In the Press, the Los Angeles Times covers the newest class action lawsuit against Match.com and its ‘phantoms’ – i.e. fake dating profiles – alleging their bottom line is to trick members to pay the $39.99 monthly subscription fee.

A class-action lawsuit claims that more than 90% of potential dates on Match.com are canceled subscribers, people who never subscribed, duplicates or phantoms the company created to snare its $40 monthly subscription fee. Match.com knows this, yet still collects $39.99 a month from its subscribers, the suit alleges. “At bottom, Match.com is a scam,” Jesse Kaposi of Northern California said in the suit, filed in federal district court in Dallas. He said he received electronic come-ons from would-be dates who don’t have active accounts, indicating that the website was merely teasing him. No response from Match.com to the lawsuit’s allegations.

LA Times

Direct from the website of the law firm, “Harwood Feffer LLP Files Class Action On Behalf Of Match.com Subscribers”:

According to the Complaint, Match.com entices individuals to pay subscription fees by creating a false perception that it has millions of active members that can be contacted through its site. Some of the tactics used by Match.com, include: (a) representing that it vets and approves new profiles when, in actuality, it fails to do so and thereby allows a deluge of fake and fraudulent profiles to be created; (b) failing to remove inactive profiles and labeling such profiles “active” despite, in many cases, inactivity and non-payment of subscription fees for many months; (c) failing to take any reasonable steps to police its site from the proliferation of false and fraudulent profiles and thereby subjecting its members to frauds and scams of the worst order; and (d) sending “winks” and/or emails out to former subscribers telling them someone is looking for them or that they have a “match” (only after renewing their memberships do these former subscribers learn that they have been duped and that the supposed profiles of interested people are no longer active and/or cannot be reached).

Harwood Feffer LLP Files Class Action On Behalf Of Match.com Subscribers