a crank’s progress

How can I have my name removed from classmates.com’s register? Please reply.

I feel the same way, almost. I have gotten connected with 3 people I know. Someone keeps sending me e-mails, and I don’t know them. Others arw unidentified unless I pay the fee. I don’t really think it is a scam, but it would be nice to get reconnected without paying that fee. By the way, I am not paying the fee. Somehow, I keep hoping I will hear from someone I met “way back when.”

MarthaJean is too charitable, I fear ;-) I think it’s a trick to get you to pony up for their paid service, though I don’t know what happens when you join and read the email from the bogus party.

As for getting off their list, I think the best you can do is unsubscribe from their service and stop getting their email notices. I don’t know how they get the names in the first place, if it’s all voluntary or if they get class rolls somehow.

Good luck with your efforts to disentangle yourself from the service or re-entangle yourself with that special someone.

This group makes it very diffficult to unsubscribe from their membership. They do not tell you how. They do not make it easy. I want to unsubscribe, now!

I managed it but couldn’t be certain how. Since I am no longer a member, I won’t see the same screens, but if memory serves, it was all about some fine print at the bottom of the screen and some confirmation steps.

Good luck. It can be done!

They suck. if you become a gold member, while you can eventually contact people you wentto school with (I found 5 after 30-35 years from Elementary and high school, and ZERO from university after 27.

And most of those people are not people you were firneds with to start with.

What is wierd, I get visits to my profile from people I don’t know.

And they DO make it hard to get off. Although i think this time it is not an automatic signup as I recall it was earlier.

They make a lot of mnoney trading on memories, butu as to how many people arer actually served by them, not sure. Long live capitaism, I guess.

There are more egregious examples (cigarette companies addicting people to a product they know admit, feebly, is an agent of death. Why should they not be indicted for making a product intentionally designed to kill people.

But back to CM.com

A waste for me to have joined.

paul

I’m always getting these “notification” emails from classmates.com and I think it’s all bullsh*t. I don’t recognize the names of these so-called “classmates” of mine and each time I’m suckered into even clicking through to the teaser link, the renewal fee gets *surprisingly* lower and lower. I think it’s a scam. Don’t reply!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, I actually got an email from someone I knew in high school, so that part went ok. But then I went online to look up another friend - visited their profile and left my name in their guestbook. A couple of hours later I get an email from classmates.com, “Someone has visited your profile and left their name!”. OK, so I sign on - oops, you have to pay for the Gold membership to see who signed your guestbook - so, ok I pay. Sure enough, it’s my old friend who’s profile I had just visited. Cool! We’re playing tag! So I send an email, and……nothing. So I revisit my friend’s profile, leave my name again. Four hours later, up pops a new visitor to my profile who has left their name - yup, my friend again. OK, weird. Obviously they are online, and obviously they are visiting my page, so why not respond to the email? After a couple more rounds of this, and a couple test visits to other people’s profiles, I figured it out.
CLASSMATES.COM IS FAKING VISITORS TO YOUR PROFILE, SPECIFICALLY PEOPLE WHO YOU HAVE VISITED! So you visit JoeBlow’s proflie, and like clockwork, JoeBlow suddenly visits your profile. But if you call Joe up, he’ll tell you he hasn’t been on Classmates.com for years. Which explains why he doesn’t answer your emails. Classmates.com is faking visits to your profile - so that you have to sign up to see who it is. Now I have also been visited by real people too, but I know for a fact they are automating return visits to your profile from people that you have visited. MAJOR waste of my time, and a total scam too. Beware of this service, they do not operate honestly!

Yes, I did the same test case as A.M. Richardson above described and came up with the same results. It appears to me that classmates.com is trying to pull one over their users in an attempt to rack in as much $ as they can - possibly a last ditch before they are flattened by facebook ;) . I noticed that they used to have a feature that displayed how many unique visiters signed your guestbook, so that you could compare that with the total number of guestbook records - thus allowing you to surmise if someone is continually signing your guestbook. I could be wrong, but it appears that feature just disappeared last week making it harder to test\prove that classmates.com is behind this. I don’t think that they are conducting themselves honestly either.

