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Man discovers friends were NOT looking for him, sues Classmates.com
You know all those ads you see all over the internet telling you that your old friends from high school, or the lonely half-naked girl down the street are waiting for you to call? Yeah, it turns out they're not always telling the truth. But one San Diego man figured that when he signed up for a free Classmates.com account and was then told that his friends were trying to contact him and he could find out who they were by paying $15 to upgrade his account, it couldn't hurt to shell out a few bucks.But once he did, Anthony Michaels discovered that nobody he knew or had gone to school with was actually trying to contact him. And the only users who had viewed his profile were people he had never heard of.
Most people would probably just figure they were out $15, because it would take more time and effort to try to recover the money than it was worth. But Michaels decided to try to put together a class action suit. Presumably, he's hoping to get more than $15 per user out of this, but the bigger point is that he's trying to get a court to show that Classmates.com used deceptive practices to convince him to become a paying member.
Comments
54
Subscribe to commentsSalsa SharkNov 16th 2008 8:05AM
Fuckin' aye!
JessNov 17th 2008 11:38AM
You're a dumbass. It's not being disrespectful, it's called the first amendment. If you don't like profanity, get off the internet and go back to watching your televangelist.
RalphNov 14th 2008 4:37PM
I have to tell it like it is I found a few classmates that I knew I emailed them and one of them emailed me back I guess I give them a neutrual rating that's my two cents
keith capleNov 14th 2008 6:11PM
my board is stuck, ok? i went to rousemount high school in mn for the class of 88, as a joke and they sent me e mail for friends. i graduated in 1966. you never upgrade on the net !
ChadSnagglerNov 14th 2008 7:46PM
I hated my fukin clsaamates; assholes
Daniel EnosNov 14th 2008 11:07PM
NOSTALGIA'S OVERRATED ANYHOW...
KimDec 16th 2008 9:00PM
I remember when I used to be nostalgic...
watdafukNov 14th 2008 11:07PM
I get stuff from these people all the time to my e-mail address thinking i`m somebody else.Last time it was somebody named Clay Anderson so Clay if your out there they are looking for you,No charge for that one.
SodaNov 16th 2008 8:05AM
Hope he fails at his law suit people are so dumb.
intellerNov 18th 2008 11:47AM
I REALLY REALLY wish classmates.com would go away. It is very clever (invasive?) how they have figured out how to get class rosters from all the schools but I rank them up there with all of those seedy "people finder" services that haunt the ads of whitepages.com.
They are ruthless in looking for and disabling anything that resembles an email address or URL in a profile. Their protection of their broken business model is almost comical.
Fortunately I've been able to contact everyone that I was interested in and got them migrated them all over to a free network like facebook so classmates.com can sit and spin on it.
JestinyNov 18th 2008 4:04PM
The guy's concern and lawsuit are legit. (and interestingly I got just such an e-mail from ClassMates.com saying people were signing my guestbook about 3 days ago). However, from my previous experience at dating sites like Match.com and Yahoo where I've observed social 'spam' before that can lure one in, I gave the e-mail little credibility.
I really wonder how prevalent or intentional such tactics are to get people to sign up. While I've had substantially positive experiences at the aforementioned dating sites, the amount of subscription money those sites could make by hiring a few geeks to impersonate 'Russian' or 'Asian' ladies (and then message or sign ten of thousands of non-paying member guestbooks.to entice them in)...is surely mind-boggling....and I really wouldn't put it past any company in this greedy, capitalistic world to employ the tactic.
BillDec 20th 2008 4:14PM
My goodness, how you gonna ever find all them home bodies from high school without classmates.com?
It doesn't make any difference what business yer in today... there's people out there who want to sue you and get some easy money.
Let em eat cake.
MarcDec 31st 2008 11:03PM
Who isn't on Facebook these days? It has its own 'spam' application problems, but at least you can avoid paying. You just have to be careful with your data, as always...
YoYoMaJan 12th 2009 9:03AM
Visits to Classmate profiles are only counted. No emails are sent. Emails are sent if someone signs your guestbook (the default setting) and you have that option set (it's by default). Classmates has no way of knowing if you know who's signing your guestbook. Classmates just suggests you go gold and "find out out who's thinking of you now." I think the lawsuit is frivolous.
Periodically I pay for the gold membership. I hadn't paid for it for about 3 years. Earlier this year my guestbook was getting 4 hits a week, up from about 4 a year. Of course I didn't know who was signing my profile since that's a "gold member" feature. Out of curiosity I paid for the gold membership and found out it was an old boyfriend from high school visiting my profile and signing my guestbook. It ended up not being a welcome thing, other than I found out he was still a jerk and I had married someone far better than him.