October 07, 2007

Business ethics

Here's a sleazy business practice: a long time ago I registered for a free account at Classmates.com, just to see if any of my high school classmates were online (a few, but we've never connected). Since then I've gotten regular e-mails from the company but nothing of interest.

Today I got a notice from Classmates that "1 person signed your guestbook yesterday! Can you guess who they are? Find out who's thinking of you," with a clickable link.

I clicked the link, only to be told that I have to upgrade my account from free to paid ($39 for a one-year subscription) in order to find out who it was.

Well, no thanks. I recognize that Classmates needs money to survive as a business, but this is a classic "bait and switch" tactic. It annoys me.

Posted by Linkmeister at October 7, 2007 10:41 AM | TrackBack
Comments

Yeah, those things are a ripoff. A year or so ago my high school alumni had a reunion - it could hardly be called a "class" reunion since it included anybody who graduated during the '60's - and they used Reunion.com, a similar group, to organize it. Well, I enjoyed meeting some old classmates and pungled up $36 for 1 year Premium membership in the web site, which got me absolutely no useful information. Let's be honest: it's been 40 years, and for most of these people there's a reason I haven't kept in touch. And vice versa. So I let the subscription drop.

Posted by: hedera at October 13, 2007 02:36 PM