Too late I found out you are right. I finally caved and paid to see who visited my profile. There were 9 entries, a few repeats, and I did not know any of them.
Thanks for the blog.

I am getting so sick and tired of these online services. Add me to the long (and growing) list of people unhappy with classmates.com. After subscribing two weeks ago to their Gold service (I opted for 3 months at $5/month), I found out that the membership would automatically renew at the end of three months. I emailed their customer service to ask how to ensure that my membership didn’t automatically renew, but didn’t get a reply. So I emailed again, repeating the question, and also said that if I asked them to cancel my membership, would I presumably continue to have Gold membership for the duration of my 3-month period. Then, today when I tried to log in, I couldn’t - it is as if my account was blocked or something. I’ll check my next credit card statement carefully and if there’s any charge there from them, I’m complaining to the Bestter Business Bureau, for what it’s worth.

I received a call from a Christy Webber asking me about my family. She nknew everything you could think of, stated she had been asking her classmates on Classmates.com and they helped her get everything. Never heard of her and the phone number is phoney. Does Classmates.com ever check these people? I graduated in 1966 and she graduated in 1986? but knew everyone I knew. She kept telling me all about how helpful Classmates.com was in finding me and getting informarion about me. What the hell is up.
That sounds creepy. If this was a college class, colleges keep a lot of information on file for fundraising purposes.

I’m not very happy with classmates.com either. I always get emails from them saying that someone signed my guestbook, but I refuse to pay money to read phony messages from folks I don’t even know. I suspected something was up. Guess it’s time to unsubscribe.

thanks for the blog info to see I’m not alone here

You can have your name deleted from classmates.com by going to the site’s help section and entering “remove name” — follow a couple of simple steps, and your name fades into oblivion once again.

[good news, if that's all it takes. Though it would make more sense to quit with that fake friend business. It's not that people don't want to be contacted (well, in my case, it probably is), but that they don't want to be tricked or scammed. --ed]

They do seem to have a good little scam running. I remember visiting this site years ago and signing up for my “free” trial. They seem to email you for a while with the messages about someone visiting your profile, someone wanting to get a hold of you, etc. for a while, then they stop (most likely because I asked to be removed from their mail list). Recently my curiosity got the best of me and I decided to spend the $39 to see who was trying to reach me. Of course, it was no one I knew, just someone who had attended the same school. I checked with a buddy of mine who had also added his name to the site many years ago. In his case, he no longer had the email id he used when he signed up for his “free” membership. The list of names on the site would lead you to believe that these folks can actually be reached.

I hate to be scammed, but being in the computer industry, I have to admit that this is a very good one.

I would avoid this site like stripper with a cold sore!

I too got a ton of those “someone you know is trying to contact you” messages from classmates.com. The sleazy thing is, after being a member for three or so years, all of the so-called messages being sent to me came in a two week period. I’m talking about twenty or thirty messages out of the blue. Since I’m a free member all of the messages I clicked on ported me over to a sign-up page. I guess the sales people at classmates were on some sort of a recruiting drive to raise revenue. Anyway, after a couple of nasty-grams to their support the so-called messages from old friends just by coincidence happened to stop. They are scam-artists at classmates.com who had a good idea that has been ruined by greed.

One other thing I learned about classmates.com. If you want to leave your email addy for free members to find, just emboss it into your photo (free photo uploads for free members) with a image editing program. I did it with Jasc Paintshop Pro and it works well. Take that classlessmates.com!

Classmates sends me emails that someone I know signed my guestbook. I had 5 signups yesterday. When I had 3, I paid the fee with the full intention of cancelling. I read the names, one was valid, then I promptly cancelled the membership. I think it is a scam to get you to pay the membership fee. The funny thing is that none of these guestbook signers ever send an email. BOGUS. I clicked on a name who signed my book and nothing came up in the search. BOGUS BOGUS BOGUS. I just ignore them like I do telemarketers.

