Classmates review: unauthorized charges 15

Three years ago I joined Classmates.com on a 1 year manually renewed membership. I was dissatisfied with their service and did not plan to renew. I went to their website to make sure my membership was canceled whereupon they pulled their deception, they offered me a two year GOLD membership for 1/2 price and promised I would be much more satisfied with that membership.

Was I ever a sucker! I thought 'oh what the heck' for 1/2 price for two years and they say it is better...why not!

Well it was not better...same old webpage with 90 million ads and pop ups on it, which made it very slow to load even with broadband. I had decided that the next time they approached me I was definitely going to cancel, and I wondered why they had not contacted me. I thought that perhaps I had forgotten my renewal date and perhaps they would contact me this month!

I went to my credit card website for an entirely different purpose and that is when I noticed they had automatically billed me for another 2 years...

That is about as deceptive as you can get, especially when you consider that I am legally blind and can't read that fine print anyway!

I just want to get this out to the general public so someone else won't get cheated like I did!

9 month's ago I payed $15.00 for a 3 month gold membership to classmates.com and never received any confirmation but the next 3 month's later was charged another $15.00, and then the next 3 month's after that I was charged another $15.00, and this month I have been charged yet another $15.00!

I've tried to go to the online site and could not get any contact information due to the page popping up over and over about that page being taken off the site. No other place was there any contact information whatsoever. I want these deductions to stop and I was hoping maybe someone on here knew how I might contact these people and to stop them from taking my money!

I will be calling my bank come tuesday to see if I can get them to put a stop to these people withdrawing money from my account when I haven't agreed for them to do so. But I wanted to add my little 2 cent's in here for the report of their actions/inactions.

My fiance Hector V. Diaz had subscribed to classmates.com over a year ago. He decided not to contiune with the membership. The charges were charged to my credit card. Since I furnished the information for biling, I decided to call to cancel the account. After cancelling the membership for my fiance Hector V. Diaz, there were no new charges until now.
I received my account statement for the month of October, 2009 and noticed that classmates.com without any authorization, and after cancelling the membership after one year ago, had the nerve to charge my account a fee of $39.00. I want this to stop. I want a full refund for the unauthorized charges and I want no further charges to my account

I had the same experience. I signed up for a three month period with classmates.com back in 2/2009. I discontinued membership prior to the expiration of the three month period. They continued to bill me and I called my credit card company ( USAA Master Charge) to challenge the billing. They took the charge off my statement, closed my account and issued me a new credit card. Soon after that, I was charged either 12 or 17 dollars from a credit agency based in CT. I found out that Classmates.com sold my credit card info to this company who proceeded to illegally bill me for a service that I had no knowledge of. Again, my credit card company took that charge off my statement and issued me a new card. Upon reviewing my November-December statement from USAA, I discovered an unauthorized charge by Classmates.com for 17 dollars. I closed my account with USAA and probably will not reopen it. By the way, I have had an account with USAA for about 28 years without any problems.

I am a retired FBI Agent and tend to look at things like this in somewhat of a different way then the general pub;ic. How interesting that Classmates.com would illegally charge my account during the holiday season when people tend to have numerous charges on their accounts and perhaps not discover the 17 dollar charge. If they did this to one million accounts, they look to make 17 million dollars. If 75% of the charges are discovered and challenged, they still look to pocket about 4.2 million dollars. I vote to throw the ### in jail with Bernie Madoff. Jospeh Phelan [oakroomjoseph@yahoo.com]

I got a charge of $39.00 January 24, 2010 on my March statement. I did remove my credit card number from their membership. I hope I did anyway. This company should be investigated and stopped. How to we get this done? according to my credit card, the contested amount has to be over $50.00. Pretty good scam. Seems they covered all escape routes. Mary Costa (maryc@epilgrims.net)

CLASSMATES COM is close to a bottom feeder. They give a little and expect to make a lot.
My mailbox is full of mail from Classmates saying someone did something with a quick come look incentive but they hang out the pay and see page. I will see what I can but never pay. The word should get out that they need a direct connection with the owners of the site and response to emails and problems with the site. Any site with no direct contact is not one to give out your credit card number to. Hope someone out there hacks their site, they deserve it!

