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Does SinglesNet Run Bait and Switch Singles Advertising?
While I was working on my Alexa story and video earlier this week, I came across the ad on the right. The ad is for a singles dating site and features a woman, some profile information for "sarahc_1225" and a simple search box.
What caught my attention was the line at the bottom of the ad. It reads:
"Photos may not be of actual singlesnet.com members"
I signed up for an account and I was unable to find sarahc_1225. While the search didn’t work based on what I entered in the form, I did receive a variety of profiles with photos of women.
Would it really be that hard for SinglesNet to show actual members of the service? Take some of the successful members and do a professional photoshoot with them. Would you consider this online advertising tactic bait and switch?
This type of ad is worse than those dancing mortgage ads. Do the ad networks and the content publishers have a responsibility to deactivate any ads that could be considered bait-and-switch?
Perhaps we should stick to dating sites like Sweet on Geeks that from what they say is as real as it gets.
For example today I found a client of mine receive regular a spam messages from a company called SinglesNet. I have identified this company is located at:
Mr. Quinn Lipin
SinglesNet
13A Highland Circle
Needham, MA 02494
This business appears to be is owned by a Mr. Quinn Lipin who also operates a home health care business from the same address with his bother Gustuf.
quinn lipin is as dirty as the day is long. the company uses A LOT of fake accounts/photos to entice people to sign-up and has full-time employees “flirt” with people all day to bring in business. the entire business model is based on duping people.
I used to work for Quinn Lipin and he is ABSOLUTELY dirty. The whole Singlesnet thing is a scam and they paid someone to sit in the office 8 hrs a day sending “batch” emails w/a picture of a random attractive girl to get people to join. They paid girls for their pictures. It is the biggest scam and they are off flying around the world, having major wedding blowouts in Brazil with fireworks and everything on your dime!
Not Sure why my post keeps disappearing however I used to work With Quinn Lipin – the whole things is a scam. They used to have someone send out batch emails of a fake girl -to get men to sign up. They also used to pay girls they knew for their pictures to set up fake profiles and then email people. THE WHOLE THING IS A JOKE!
Meanwhile he is off getting married in Brazil with fireworks and everything and renting houses and yachts for him and his friends to go on vacation….must be nice!
Someone needs to do something about this – it is a disgrace and they sit there laughing all day long !
ya this is funny bc the girl in the picture is me., i never got paid for it either.. a lt of my frieds called me telling me they are seeing my picture pop up on websites. this happened with true.com also. i got a holf of true.com and they flew me out to texas to do a shoot aqnd actually get paid for it. ive found tons of companies using my pics without my consent. i know true.com made me set up a profile but i dont run it
I am sorry for you lady, fight them, get your money unless your photos went royalty free via some blanket waiver to true.com.
Me: Well, I feel I was duped too. Sad. I should have checked out the singlesnet.com site in google before paying, here’s the deal.
One of my email inboxes has been getting spammed regularly by singlesnet.com for months so, being single again, I finally caved and decided to check it out. I saw a couple cute interesting women that were communicating with me via the free flirt alerts for a few days. Then some of them started sending me “emails” so I felt encouraged to pay to read the messages. I paid and the inbox was empty. Then to make matters worse… I discovered two oddities:
1)
The previous day I was trolling/perusing Craigslist and responded to a personal ad in the romance-w4m section. Its Craigslist, its sorta like playing lotto, and I am pretty much sensitized to that whole scamming bot-filled scene. But the next morning I had a response in the email inbox. Body of the inbox message follows.
[--
Hey! How is it going? Thanks for the email. I don't normally do this sort of thing, but what the heck, you know? Lets see what happens! Anyway, I'd really like to meet up soon. If you follow this link I have some more pictures and my cell phone number. My screen name is janet241 on there, so type that in once you get on.
http://www.scriller.info/janet
It's free, you don't need a credit card or anything. Anyway, give me a call as soon as you can and we'll work something out! Talk to you soon and go out for coffee or something?
Janet
--]
Ok armed with this information, and thinking I might have someone interested, I went to spybot search and destroy… made sure it was updated and immunized and clicked the link. It took me to singlesnet.com. Wow what a coincidence, I just joined them, ho hum no never mind, let me search for Janet. Search for janet241 = no results found. WTF, she/it just emailed me her info. Oh well something is up, and this is when my ’spidey senses’ let me down, I’ll just email her back and alert her to the problem. I shot back an email with my screen name and never heard another peep. FOUL BALL.