It seems to me they are running a scam as well. I got an email from them recently and decided to go in and update my profile on my free account. A couple of days later I get some signatures on my guest book, but I can’t view them without paying. So, because I think they are actual friends who have viewed my recently updated profile, I pay the $15 for 3 months. When I view the entries, they appear to be bogus people, with no information filled out in their profile. I have continued to receive these fake signatures for the last couple of days. There is every bit of evidence that these are being generated by Classmates.com themselves. Very scummy behavior! They seem to not realize that if they provided their services free, they would increase their traffic significantly and improve ad revenues. Instead they have a very slow site, with overwhelming adverts, and broken functionality if you don’t pay.

BTW, somebody mentioned that the 3 month subscription autorenews. This is true and I actually didn’t realize until I read the post. If you click on ‘My Account’, and login, under My Membership Information, there is the Renewal Option field. Click on ‘Automatic’ and click yes to change it to manual.

Very glad to have come across this blog. Thanks!
The “someone signed your guestbook” / “you are a real people person, 50 people have visited your profile and 3 signed your guestbook” has been driving me insane.
It felt like a scam of some sort and to see such a turn out of like individuals with the same problem I know feel confident that it will be of no loss to lose my connections to their site.
I wouldn’t doubt they have been a major offender selling my personal information (address, e-mail, etc…) to every yahoo under the sun.
What more they prey on the hopes of the single sect to re-kindle a relationship. After reading these entries I am sure I am far better off just running into old flames at the grocery store. Darn you internet!!!
Still it was highly informative to read about how many did quite a lot of follow up research only to find even more crafty trickery going on. The company appears to cover all the angles.
I am positive during one late evening of hitting the bars only to return home and come up with the “bright” idea to sign up as a “gold” member only to be left in a weeping pool of my own regret. That or sign up for gold only to find that as a “platinum” member They will send a limo to take me directly to their doorstep…as “titanium member” They will break up an old flames’ marriage and pay for the wedded bliss of I and the old flame I may still have the hots for…and for just a dollar more (re-occuring per month fee) Classmates will throw a party for me and all my former aquaintances from Kindergarten through College the first of every month at a local Super8 motel of my choosing.
Thank you again for putting my mind at ease.
Good luck everyone! I mean it!
To pray on all us as they do when all we want to do make that connection. Shame on Classmates dot crap!
May they all get an incurable case of leprecy with big ole’ warts all over their exposed parts and scratchy shingles in their private areas. =)

I want to know whay the $15.00 a month is for. I go to Classmates.com and I don’t even know who the class of 69 are . Now you want another “Whatever” to send my classmates an e-mail. I thought I canceled 2 months ago but I still have $15.oo on my credit card. I have been wondering if I have to get my lawyer to handle this one. I am totaly dissapointed. Lin da $$

So today I get an email from classmates that I have an email. It is from someone I knew but NOW you cannot access your email messages without paying the fee. Classmates is getting desparate. Oh and BTW? It said the email message was not paid for. So if I am not a paying member and this other person is not a paying member, how the heck did an email message get sent? Desparate Classmates.com.

Roni, you answered your own question in a way. You didn’t get a REAL email. You got spammed. These assholes did the same thing to me for months. I must have gotten twenty emails in a matter of two months after having gotten none for five years. As soon as I complained (I can’t remember to who) the damn mails stopped in a matter of a few days. They’re scam artists there. One other word of warning. I joined Alumni Archive.com for the same reason I joined classmates and guess what? It stayed free for about two years and allowed emails and messages then one day it’s not free anymore. I complained to the ” contact us” link and they banned my IP and username. So… i used an anonymous websurfer program and re-joined the free service just so I can flame these assholes all over again. Someday someone is going to start a reunion site that will stay free. Until then, these douchebags are all there is.

Yeh! I’ve been getting emails from classmates .com but, I can’t read them. It’s a real shame too! I’ve been listed as deceased, GO FIGURE! I wanted so baddly to respond to let fellow classmates know I’M STILL BREATHEING!! I haven’t bothered to open any more emails from those worm sniffing, bogus-assholes, spam-scam artist. Something has to be done. I’m almost tempted to contact NBC DATELINE. I love that program, more people should watch it. Be surprised what you may LEARN.

