the date telling me all about how he and his ex-wife had great vanity plates with their initials and showed me pictures of his kids. If that had turned me off to the personals, I never would have met RP as this happened about six months -- and at least 20 - 25 dates -- before he and I connected.

Patience is a virtue in this area. There are gonna be some not-so-fantastic experiences. There will be some that are okay. There will be others that are really nice but there's no spark. But these things happen regardless of how people meet. The virtue of personals is self-direction. You put out your preferences. You are matched with people with similar preferences. At the very least (assuming everyone in the equation has been honest, which is not always a safe assumption), you should have something to talk about and a means of passing a more or less innocuous evening. There's something to be said about getting out and seeing people, even if they are not the right people, just to get you out of the house and out of your comfort zone and in the realm of doing something (safely) daring. It's this kind of vulnerability (but you have to be sensible, of course, and not do anything stupid) that makes it possible to fall in love.

As for what happened, with the fake dates, it's abominable. It's like, to my mind, parading babies in a doctor's office in front of infertile couples, as an ad for how great the fertility treatments are. We are talking about people's delicate feelings here. It hurts to be taken advantage of. Perhaps not in as quantifiable a way as if someone was swindled in an investment deal, but the principle is similar. This kind of deception is just plain wrong and no one deserves to have it happen to them.

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jespah wrote:

Gee, RP and I met through the personals. What does that say about us?

We've always been charitable about you and the Region, don't make us say something we will all regret . . .

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Dang, if I can't trust a little dog, who can I trust?

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Leading online matchmaker sued for bogus dating scam

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