Classmates.com gets sued for phony come-ons

Sat Nov 15, 2008 1:45PM EST

See Comments (57)

If you've never received Classmates.com's spam messages -- "A former classmate of yours is looking for you!" -- you probably don't have a working email account. Classmates.com's come-ons are some of the most venerable and virulent email advertisements around. And at long last the company is being sued because, you know, no one is really looking for anyone using Classmates at all.

Having never heard of Facebook, a San Diego man named Anthony Michaels paid $15 for Classmates' premium service after being told that old school buddies wanted to get back in touch with him. Was it his secret crush? No, Michaels soon found out. In fact, no one he'd gone to school with had ever searched for him.

Michaels' attorneys are looking for class action status to represent what could be hundreds of thousands of similarly scammed individuals and millions of dollars extracted from wallets.

Classmates began its aggravating existence back in 1995 and remains a major online advertiser: Wired notes it spent $30 million alone in 2005 on web ads. For its efforts, the company now claims 40 million registered users; premium subscribers are billed $15 per quarter to maintain their sad and lonely hopes that someone, anyone, from their past may actually want to talk to them. You can read just a few of the complaints about the service here.

Astute readers may also recall the case of Reunion.com, which was accused of spamming users earlier this summer and has now also drawn legal fire.

See Also: JR Raphael's "5 Reasons I Hope Classmates.com Gets Sued Into Oblivion"

Comments on Classmates.com gets sued for phony come-ons

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  • 46 Posted by debjensen@ymail.com on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:40PM EDT Report Abuse

    Well it is about time for them to get sued. I would have so many e-mails from them and nothing but untruths.

  • 48 Posted by roseuvhollywood on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:51PM EDT Report Abuse

    I guess I have never thought it was so great to get back in contact with people who have really forgotten me. You know if you have friends even those who have relocated they are really good about keeping contact. If for some reason they don't that is fine. I think this and other people search websites are dangerous. For women and stalker types. I mean for a few bucks these places put all of your personal info out there. I believe our info should be on a need to know basis. Why should someone who was just sitting around wondering what you became have everything? Then for this same website and others like it to constantly lure people into thinking they are being searched for? So wrong. I hope this changes. They need to be regulated and information verfied. They need to do more to ask us if we even want to be contacted as well. Some of us don't want anything to do with certain people. We should have a choice in the matter.

  • 49 Posted by neha_1027 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:35PM EDT Report Abuse

    Wow..... I guess I need to start keeping a contact list and keep it until i die so i dont get ripped off 10 years after i graduate high school or college!!

  • 50 Posted by tonirgregg on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:16PM EDT Report Abuse

    I get these emails from Reunion and Classmates all the time. Luckily, I know no one is searching for me and I am NOT going to pay 15 bucks a month for something I check once a year.

  • 51 Posted by beachpatricia32 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:04PM EDT Report Abuse

    I have great sucess with classmates!I never paid for the premium membership yet,but I reconnected with 2 old friends who did pay for it and they had been looking for me!And I thank classmates for it!And right now the price is only 19.97 for a year.But personally I love classmates.And I know I can connect with more people later.Actually it's an awesome site.

  • 52 Posted by brenda.balin@att.net on Thu Sep 3, 2009 3:12PM EDT Report Abuse

    I took a 3-month paid membership, and cancelled before it ran out. No charges, but repeated efforts to get me to rejoin. When the offer was low enough in cost, I rejoined for one more year. It's just fine. I've reconnected with a bunch of people from high school--even had a 2-year fling with my long-lost prom date! If you want to cancel, just do it before your membership runs out, and delete your credit ctd info. Easy. If you want to remove your profile, just delete all the info in it. I don't get the complaint. It's like everything else: if you don't like it, don't do it. If you don't like the e-mail, program it as spam, delete and forget about it. It's not like they're knocking on your door.

  • 53 Posted by janmarie1020 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 4:28PM EDT Report Abuse

    For those of you that are happy with classmates and have found others, Congratulations. No one is arguing that you can't get in touch with long lost classmates. The issues here is classmates.com is using deceptive emails in an effort to get you to pay for their services by saying someone is looking for you. You then pay your money and expect a personal note just to find out that it was all spam and deceptive advertising. I personally didn't fall for it but I'm glad this person is suing them. There's so much fraud and deceptive practices online that suing the culprits will be the only way to make people think twice before using this approach to advertising.

  • 54 Posted by pabock71 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 7:48PM EDT Report Abuse

    Beware of Reunion.com also. They ask you for a credit card to verify that you're over 18 and say they won't charge you unless you sign up for their premium service. I never signed up for that service yet for the past two months they've charged my checking account. I also found out that no on was looking for me from my high school. Something should be done about these two crooked services. I also receive the ads from Classmates but I learned my lesson from Reunion.com. I wish someone would start a class action against Reunion.com also. I don't know why they're getting away with it when they're doing the same thing that Classmates.com is.

  • 56 Posted by pulpgraffiti on Thu Sep 3, 2009 8:22PM EDT Report Abuse

    They also have a monopoly. After getting tricked into signing up to see who was trying to contact me, I got the idea to start my own classmates reunion site where I would offer the same package for free. There is no reason to charge for it since it is ad supported anyway. But two things have stood in the way. One, Classmates.com got a trademark on the work Classmates. That is like Coke trademarking the word softdrink. I am trying to make this work at yearbookonline.com-com.us but it is difficult to do without advertising this without using some form of the word classmates. No form of the word can be used. The other factor is that all the good .com names are taken and people just won't even try to remember your site if it doesn't end in .com

  • 57 Posted by wtester100 on Thu Sep 3, 2009 10:51PM EDT Report Abuse

    Hmm never knew this before...seems a trap .... if true they should get sued.

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