For some reason, I got banned from Classmates.com. I do not know why, and I was never given a reason. I didn’t even know it happened until I tried to visit it a few times to no avail. All I ever did was update my profile, and now I can never go back. They keep emailing me and asking me back, saying people want to get in touch with me, but I’m banned. And the site is utterly worthless unless you pay money, otherwise it serves no purpose to even join it. The site is simply run and operated by scumbags.

well I dunno about your experience but heres what I found:

(1) Why can’t we just

Lucius (Lou) Harwell (view profile)

Started: 06/13/07 12:57pm PST

shoot the illegal aliens as they illegally cross the boards into this country? Shouldn’t we just start shooting them and be done with it?

Now, suppose one of these “illegals” is carrying a dirty bomb or antrax?

Shouldn’t we just start shooting them and be done with it?

I’m just asking a question to see why we should or shouldn’t just shoot them?

In one of the 500 pages of archives and over 10,000 respondent posts there that are the rule and not the exception all condone by CM at the Elections and Leaders Discussion Board there.

Seems to me CM has a problem there over this?

Dont take my word for it?
See for your self?

[well, not being a member, I can't "see for myself" but I did see the similar report filed at Ripoff Report. I don't think they care: as long as they make their quotas, who cares? I don't agree with that attitude, necessarily, but I can see them adopting it. -- ed]

I had the same deal with Reunion Dot Com. Wanting me to send them a fee to fine my friends I was in the Army with. I have search the white pages and what pops up you got it. Somebody with a hand out wanting do the searching for you for a fee. The other night I got a new one I hadn’t seen before{Web Detective Pro.Com} . They are all the same and I believe they work with each other to see how much money they can make off of the people that don’t know any better. I haven’t sent them any fee and won’t!! But it’s shame we can’t use our computers fine and connect with our relaletives and friends that we have lost contact with. Why are we paying a fee to use the computer for anyway.Like Yahoo,Google and People PC !!!

You folks are hilariously paranoid! Classmates isn’t running any scams, but they do have a business model that requires payment. OH NOES! An internet company that needs MONEY to run itself? It must be a scam! Riiiight. It’s called business. Look into it.

Your guestbook signatures come from anyone who views your profile, unless they have their signature ability turned off. So yeah, you’re gonna get people you know AND random people you don’t know. If you really think Classmates employees have the time to sit around individually scamming their 50 million (or whatever) members, you’re nuts.

Oh, and yes, you CAN get an email that hasn’t been paid for … the concept there is pretty simple: someone has to pay for it, either the sender or the recipient. So if the sender didn’t want to pay to email you, they were still able to write and send the email, but now you have to pay to see it. The lesson there is that your old friends are cheapskates.

And full disclosure: I am a former Classmates.com employee and do know what I’m talking about. You people are very, very silly.

Random people you don’t know? Or people with obviously fake names?

If you’re a former employee, you’re obviously well-connected: I have a lot of traffic from “nat120.classmates.com” this afternoon and shortly thereafter, this comment.

Author : MissEss (IP: 65.197.174.98 , nat120.classmates.com)

OH NOES! An internet company that uses astroturf to defend itself!

And I leave it as an exercise for the reader why Classmates makes it non-obvious how to get off their mailing lists and people end up here . . . it’s a top ten most-requested page in my daily, yearly, and all-time tallies for queries on “classmates spam” and the like. Congrats for calling all those customers foolishly paranoid. Hope that works out well for you.

