How "elite" dating websites scam people | Hacker News Reader

How "elite" dating websites scam people

blog.cubeofm.com

100 pointsmaxklein71 comments

That yearly subscription upfront is a pretty blatant tell. I guess some people need a multi-hundred dollar lesson to learn that not everyone wants to sell you something you want to buy.

Yet another reason to love okcupid. (Disclosure: I'm a user and not financially associated with okcupid.)

I can't figure out which site he's talking about (I assumed eHarmony, but they don't seem to use "elite" as branding, and searching for elite dating brought up only escort agencies).

When I googled elite and dating there were several: elitepartner, elitedatinggroup, elitedaters, you get the idea.

Edit: elitepartner.de is a German site, which runs in a similar way as described and advertises in major newspapers. They clearly optimize their Google results as a cursory look through search results reveals that their enormously bad reputation on user-review sites is buried amongst dozens of supposedly objective dating sites reviews, which - quelle surprise - they fare exceptionally good on.

I didn't find those with that search, but searching on a complaint quote in the article did bring me this: http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/elite-meetingmeeti... which seems to make it pretty clear which site he means.

That thread is fantastic. Situation comedy gold. Wow, elitemeeting is completely shameless!

Its pretty clear someone that works there has gone posted their own positive reviews and upvoted/downvoted all of the reviews accordingly.

It's usually not the big dating sites, it's those sites you get ads for if you use OkCupid or PoF.

Affiliate marketers are familiar with these as they usually offer the best payouts. The majority are matchmaking services, or market themselves that way, and $800 is on the low end. They typically start around $1500 and can go into the tens of thousands (ie. matchmaking for corporate executives)

"I'm not going to mention any of the websites by name, because they are extremely litigous, and I don't want it to be said I directly accused any particular company of scamming."

I hate this aspect of our legal system.

This comment explains how to find the sites: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1260609

Since nobody has posted the site names yet, it's EliteMeeting.com (also run under MeetingMillionaires.com)

I really have no idea why people are so afraid of them. Maybe I'm foolish, but compared to someone like Scientology, I doubt they're terribly effective at harassment.

I posted their URL on the original blog in a comment. If they contact me, I'll probably post it widely and contact the EFF. (if they'd like to try some kind of extrajudicial methods, I hope they visit me at my office, behind the 3 machine-gun-armed checkpoints)

Truth is the ultimate defense for libel suits.

Saying "elite dating.com (or whatever site it is) sued a person I know for $800 for contesting the charges of a CC and here is the proof" cannot be libel, plain and simple.

That's not going to stop these people from filing vexatious lawsuits.

Many are not enthusiastic about the idea of defending against a libel suit. Baseless or not, it can still take a lot of time, money, and energy.

The woman who paid $800 for peace of mind is the perfect example.

The best things in life are free, so are the best dating sites.

Plenty of fish, okcupid and so on are free (or at least, freemium) and are way better than most of their paid competition.

There are lots of scams on dating sites, so better beware, it's not just some of the site operators that are scammers.

Yes, and co-opting other communities or activities to find people you like and have something in common with work probably best anyway. (Of course if you want to find a significant other, you will have to make sure that your preferred gender is represented.)

Works especially well offline.

A hackernews dating site would be amazing, except for the demographic problem of too many heterosexual males.

My favorite sites so far for meeting people for dating have been flickr, chow, and dpreview. I suspect travel sites would also work pretty well.

> A hackernews dating site would be amazing,

I am not sure our demographic should seek significant others within itself. This inbreeding has been associated with increased autism in California. We would have to review demographics of similar populations and see if there isn't too much evidence that suggests it's a bad idea.

Mixing demographics is so much more fun!

I guess when you mix people from different countries (or even continents) it wouldn't make so much of a difference that they are all geeks, would it?

I met my girl friend on okcupid, We've been dating for almost 2 years now :)

On what grounds are they suing? Especially if you mention their name in a negative blog article, I'd really like to know that. If anyone can provide me with details, please reply or contact me, am curious due to legal background.

Edit: Google for "elite dating" now brings this on 4th place. Awesome.

They would probably sue for defamation or libel. At least in the USA, the merits of a such a suit are beside the point. The point is to intimidate you with the threat of a lengthy and expensive legal process, at the end of which you might only end up with the consolation that a judge thought that you were right, but you are now tens of thousands of dollars in debt due to the legal costs of the trial.

Outside of the USA, it's even easier to win a libel suit, at least in the UK; I'm not 100% sure about elsewhere. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonalds_Restaurants_v_Morris_...)

Sadly, the UK is pretty notorious. I wouldn't use it as the standard for "outside of the USA".

Jesus, for $30 a month you could: Go get a drink every week with some friends and maybe meet someone in an actual real life bar, sign up for a fun activity like salsa, generally do something you enjoy where you'll meet like minded people.

