It doesn’t get much more underhanded than this. A dating service signed up members for free – and amazingly, most of them started getting responses from nearby potential love interests almost immediately. But there was a catch – well, two catches.
It reminds us that it is easy to scam any which way, but to really come up with a vile scam, you need a computer.
The perp in this case if JDL Dating Ltd., a British firm offering 18 different dating websites, available wherever there is internet service.
New clients signed up and created a profile for free. And darned if the hits didn’t start coming right away!
Then came catch #1: If you want to see the profile of the local love interest, it required signing up for a paid membership costing between $10 and $30 per month.
Catch #2 was even better: If you bought the membership, what you got to see was a fake response. They were computer-generated “Virtual Cupids.” Although photos were said to have a v encircled by a C on them, there was no reason for consumers to look for them, much less understand their meaning.
The subscriptions generally ran from one month to one year. Just to add insult to injury, JDL kept them alive and billed after expiration unless the consumer cancelled the service. That act had to happen 48 hours ahead of expiration, a fact the FTC said was buried deep in a terms and conditions document that wasn’t supplied at the time the subscription was initiated.
Under terms of a settlement agreement in a case the FTC calls its first enforcement action against an online dating service, JDL will pay $616,165 in customer redress.
“JDI Dating used fake profiles to make people think they were hearing from real love interests and to trick them into upgrading to paid memberships,” said Jessica Rich, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Adding insult to injury, users were charged automatically to renew their subscriptions – often without their consent.”
RBR-TVBR observation: Broadcast efforts to get into the dating game involved shows like: “The Dating Game.” And MTV’s “Singled Out” delved into affairs of the heart.
While we would not want to speculate on the track record of matches of those shows and others like them – we strongly suspect they did not often produce a wedding – at least the matches involved mates consisting of actual flesh and blood.
You’ve just gotta love that internet. The FCC and FTC should probably get together and make it a requirement that everytime a citizen logs on, a big sign in flashing letters will present the message “CAVEAT EMPTOR YOU FOOLS!!!!!!!!”