There’s got to be a way to get around them. I Joined for the 3 months and emailed quite a few classmates. I heard from one guy and he gave me his personal email by writing it out…’joemith at yipeedotcom. It got past them in the email. I tried the same thing in my bio and it was immediately detected and my profile was banned. I went back in and took the address out and was immediately reinstated. I’m going to keep trying different things. I found one gal’s address in her bio like this…”Janedoe and you know the rest”. I sent her an email at yahoo and bingo! In any case, what a pain. The idea of putting your email address into an uploaded picture seems worth a try. Do they block mailing addresses or written out phone numbers…”fourohsix-sevensixtwo-blablablabla? I’m going to keep trying,

[the secret is to put it in the picture you upload, using any photo editor you like. I'm sure they can and do search for the phrase "dotcom" in all the text that get stored.]

Caution! If you pay to join, you are automatically renewed without notice! This was for $59.00 for 2 years and then I canceled but no refund. I am a unhappy member for the next two years. one way to cancel is to go to the help screen then look for “contact us” which gives an e-mail address.

I too was curious about all these e-mails about folks trying to contact me and I signed up for 3 months just to check it out. I sent a couple of e-mails to former classmates and got no response and that was about 3 months ago. I now realized that I was automatically charged again and I contacted Classmates via e-mail. After the 3rd e-mail they tell me they have cancelled my membership, but are not saying anything about reimbursing my $15 that I was charged again. This may not be a scam, but it is certainly a high class step up from that and I’m not satisfied at all. I will take the matter further to get my money back. We all need to be cautious and believe that if it seems to good to be true - it is!

@MissEss:

Sorry, but to back up paul (comment #29), the evidence against CM is pretty heavy. I’ve been watching this issue, too, and I’ve gotten a “teaser” sign every month, once per month for the past year now: http://dotnoted.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!739DCC71898E38F9!351.entry.

Of course, you are perfectly correct when you define the action of “These people have visited your profile and left their names” as “monthly, automated, random selection of a profile out of the set of your defined classmates, the generation of an entry describing this automated selection to be viewable only with a premium membership, and an email alert of this action”: there is no scam in this case. It’s only when you define “signing your guestbook” as a manual, conscious act of some other human being who you once knew and associated with that makes the above mechanism appear to be a scam.

Actually, re-reading your comment makes it clear that you _are_ defining it as a randomly generated message from the set of all people who have visited a profile. I wouldn’t need your IP address to know that this is a classic astroturfing post - the same spin as the original spam, only in comment form. Just when I didn’t think this could go any lower… Good luck with that “business” thing, however you define it.

it’s not just classmates… but reunion.com the alumni sites… all of them. you find who you are looking for then even dare try to click on their profile and TA DAH! you must pay! why pay for a friendship that came for free? what the hell do they think we are? so what it’s $20 starts.. that’s not the point. technically i find these sites useless. all one wants to do is hook up with someone who found these sites as a useful utility until of course when they realized they too have to pay just to make any contact or even view a picture.

bullshit!

Have any of you looked at http://www.classreport.org? They appear to have a policy of no fees, no ads, no spam. I surfed the site for 20 minutes, got 2 email address of an old friend and girlfriend, and I never had to sign in.

Hmm, that looks a lot more legit that the one under discussion.

My work-around:

I get the Classmates visitor signed your guestbook e-mails too.
What I did was put up a notice as my profile photo i.e. a text .jpg that says… `I’m not here. Look for my Facebook account’. That way I know all the `guestbook signings’ are almost certainly bogus junk. Anyone who really wants to get in touch can use my [Facebook])<- insert your superior-to-Classmates network here.) You can then remain a free Classmates member but put their address in the spam filter.

Hello there.
Just found your site. Great job!
I like it much.
look here [live.com]
so why is someone using mail.ru as their address spamming on behalf of MSFT’s live search service? — ed

I got sucked i to the free membership. To remove my name, I went to Classmates.com’s Help section - the last FAQ link walked me through a few simple steps to unregister. Seems to have worked. We’ll see.

you can set your payment option to manual if you do not want your membership to renew then just don’t renew. I think that is in account settings. I finally got sick of getting emails from people i used to know in high and having to go gold before i can read them so i cancelled my free membership, removing my profile altogther. Screw classmates.com!!!

