True.com’s ads have become a pop-cultural online icon – a symbol of deceptive online advertising.
The mega-budget interactive campaign is heavily plastered across social media networks like Tribe and MySpace and it works quite well: the ads lure in almost 1,000 new member sign ups per hour.
True.com wasn’t always an extortionate scam site.
The company first started off as “True Beginnings,” and was positioned as wholesome, marriage-minded dating service!
That was was slow-going, so they tried the “No Marrieds. No Felons.” safer-dating angle with rigorous background checks. Unfortunately that didn’t sell so well, either.
Now True.com’s founder Herb Vest has hit the jackpot by positioning True.com as a sleazy hook-up site. His patented advertising method consists of scantly clad models and licentious headlines beckoning you to sign up for a “free” trial.
If you fall for the “free” trial offer you have to give over your credit card information. Then they’ve really got you.
Many users report deceptive practices getting fake winks from bogus “date bait” profiles (pictures of models), or messages far away “members” like hot blondes located in Columbia. Some even get hit on by Nigerian scammers posing as hotties!
Folks who try to cancel the service before the “free” trial expires find that it is impossible to do so online: a cancellation feature has deliberately been omitted from the online interface.
Victims report:
- Simon Slade reported having to wait on-hold several hours on the “Customer Care” line before finally getting through to a live person to ask to cancel.
- Being verbally abused by surly collections agents who accuse them of fraud for wanting to cancel so soon.
- Extra charges billed to their credit card for several months afterwards.
- The company keeps your info in their profile database after you cancel and flat-out refuses to delete it.
- Thousands of similar, unpleasant experiences on dating site review forums.
It’s time the True® truth be told. The best way to illustrate it is with this actual, unaltered affiliate program ad from the company:
“Oh Lynda, You’re So Fine!” – Classmates.com
Thursday, November 9th, 2006Yep, she sure is!
Lynda, the nerdiest girl in your class who you never talked to, is now a online banner ad cover girl.
Who would have known?
Lynda tempts our voyeuristic curiosity to see what became of our former classmates. Especially those lurid nerd-to-glamour girl or valedictorian-to-serial killer sort of 180-degree ironies – stuff that could bring us a quick rush of emotional gratification.
Classmates.com was a really good idea when it started back in 1995. The internet was just taking off among the upper-class early adopter segment. The pay-for-access e-mail database model was fairly viable.
But now, with all the competition from free social networking sites, I suspect it’s a million times harder for Classmates to get people to pay for membership. Their business model got eclipsed by new technology. And so did a lot of the old information in their database – like expired Hotmail addresses, or Geocities and Tripod pages from your classmates who logged into once back in ‘98.
I have contacted several of my former classmates, for free, thanks to MySpace. It’s been a brief hoot to connect, compare and see what they’re up to. (Some are in Hollywood, some are on Madison Avenue, and some are in rehab.)
But in many cases, the things we had common over a decade ago have drifted apart. I’m sure if we met in-person it would be a blast, but the online conversations feel a bit distant and forced.
My best memories of the good ol’ days are the analog ones. Like calling up old friends. Or going through the old seventies editions of my high school yearbooks they kept in our school library and looking at the giant afros.
What if I signed up at Classmates.com in order to digitally reconnect with Lynda, the shy nerd girl I never talked to who is now a banner ad model? We’d have so little to talk about, it would hurt to even try.
I think I’ll pass.
Posted in Ad Parody, Banner Ad Commentary | Comments