I have followed these Classmates.com lawsuit and complaints for the past month or so. I feel that the burden should be on the consumer to realize these are a scam. I also feel that class actions should be used for significant public policy issues; like protecting, children, the elderly, the consumer against hazardous products, financial ripoffs that undermine economic security.
Here is another view courtesy of JR Raphael of PC magazine which I will summarize as Classmates.com is a Internet pest, a bad business player that engages in sleazy practices and is unresponsive to consumers. That’s not compelling to me as a reason to encourage class action lawsuits.
Say there was a gym in your neighborhood and they sold you a monthly membership. You had seen their sleazy ads, saw that the facilities weren’t top notch but you joined anyway. Once there the machines often didn’t work, the hours sucked and there was no one to complain to. Would you keep renewing your membership? Tell others about this great gym you belong to? So why is the Internet different? Convince me.
Tags: class action, Classmates.com, Lawsuits, PC World
Reading Tea Leaves by Randy Wilson 
December 14, 2008 at 11:55 am |
Nice bog you have here. I pretty much lurk the internet when I’m bored and read all I can about the organic lifestyle, but I really liked you view on things. I’ll bookmark the site and subscribe to the feed!
December 14, 2008 at 3:16 pm |
Welcome back anytime.
January 21, 2009 at 4:12 am |
Classmates.com sends an email stating that someone is attempting to connect with you from your past. Knowing that this is an old & large company, people feel comfortable sharing their personal information to get the message that is waiting for them. However, to access your messages, you will have to sign up for a gold membership package. Then, after a $10 trial period, you are automatically charged for your membership at $39.00. I attempted to cancel on my renewal date, but they just stated that there is no cancelling the membership on the renewal date, and they billed me anyway. I’m waiting for my credit card company to help me.
January 21, 2009 at 4:17 am |
Good luck with that. If there is a decent settlement out of the class actions, you may have a legal remedy and/or get a cash award.
April 27, 2009 at 7:15 pm |
Going through your list of reasons, I almost gave up hope. Hope of you understanding the problem. Then I saw the light at the end of the tunnel…
Say there was a gym in your neighborhood and they sold you a monthly membership. You had seen their sleazy ads, saw that the facilities weren’t top notch but you joined anyway. Once there the machines often didn’t work, the hours sucked and there was no one to complain to. Would you keep renewing your membership?
The key is the last sentence. would you keep renewing ? no. I tried this once, fell for the someone is searching for you thing. I also had been wanting to try it out and find some old friends, so I tried it. It is subpar, and no, couldn’t find the people I wanted to on there. So I canceled it. I got charged $40. Seems I didn’t cancel in the few day free period. Ok, I can live with that. It was my fault. Last week I got charged again. But I canceled the account, and removed the credit info from their website.
Now I have $40 charge. I called them and got through, 425-917-5000 by the way. They say they attempted to make the charge but it was declined. It wasn’t, it went through. Now I am trying to dispute the charge. A lawsuit might be the only way to get them to stop doing this to people. Maybe it is people’s own fault 99% of the time. Most people are stupid. But if you cancel it and they charge you again anyways, then won’t refund it, that is fraud.
May 12, 2009 at 10:23 pm |
I agree with the posters that Classmates is not a good company. I think that http://www.classmates.com used to be a good company but lately had been endowed with bad leaders who had probably summoned their workers to do those ‘scams’. It’s a sad story.
You can report them to the BBB or file a fraud claim with your Bank. The last time I was scammed by these online furniture sales company, I had sent them email requests to be canceled, warned them that I would contact my bank and file it as fraud, then I filed it with my bank.
They lied and tried to accuse me of false things. I persisted, presented my evidences, and I won. After about 5 months of distress.
May 12, 2009 at 10:37 pm |
Thanks for the insight!
June 5, 2009 at 1:26 am |
I have had a problem with Classmates like others here in that they are charging me $39 annual renewal fee which I did not authorize. I called the credit card company and they removed the charge for me and they did contact Classmates but I don’t know what was said. Two weeks later the charge of $39 was re-charged to my credit card by Classmates. I am calling my bank again.
Naturally I am not happy about this at all. Since I will probably lose the $39 to Classmates, I will simply have to swallow that indignation. But my next step is the have the credit card number replaced by another number stating that I am having fraud problems and need a new credit card number. I need my credit card company to refuse any future charges to the older number so that next year this nonsense will not continue. I do not know any other way out of this mess since I am unable to contact Classmates either by email or phone. You know the drill with them.
I do hope for the sake of others that heaven and earth is moved to clamp down on Classmates.
August 17, 2009 at 6:17 am |
I can’t even get on it anymore. I’m getting viruses from it.
August 17, 2009 at 6:19 am |
I can’t even go on it anymore. I keep getting viruses everytime I log on to it. I can’t close my acct. that way either.
January 22, 2010 at 1:57 am |
I was soon billed $19.95 twice after signing up for a Gold membership for one year with classmates.com. A group calling themselves PrivacyMatters claimed I had ok’d them to dip into my credit card for a service I know nothing about. I called my credit card company and had the two charges removed. I also cxl’d that credit card and will never do business with classmates.com again. Frankly with classmates.com’s long internet history of scaming people’s credit cards, I was baffled as to why they haven’t been busted by the feds. They are thieves who need to be jailed anytime soon.
February 15, 2010 at 3:56 am |
I wrote classmates an email asking to cancel my subscription. I was told that they had already charged my account until November 2010. We were in January 2010. It makes no sense that they should charge so many months ahead. They also told me that even if I cancel my membership now my account would still be charged for the months from now till November2010 and that my informatin would still be shared with third parties.
February 15, 2010 at 5:15 am |
Hi, I posted in June 09 that I was having probs with Classmates billing and my inability to cancel. I contacted my bank credit card, told them about this problem, and they reversed the charges back to Classmates. However, this fee reversal was pending Classmates response back to my bank credit card company on the entire matter. Since they had their info that I was signed up at one time (years ago) and never cancelled (because they see to it that you can’t….) my bank credit card recharged my account for the annual fee saying that Classmates showed that I initiated the charge.
I was not pleased with this and told my bank that I want to block my credit card immediately because Classmates was perpetrating a fraud and if my credit card was not blocked, I would to cancel my relationship with my bank and close all accounts.
It was a drastic call on my part but I had to put an end to this insane Classmates nonsense. I have great credit and a very good history with this bank so the bank wisely blocked the card and reissued me a new one under a different number. The bank once again removed the annual Classmates fee and that was the end of it finally. I told the bank at that point that if I ever saw another Classmates charge on my credit card in the future, I would end my relationship with the bank because of the long list of problems I have had with Classmates. Now I am extremely cautious about providing any company anywhere temporary access to any credit card number I have.
At this point any emails I receive from Classmates (yeah, they still try every now and then) I ship them off to spam, block them, and treat them like all the other bit of trash I get.