I found the setting to make the membership in Classmates.com from automatic to manual just a few days before it was set to renew. So now i’m just waiting to see if they charge me. If they do I will contact my credit card company and show them the copy I made showing the manual setting as such. Classmates never answers their emails. They must be on auto pilot while they’re sunning in the Bahamas someplace enjoying the money.
A word of Caution, When signing up three months ago, they signed me to Great Fun. com. Evidently Great Fun is some sort of club that offers discounts on different products such as vacations, cars, motels. They were charging my credit card a monthly fee. I never asked to be a member of Great fun. When I contacted my credit card company, they informed me that I must have signed up on my initial signup with Classmates.com, unknowingly. Classmates.com gave all my info to Great Fun including my credit card info. I called Great Fun and told them I never signed up with them, she could care less. I was able to cancel so hopefully that will be the end of Great Fun. From my personal experience, Do Not sign on with Classmates.com.

Received a reply from a Venita Vance to a complaintI filed in their abuse dept.
I hope this is helpful.

Hello Howard,

Thank you for contacting Classmates. I can understand your frustration and will do my best to address your concerns.
It’s not unusual for a name registered on an internet site to be found in results from a search engine such as Google or Yahoo. These search engines use “bots” that continually scan sites across the internet looking for information that matches the search criteria people have entered.

The Classmates.com data available to these search engines is limited to names, schools, and graduation or affiliation—the same information publicly displayed on the Classmates.com web site. Your personal contact information will never be exposed.

If you don’t wish to have your name returned in a search specifically as it relates to your Classmates information, we can remove your name from our site. Please note, however, that we cannot effect this change through the search engine: it will display your information until such time as it is purged from their data store.
Thank you for your cooperation and patience. As always, please let us know if we can be of further help.
Sincerely,

Venita
Classmates Member Care Department
http://www.classmates.com

Received: 4/4/08 8:14:42 AM GMT+05:30
To: membercare@mc.classmates.com
Subject: Abuse issues

I did not give you permission to post my name on the internet. I will thank you to remove it immediately.

Sincrerely,

Howard Martin

So dont use the site. Here is a site I came accross: www myhighschoolyear com its FREE and you can write anyone in your class list.

[hey, what's with the link spam here? you can put your URL in the space provided, not in the comment, if you're just trying to gin up Google Juice. interested users might find that the site mentioned is waiting for you to build it. I'd give it some time before entering any information in it. ]

I am having trouble with classmates.com, I have e-mailed them concerning my pc locking up when I try to e-mail someone who has responded to my invite, I received a reply saying the matter has been solved-the matter was not solved. I have given up on the web site!!!!

hoops!! trouble again!!

Any compalints about Classmates.com? Here is the web site addy of Better Business Bureau Online:

http://www.bbbonline.org/cks.asp?id=1296000869

I FEEL THE SAME WAY VERY DISAPPOINTED IN THIS SITE. E-MAILS FROM PEOPLE YOU DO NOT KNOW. OR FROM SCHOOLS THAT AREN’T YOUR SCHOOL YOU GRADUATED FROM. I WAS TRYING TO BE OPEN MINDED ABOUT THIS BUT THIS IS REDICULOUS! I STARTED PLANNING WITH SOME OTHERS JUST RECENTLY A BLACK TIE EVENT FOR OUR 25TH REUNION PERIOD. AND NOW MY BRAND NEW COMPUTER CRASHES ALL THE TIME, WE ARE GETTING WEIRD MESSAGES AND THE CLASSMATES PROGRAM WILL NOT SHOW YOU ON THE SITE HOW TO TAKE YOURSELF OFF. WE HAD TO CANCEL THE DINNER/DANCE AND LIVE WITH THIS WEIRD OH OR WEIRD OHS. I AM NOT JUDGING I AM A PASTOR BUT AS MY FAMOUS SAYING “I HAVE YET TO SEE MYSELF WALK ON WATER!”

There are two sites I’ve come across that let you get back in touch with old friends for free. No catch. They are ReconnectHere.com and FindEm4Free.com ReconnectHere is cool because you can look for much more than classmates, including workmates, neighbors and such. And both sites are free.