Where do you live that $30 pm will take you that far? One night out in my town costs more than that.

Your town must be expensive. In Toronto, a beer costs about 2 CAD, which is also 2 USD (we have reached parity again). This is true even if you get it at a bar, provided you get it as a pitcher. The food then costs maybe $5 on top of that. So this is $7 per-night under the described rules ("a drink every week with some friends"), which allows just over 4 nights out with a budget of $30. And that's only if you're buying food there, too (bad idea, honestly, you can feed yourself for a week with $5 of food if you're smart. Rich people confound me.)

It's possible you go to more expensive pubs than I, but paying over $30 for a night out sounds ridiculous.

That doesn't sound right. I visited Toronto quite a bit a few years ago and paid quite a bit more than that everywhere I went and I hardly went to fancy places. What kind of food can you get for $5?

Of course here $30 is quite a modest night out, even without a meal. I generally assume at least $80-$100 for going out for food and beers on a Saturday night with my mates, and it's not like we're hitting up all the exclusive night clubs. I know lots of people who spend at least double that.

JC! In Switzerland in a disco you pay 17USD for, say, a vodka-redbull. Food in a bar usually runs 20+. One night out is easily 100USD here. (Well, prices are actually in CHF but it's close enough at the moment)

30.- for drinks in a bar (2-3 drinks)

15.- entry for disco

50.- for drink (3 drinks)

5.- for a hotdog on the way home :D

That’s crazy. London (where I live) is min £3/drink (CAD$4.50), food £5-10 (CAD$7.50-15). A couple of drinks and one plate of food and you easily see a CAD$25 spend.

Outside of forever hypothetical situations devised on messageboards, where a night out can reasonably be limited to "(cheapest) plate of food and 2 drinks", and ends up being more like "plate of food, ooh and those deserts look good, and that was 3 drinks during the meal to wash it down, and now for another 11 drinks, and buying a round for those guys I know from... er... somewhere... and those drinks for those nice girls I thought I had a chance with... and the entrance for the club, and the cloakroom, and some more drinks, and a kebab, and oh screw the nightbus let's get a taxi", it's pretty hard having a night out in London for less than £100.

I think what is most apparent is that different people drink different ways. There is nothing unreasonable about the "hypothetical" case.

You have better nights out than me :)

What places are you going to in Toronto? I grew up there and even several years ago a pint was typically $4-5 and appetizers at a pub were $6-10.

I don't drink much. I was using Molly's as a bar benchmark ($10 for a pitcher), and the first price was just from an LCBO.

Oops, I misremembered. I was thinking of Ein-Stein, not Molly's.

NY. More cocktails than beer. How many beers do you need to get a buzz?

$5 food? What are you eating? Is it healthy?

I'd need more beers to get a buzz, of course, but honestly I have no idea how many it'd take. I was working under the assumption we were only having one.

As for what food costs $5, I'm eating pasta and instant noodles, at the moment. It's not healthy if it's all you eat, of course. At the bar you could spend the money on a burger or whatever.

Yeah, I'm probably gonna need at least one strong $10 martini (still add tip onto that) if I'd qualify it as drinking :-)

Also, you won't find a $5 burger in any bar in NY.

I live in London. I didn't mean that you could do all of those things, but for £30/month you could definitely go for a couple of pints a week somewhere nice. Dinner, cocktails, a club and a taxi home is a different matter!

The problem here is that these sites are able to continue to operate because:

1. The people that register don't search the web for reviews, but instead are simply persuaded by trustworthy-looking TV/newspaper-ads. 2. Negative word-of-mouth in this business is not strong enough: people seldom like to tell their friends they're on a datingsite. Let alone telling the about one that has succeeded in ripping them off financially. 3. Affiliate marketing ensures that sites with the highest commissions (the ones that are able to charge/ripoff their users the most) will be recommended the most on various review/overview-sites.

So, the question is: what can be done about this?

Is the obvious idea also obviously wrong somehow? Make a site(s) that addresses the needs of those who get scammed in a reasonable way.

I realize it is difficult (chicken and egg, subtleties about dating/sex habits of males and females), but someone ought to be able to do it.

Often those peoples' needs are to have no-strings-attached-sex with rich, young, beautiful women.

There is a lot more demand than supply in that direction, so scams predominate.

You're straining my credibility with this "rich" bit. I have neither personal, anecdotal nor psychological research evidence to believ wealth comes within an order of magnitude of young or beautiful in its effects on attractiveness.

For those men who are honest with themselves about their desire to have nsa sex wit young beautiful women there's seekingarrangement.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1258234 for previous discussion of that

Curious as to why they have to be rich if the primary goal is no-strings-attached sex? If the assumed hope is that one could mooch off this rich, young, beautiful women a little before engaging in the no-strings-attached sex and taking one's leave, I'd say that would bring supply down to about zero.

