
How "elite" dating websites scam people - maxklein
http://blog.cubeofm.com/on-how-elite-dating-sites-are-scamming-women
======
drunkpotato
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.)

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rdl
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).

~~~
dsplittgerber
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.

~~~
randallsquared
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...](http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/elite-
meetingmeeting-millionaires-c205060.html) which seems to make it pretty clear
which site he means.

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

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johnrob
"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.

~~~
exposethescam
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)

~~~
rdl
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)

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jacquesm
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.

~~~
eru
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.

~~~
rdl
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.

~~~
rbanffy
> 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!

~~~
eru
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?

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dsplittgerber
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.

~~~
pyre
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_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonalds_Restaurants_v_Morris_&_Steel))

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

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SandB0x
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.

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

~~~
devinj
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.

~~~
robin_reala
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.

~~~
yetanotherlogin
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.

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

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sssparkkk
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?

~~~
rguzman
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.

~~~
akgerber
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.

~~~
jonny_noog
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.

~~~
rdl
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)

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

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

~~~
jrockway
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?

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

~~~
jrockway
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.

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barrkel
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?

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tjarratt
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?

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

Who has some spare time to build this?

~~~
bkudria
Sorry, already exists: <http://www.mywot.com/>

~~~
niekmaas
nice, that saves us all some spare time than

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yosho
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.

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byoung2
If the site costs $30/mo, or $360 for the year, why was her fee $800?

~~~
romland
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.

~~~
byoung2
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.

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

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zackattack
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.

~~~
clistctrl
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)

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

~~~
alex_c
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."

~~~
Concours
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.

~~~
RevRal
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.

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yardie
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.

~~~
kelnos
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.