I have two comments. FIRST: Many of the people I have been contacted by and have contacted through Classmates.com ARE old friends and classmates. Two in particular were important for me to find because the two of them meant a great deal to me back then. One person i contacted lives in New Jersey, where I have never been, but we have become friends through the website. Second: The quality of the Classmates. com website sucks! I have never completed a reply without the site bogging down and coming to a halt. I have gotten around the problem by getting them my e-mail address in code…the site will not allow the exchange of e-mail addresses, which I think is _____! I think this is so because they know their site is junk and all of us who wish to stay in touch might drop Classmates and just e-mail one another, which is exactly what I have done. I am still searching Classmates for other long lost chums.

D. Burdette

Thanks, Rich & Paul. Here is a series of recent emails to classmates….
— Original Message —
Received: 5/2/08 4:15:49 PM GMT+05:30
To: membercare@mc.classmates.com
Subject: Abuse issues

I was ABOUT to sign up for the free trial a few days ago, but didn’t go through with it at the last minute with the credit card. Right about that time, I get an email from classmates each day saying I got 4 or 5 new guestbook signers. This is impossible. I’ve only gotten 5 signers in the last YEAR. It is you people trying to get me to join, or spammers somehow seeing my new activity. Which is it!??? Or please explain.

Beverly T

“Classmates (Sylvester)” wrote:
Hello Classmates Member,
Thank you for contacting Classmates Member Care. We’re more than happy to assist you.
I would like to inform that Classmates.com is voluntary site. Classmates allows people to voluntarily list themselves in our directories. Please note that the members may visit the other member profiles listed in the site and leave their names. I would like to inform that Classmates.com does not make any fake visits to its member’s profile.If you have any further questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us again.
Sincerely,
Classmates.com
Sincerely

Sylvester
Classmates Member Care Department
http://www.Classmates.com

— Original Message —
From: Beverly T
Received: 5/4/08 7:35:56 AM GMT+05:30
To: “Classmates \(Sylvester\)”

Hi Sylvester,

Perhaps I was unclear. Let me try again….

I registered at classmates over 3 years ago. Less than 5 people signed my guest book ALL those years combined. In the past week, right after I ALMOST paid for a free trial subscription, 4 or 5 people SIGNED my guest book each day. Are you saying this is a COINCIDENCE?????

Classmates might not ‘fake visits’, but it appears SOMEONE is. People get spam all the time from websites that are free to search. What is disturbing here is the timing (after visiting the credit card page, although I did not enter any info). I know no one likes to scare customers away, but surely you have serious spam issues, and someone must be aware of them. Thanks.

Beverly

“Classmates (Sylvester)” wrote:
Hi Beverly,
Thank you for your reply. Thank you for taking the time to send us your comments about the recent changes to Classmates.com. Classmates will occasionally introduce new features or improvements as a part of our commitment to continually improving the Classmates experience for our members. While we strive to respond to the needs of all our members, we do recognize that some features may not completely satisfy everyone.

We value your opinion, and you can be assured that it will be considered as we try to make the Classmates experience as exciting and satisfying as possible. If you have any further questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us again.
Sincerely,
Classmates.com
Sincerely

Sylvester
Classmates Member Care Department
http://www.Classmates.com

Hi Sylvester,

You are obviously ignoring my concerns, and sending me this non-sensical form letter. Please either read it again, or give it to someone who can read & better understand it, or don’t bother to write back. I will never consider becoming a subscriber unless these concerns are addressed, and honestly. Again, my previous email to you……

Hi Sylvester,

Perhaps I was unclear. Let me try again….

I registered at classmates over 3 years ago. bla bla bla….”

Back to this thread now…. If it isn’t classmates themselves spamming you (and I find it hard to believe they’d be SO stupid as to say 4 or 5 a day signed your guestbook), then someone else is up to no good, and classmates is doing nothing to control it. But they clearly chose to ignore my complaint like they didn’t even understand it. A quick search on yahoo on ‘classmates spam’ turned up this page, glad I found it.