Attractive females in the 18-25 bracket are pursued by men in the 18-death age bracket, far more than 18-25 year old men are pursued by women in the 18-death age bracket.

This leads to scarcity, and men use "rich", "high-status", "famous", etc. to differentiate themselves.

Male competition for breeding rights is the bedrock of human civilization (and probably for animals too)

Indeed, but I was referring to the part of the comment that describes the women as needing to be rich (and young and beautiful).

Beyond the difficulties that you've mentioned you've got established competition who has plenty of ill gotten cash to spend plastering the web/world with ads. And as someone already mentioned people who have been scammed by a dating site are likely to keep that to themselves. Competition who will sing their own praises from the rooftops combined with quiet victims is a bad combination to have to compete with.

This is just a roundabout way to brag to the world that your ex-girlfriend has resorted to Internet dating, isn't it?

What's wrong with Internet dating? You can find people that actually share similar interests instead of being stuck with whoever is working at Starbucks when you want coffee?

Internet Dating has no negative social stigma to you? Where do you live?

Who am I going to be stigmatized by? The people I find to date on the Internet? Nope. My friends? I don't discuss it with them.

I certainly hope not. Although there is, there really shouldn't be a stigma against people using dating websites.

There isn't. But there is a stigma against people who have a stigma against people using dating sites.

I find it amusing that "their adverts feature 30-50 year old professionals, a class of people that are not as used to the internet and its danger as other younger people" - what class of people is it exactly that are always wringing their hands about the safety of young people on the interwebs?

There are lots of people hard at work on security, but does anyone really think about trustworthiness or authenticity w.r.t. websites? It seems to me that doing a quick google search for one of these 'elite' sites would turn up a few reviews and complaints of shady business practices, but has anyone put forth any thought on how to alert users that a website may be malicious, even though they aren't a source of malware?

...or is this something that we, as web designers/developers, expect users to be able to do on their own?

well, perhaps a nice firefox plugin linked to a user-controlled database will do the trick.

Who has some spare time to build this?

Sorry, already exists: http://www.mywot.com/

nice, that saves us all some spare time than

it's amazing that in this day in age, people can still easily fall for these scams.

A simple google search for [dating site name] + scam will easily reveal the details about any site.

Maybe what we need is a yelp.com for websites.

If the site costs $30/mo, or $360 for the year, why was her fee $800?

I read it as she was being sued for that amount, not that it was the annual fee. I'd guess the extra dollars would be administrative fees etc etc.

Ah, that's probably what the author meant to say. As written ("She was being sued by the dating website for not paying the fee of a bit more than $800."), it says the fee was $800.

Maybe $800 is the "non-discount" amount. If you follow whatever terms, you get the discount. If you don't follow the terms (like, not paying), they charge you the non-discount.

That sounds probable given their other business practices. Sticking those who complain with a much higher fee would cover the cost of keeping a lawyer/legal standover man around.

that's more or less the case for most dating sites

I've had good results with POF.

I signed up for a JDate profile (you gotta go after the low hanging fruit) and started getting messages from users with VERY suspiciously generated usernames. They fit the pattern of {phrase}{number}{letter}. I emailed their tech support and asked if I could sign up but then get a 30day refund if I "didn't meet anyone nice" but they don't have any refund policy.

I tried POF, I find its a different type of person who uses it. If OKC has those people, it isn't showing them to me (well it wasn't 2 years ago)

I've had good results with real life. Going out and meeting womens , and enjoying it all the way.

Oops, voted up by mistake.

I don't see how this is relevant to the article. It's a bit like reading an article about shady business practices by auto dealers and replying "I've had good results taking public transit."

my point was to show a way to avoid this, and going out to meet peoples in real life is a way to do that.

I'd take issue using the term "real life" in this context.

By extension you're saying that anything that happens in a computer is "not in real life," even though the things that happen in computers have consequences in reality just like anything else.

The stigma needs to dissolve. When someone asks me "where did you meet your girlfriend," I'm not going to reply "not in real life," because that just doesn't fit a consistent definition of "real life." Especially in today's world. I also wouldn't say "I don't work in real life."

And your "point" is moot. How does meeting women in "real life" protect a person from scams? It would seem a golddigger's target demographic is the same as discussed in this article.

I'd just like to say, dude your ex is a moron. She fell for a scam, got bailed out by her credit card company and fell for another one by the same company. She's out $800 because she couldn't be bothered to consult with a lawyer who would have told her the letter was boilerplate bullshit.

It's true (though the parent could have been a bit nicer about it). A consult with a lawyer would have likely resulted in a stern letter from said lawyer being sent back to the company. These people go after the easy marks. Show some teeth and they'll likely back down. It's not worth their time to pursue the people who fight back.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com