Match.com Receives Bad Press on Good Morning America

The news story of a federal suit by a man claiming he was deceived by Match.com (see Story) is now making headlines on TV news shows. Good Morning America did a piece about a man named Barry who is thinking of being part of a proposed class action lawsuit against Match.com. After using Match.com Barry felt "undesirable and rejected" since he received few responses to his winks and emails. The original federal lawsuit filed by Sean McGuinn

... alleges Match.com perpetrates fraud by returning inactive or canceled members in search results of seemingly dateable people.

He believes he was actually sending e-mails to ghosts of Match.com's past.

While most dating sites like Match.com don't hide the fact free members cannot respond to paid members communication (this information is mentioned on Match.com's Subscription Page), I think paid dating sites do need to allow free members to reply to any paid members communication (Match.com is in the process of testing this). I think the McGuinn lawsuit doesn't have merit (of course I am no lawyer) and in my opinion a people like Sean and Barry are just hoping for an easy way to make money. That being said, the online dating industry as a whole does need to clean up its act. I run across so many free and paid dating sites that report facts that are just not backed up with concrete evidence. Of course, this really is not just a dating industry issue, most industries on the internet suffer from this type of problem, it's just when your business is something as personal as finding a person's match, it can cause them to lash out much easier in anger if they think they have been deceived.

For the Good Morning America video clip, visit ABC News.