I have had difficulty connecting with classmates since I signed up in Feb. It freezes. I have been able to contact 2 people, one time each. Every other time I could not get through to classmates.com in response to a
“new visitor” because the page would freeze. I paid the yearly rate and am very disappointed.

Hi All,

I am asking them to remove my profile on their database but I am receiving the same e-mails that they couldn’t find my record. The e-mails always come from different senders on this database spam.

Do you know class action lawsuit? Why don’t we try it?

Classmates has tried scamming me several times but this last one takes the cake. They said we had two new classmates subscribers, one being Jon Todd from Nevada Union High School in Grass Valley, CA., who actually graduated in 1961. Trouble with this statemnt is Jon Todd died over 30 years ago, and I attended his funeral in Grass Valley. Nice one classmates!

Once you sign up for classmates, How do you cancel ? I guess I will call my credit card. This should be easier! Its like a scam!

Paul told me about this collection of comments about Classmates. I’m surprised by some of the comments because they are very similar to why I built a site for my high school 7 years ago. The site was free and just for my high school and it started growing right away.

A few years later people started asking me to put up sites for their high schools… and many of them have grown very nicely. The site is alumz.com and I have about 3000 schools now. Anyway, the site is free and after all of this time I haven’t sent out 1 email to anyone who has signed up.. People tell me that I should send some out periodically and it’s possible that I do at some point, but I’ll never pull the bait and switch like Classmates does. The only thing I’ve even considered is a newsletter to let people know about new features.

Your school may already have a site on Alumz.. it may also need some help to grow.. that’s what it usually takes, someone from the school to tell people about it. If you don’t have a site on Alumz, send me an email and I’ll be happy to set one up. I just need the school name, colors, city and state.

I’ve also setup some sites for families and companies.. one of my top sites is an airline that went out of business.

Thanks Paul for letting me know about this site.

Regards,
Mark Connell

I paid my $15.00 and the Gold membership started. The pages stopped working. The attempts to contact them through the site are not working. The messages will not go through.

You know, it sounds to me like you all could let these folks know about this.

It is frustrating when you are not a gold member. Often I find the t
the names are not recognised because the married name i appears on the message but once you click on that you will find many are your classmates or friends of your siblings or just alumni from that era. I have found lost friends from Europe being a military brat. I have also reconnected with my parents lost godchild and her family . I have been able to send pictures of a now deceased classmate to a very grateful family . Sorry for the misspellings I can’t seem to get the keyboard to work. PH.

I have enjoyed many connections made with classmates. Watch for the special price events. I have reconnected with lost relatives, friends and alumni of myself and my family. Unfortunately the messages of people trying to contact you are not recognized due to the married names. Once
I realized this and clicked on their names and got the full name I recognized quite a few people as my classmates, old friends or friends and classmates of my siblings. I have gone to the sites of my parents
high school looking for their relatives and my cousins trying to return a borrowed yearbook from 1946 to a rightful owner. I have sent pictures to a family who lost their sibling and was my former classmate and friend who died young. The family is grateful for the pictures I have of their loved one from so long ago. I enjoy the site but the full price is to much for me so I only have my gold membership when they offer discounted prices. Until I went gold I didn’t see much advantage to the site. Now I have wonderful conversation with lost and now found family and friends. Peggy

well, I got ahold of someone from classmates. com and they removed my name completely from the site. The important thing to remember is don’t ever give your bank info over the phone never never never if any one asks for money it is a scam. the site also told me thay are never going to shut down that they are here to stay. Please warn others before it is to late! They need to be shut down.

the site also told me thay are never going to shut down that they are here to stay

Yeah, they would say that. While I’m sure they do offer some value to some of their customers, they make the rest of us feel like we’re being scammed. Surely, there is a happy middle ground?

I plan to write to the Better Business Bureau about classmates.com. It is worthless, a ripoff. They just renewed my subscription without first asking my consent. I contacted them via email and asked to discontinue and be reimbursed for the renewal. If I do not get that satisfied, BBB, here I come.

Marguerite