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Federal officials sued Match.com's owner for allegedly encouraging customers to subscribe to paid subscriptions at the popular dating site and then retain them as subcontractors by applying cancellation policies. " misleading ".
According to a press release from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Match Group, the company that owns several apps and dating sites, has sent Match.com users fake "love interest ads" for encourage them to subscribe to the service.
Users can create a Match.com account for free and are allowed to browse other profiles, but only those who have purchased a paid subscription can view the profiles that liked or favored them on the website, or read the posts. that they receive. (The cost of the subscription varies depending on the package, but averages $ 20 per month.)
The FTC alleges that the company sent emails to non-subscribers on Match.com about accounts that liked or promoted their account, sent them to the website or sent them all via email as part of An offer from the company to persuade people to subscribe – even if these accounts had been reported as fraudulent and were probably run by someone who was trying to commit a love scam.
As a result, between June 2016 and May 2018, some 499,691 users subscribed to Match.com within 24 hours of sending an e-mail regarding a similar message or from a fraudulent account, said the pursuit.
Many of these subscribers ended up interacting with a fraudster on the website, the FTC said, exposing them to the risk of fraud.
When asked about the FTC's lawsuit, a Match spokesperson asked BuzzFeed News to declare on his website a statement contesting the charges, stating inter alia that the agency "grossly overestimates the impact of fraudulent accounts." "and" malformed what is meant by "fraudulent" ".
"The vast majority of users referred to as" fraudulent "by the FTC are not fraudsters or similar types of fraudsters, but spam, bots and other users who are trying to use the service to theirs. own commercial purposes, "reads the statement.
Match Group, Inc., owner of https://t.co/pxAyhHQgcz, Tinder, OKCupid, PlentyOfFish and other dating sites, sued the online dating service, alleging that fake ads from romantic relationship was cheating hundreds of thousands of consumer subscriptions on https://t.co/pxAyhHQgcz
The lawsuit also highlighted the company's policies around a guaranteed free renewal, as well as its cancellation process.
Some Match.com subscribers have struggled to access the free renewal of their six-month subscription guaranteed by the company, said the FTC, because the terms of this renewal were not clearly defined by the company. When subscribers tried to challenge these charges with their banks, the FTC claimed that they could only use the Match.com services for which they had already paid out money.
The company has however stated that these terms "are listed in several places and are clearly called next to the guarantee by a hyperlink" Read more "clearly visible on the site.
And although Match said in its statement that the online cancellation process "generally takes less than a minute," the FTC alleged that its "embarrassing and tedious cancellation process" weighed heavily users and, in some cases, misled them into believing that they had canceled their subscriptions. when they did not have it.
Match is also the parent company of Tinder, OKCupid and Hinge, among other dating apps.
The company said in its statement that it intended to "vigorously defend against these charges in court."
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