When Classmates.com told user Anthony Michaels last Christmas Eve that his former school chums were trying to contact him, he pulled out his wallet and upgraded to the premium membership that would let him contact long-lost fifth-grade dodge-ball buddies and see if his secret crush from high school had looked him up online.
But once he'd parted with the $15, Michaels learned the shocking truth: No one he knew was trying to contact him at all. Classmates.com's come-on was a lie, and he'd been scammed.
I signed up for their basic service ages ago, and every week I get a similar message. I've never bothered forking out the extra $15 to find out who it was from because, well, there are very few people from that time in my life that I want to run into again.
But this makes it official: that girl who wouldn't dance with me at the prom ISN'T trying to apologize and ask me to take her back. Good to know.
You raise an interesting point. Perhaps their business model would work better if the upgraded version let you hide from people in your past.
ReplyDeleteI expect Classmates is taking a beating from Facebook, where you can look up the people you really want to try to reconnect with, ignore those you dont, and it's free!
ReplyDeleteI wonder what dot.com-bubble genius MBA thought this crap up?
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt it's a scam, someone should never pay for something over the Internet. It's the only way to avoid being scammed.
ReplyDeleteNow excuse me while I go buy something on eBay.ca and sell something on usedregina.com
What the?..Oh, usedregina. Read something else there for a sec.
ReplyDeleteA lot of business people I've met, particularly those whose commerce involves things we could easily live without, think, deep down, that it's perfectly moral to assert that it's the consumer's own damn fault if he or she falls for their scams, schemes and confidence games.
Before the "Age of Information" it was a lot easier to detect these scams. Nowadays, with the application of sophisticated technology backed up by an advanced understanding of human psychology and propaganda, it's really getting tricky.
"Before the "Age of Information" it was a lot easier to detect these scams. Nowadays, . . . it's really getting tricky."
ReplyDeleteIt's not really hard at all ti. I've made hundreds of purchases online. I nearly got scammed once for $1100. I discovered I'd been phished, contacted Visa, and they took care of the rest.
Another time a retailer sent me a defective product and didn't want to refund me $225. Visa refunded the full purchase price before I even sent the item back.