2)
Later the same day, I am perusing singlesnet.com directly, over the weekend there were some really nice choices, maybe I will find some more. There were 3 different profiles that stood out… hot pictures for each but the profile said they were 40+. So being one to give compliments to women for looking good, I sent some flirts and emails. My inbox lit up almost immediately, “damn I am lucky”. But wait what is this? Looks like she copied a script, as its two paragraphs. Ok so now not only did my ears peak, I am also curious and suspicious. Now I have seen what skilled makeup artists can do, but what are the odds that 3 different womens profile shots use the techniques? So I shoot the next one a message, and wham my inbox is lit again. Damn the response is way too fast. Closer inspection of the profiles… they were different but they essentially were derivatives of each other. So now I start looking at the emails that were sent, and each of them having some form of [comfort ... @ yahoo.com] IM and wanting me to give them my MSN or Yahoo IM or email address. Damn a bot. ‘At this point I am still unaware of displays of Quinn Lipin character or who singlesnet.com is or about’. I go ahead and use the system to block both of them. Then I report them to the singlesnet.com customer support. They, customer support, will get back to me. So I return to perusing and there is yet another profile that is 40 something with a 20 something face and physique, check the profile and yep its another one. I try to send customer support notice for that one too, but their system only allows one open support request at a time. Later they respond that they notified the correct department to have the problem fixed. I also notice that all these odd profiles disappear. (The web interface keeps knocking me back to page 1 of the who’s ‘online browse’). I look at the clock and notice how much time I wasted and bounce. But for the remainder of the day its gnawing at me. So I popped them in google and eventually wound up here. Now I will see if I can get my money back. Wish me luck.
So in the end here are my deductions and determinations:
1. singlesnet.com is working over Craigslist seeding it with ads for non existent members, using other feeder domains like scriller.info to hide the fact that its them.
2. Its likely that my job postings on Craigslist is what spawned my inbox to be spammed in the first place.
3. singlesnet.com is either insecure to bots and/or seeding their database with fake profiles.
4. singlesnet.com may be feeding the free accounts with flirt alerts and emails to entice upgrades.
5. I am not the only one that is aware of this.
6. Its going to be more difficult to filter the real profiles from the peppered and fake.
To me this is like the old days when shady service stations would break bottles and dump nails up the road to boost tire sales.
Update!!!
I just contacted them by phone for a refund.
I didn’t offer or expand on why, but was prepared to if they asked.
I was offered by the representative to be upgraded to a full year since I was a paying member for 1 day. I turned it down and pressed for the refund. I was told it would be no problem as I qualified for it, but I would be black listed from using the site in the future. I accepted that and pressed again for the refund and was told it would take 3 business days to appear. Hopefully thats the case.
I have a confirmation number, fingers crossed.
They will most likely get your $ back to you however it may take a few calls to get it. The problem is that there are sooo many people out there that will not call to get a refund so that is why it works………..they dont mind paying you back b/c they have made millions on the others that wont call……that is what needs to be stopped.
total scam…………i cant understand why it hasnt been addressed by any of the local boston news channels as the scam it is……….i have first hand knowledge of this and could provide a list of people for them to talk to.
I got my money back and am now blacklisted as the rep mentioned. So at least they do respond if you press them on it early on.
Everyone else good luck.
Well I would have to agree that singlesnet does send Phishing request via Spam, and any other way possible. Also when you are looking on or at someones profile you hit on the profile, and guess what happens, you guessed it it appears in your account, what a skamm. I completely dont understand why singlesnet is trying so hard to committ people to people.
Hey if u wanna know what Mr Quinn Lipin is doing with all the money he gets from singlesnet.com, just go to orkut.com (u need to create an account to see profiles, is free) and check out profile from DANILLA DAMASCENO, his wife who is now 5 months pregnant with their first baby girl…
To the model…
You do realize that when you are a model you sign a release document so that whomever took the pictures has the right to them right? You do not. That means whoever owns the rights can do whatever they want with them, sell them to whoever they want, license them, whatever… You have no rights to those photos any more… If you don’t understand that you’re probably in the wrong line of work…
They are just the only ones to admit. :P
damn she is hot
It is bait and switch unless that woman is on the site – what a stupid ad
LOL! That’s classic bait and switch, not to mention a bit of false advertising. She’s hot, which is exactly why they do it. It’s that kind of eye candy that gets them clicks or they wouldn’t do it. But you’re right, they should go through their user base and pick out a few people and pay them to do a photo shoot, so they can use photos of real people/users in their ads. That would be the honest thing to do. I wonder what the other dating sites do.
Of course it’s not actual members, are you so naive to think that they are? Do you also think all commercials on TV are real???
My view is that they use the models for the ads 1. Because they are eye candy 2. Just imagine the attention random people would give to the person in the ad? I know they are there to ‘date’ but if it was me I’d want quality not quantity, not lots of messages stating “Wow ur hawt!’
I’ve written a few posts about the effect of pictures of attractive women on decision making by guys, including yesterday’s A Pretty Woman Beats a Good Loan Deal. It’s easy to see why a dating site trying to sign up guys might use a pic of a very attractive woman.
Dating sites seem to push the limits of truth in advertising, particularly when they use geotargeted text to enhance the appeal. Imagine the same ad with “Sarah in YourTown” added.
Personally, I think using a model-quality pic misses the point. Yes, it gets one’s attention, but at the same time it stretches the site’s credibility way past the breaking point. Can one really imagine that this hot babe is so desperate she enrolled on a third-tier dating site and is waiting to hear from dozens of geeks with a credit card and no social life? eHarmony’s approach, which uses normal-looking people in TV ads, is a lot better.
This ain’t surprising but definitely a slap in ethical principles.
Sarah_C is a girl I grew up with named Jessica Crider.
She is trying to get into modeling and she does these because she is trying to break into the modeling industry.
Google her name and it will be very apparent to you.