They just took $39 from my Paypal account and said that I had checked "auto-renew" when I joined with the $20 membership. They have refused to refund my money after complaining to them that they have data leaking into the search engines even though we must login to their site. Classmates has told me they are a public site and the search engines can cache data, etc.
Paypal also won't refund my money saying that I was on auto-renew even though I don't use Classmates and I don't want to continue with them or pay. The best thing all of us can do is complain to the BBB and Attorney General in Washington.
Here are the links. When they get numerous complaints--they will look at the company more seriously.
www.thebbb.org
www.atg.wa.gov/FileAComplaint.aspx#Online

The same thing happen to me today. I wrote an email questioning the charge and why wasn't inform 1st place via email. I ask for a refund.

This is there reply "Hello Classmates Member,
Thank you for contacting Classmates Member Care. We're more than happy to assist you.

**YOUR ACTION REQUIRED--PLEASE FOLLOW THE STEPS BELOW TO AVOID FURTHER BILLING**

We're sorry to hear that you don't wish to continue as a Classmates Gold member. While purchasing your Gold membership, you were provided with information just above the "Submit Payment" button explaining that all memberships are enrolled in our automatic renewal program. This automated billing process prevents any interruption in your Gold membership benefits. Through your acceptance of the Gold membership offer, you authorized us to continue to charge your credit card to extend your membership until you took the necessary steps to remove yourself from this program."

I wish to cancel my Gold Classmates. Thank you

Classmates.com is the only company I have ever done business with on the internet that does not inform members when it is time to renew. These bottom feeders just charge the account they have on record, and increase the rate from 9.95 to 39.95 without the customer's knowledge or permission. Then they send "cut and paste" information by e-mail that repeatedly asks that you convert to manual renewal from automatic in order to avoid further charges. I hope there is a class action suit against them. The site is clearly a ripoff that clutters mailboxes with irrelevant notices but fails to provide meaningful subscription information. In fact, I'm not so sure their computer doesn't change the manual renewals to automatic renewals automatically.

Classmates is a real ripoff. They reel you in and then don't have much information on the website.
I did not want a renewal but they charged my Discovercard $39.00.
I didn't authorize it and I don't want it.
I canceled my Discovercard because they won't take the charge off my account. Are they working with Classmates?
There should be a law against people charging things to your account without your permission.

I just had the same surprise, and you know that 'auto-renew' is automatically checked by default--nobody does that. I expect lots of hell and no cooperation, but I'm jumping ahead and reporting my complaint using the above links 'Robin' left, and I'm also aware that, overall, this company reeks, they've been sued for basically deceptive emails, and already had to comply with a huge settlement where we all get $3. Ooooohhhh, that'll buy half a hamburger @McD's.
Classmates.com is organized and marketed intentionally to effectually pimp out all info between school friends--and the way they handle their billing and accounts, they act like capital A-holes.
Facebook and other social networking sites have advanced to the point where Classmates.com will be out of business within a year, thank GOD!

I think this company is as unscrupulous as they come! The same thing happened to me and they are telling me that the choice for automatic renewal was plain when I signed up. NO WAY. I NEVER ever sign up for automatic renewal. Companies that have a real product to sell, like Birthday Alarm for example, or any of the online companies that I do advertising with (Land and Farm etc) ALWAYS send a renewal notice because they know that there is a reason for me to renew. Once a class reunion has come and gone no one needs Classmates.com or Memory Lane or whatever it's now called. Classmates can communicate very well, and for free, via Facebook. This company's billing practices are a desperate attempt to plug a hole in their terrible business model. Won't help. They'll soon be gone. I'm turning the charge over to my visa company as a dispute--let Visa deal with these clowns.

They just charged my checking account 39.00 without my authorization.Don't know how they got my info.I called them and they say no refund, I said this is internet fraud and I will call my attorney.She said, hold on.Came backand said they would refund but will take 30 days.I am on a fixed income and this really hurts, everyone I went to school with has died anyway.Why would I join this crap?More important for me to put food on my table or pay for my hbp meds.Idiots!

Due to my oversight and negligence classmates got away with charging my Discover account. I never joined them, although they claim I did. They do not offer refunds, so I disputed the charge. I have since called Discover, and gave them the confirmation # that classmates provided today (9/8/15) . They are thieves, and have to be dealt with. Smart people will stay away from them.