Classmates.com a.k.a. Memory Lane

Recently, Classmates.com automatically billed my cc $59. I did not request this billing. When I tried to obtain the refund, they turned me down. Do I have to hire a lawyer and sue them? They had no right to just take my money!

My first subscription to Classmates was back in 2001. Back then they did not have automatic renewals and they would ask you to renew when your year expired. I only paid for a subscription three times, the last one being in 2006 or 2007. After it expired I had no interest in renewing it as I no longer had a need for their site. I went about my life for about five years. Then a strange charge appeared on my credit card in 2012. It was from Memory Lane. I had no idea what that was so I looked it up on the Internet and learned that was the new name, at that time, of Classmates. They'd been purchased by Memory Lane and were even using that name for a while. I had never resubscribed, so I knew this charge was in error.

I found their agreement contract on their site and read that all "subscription renewals" were "non-refundable." I also saw that they had changed over to automatic renewals sometime after I'd completed my last subscription, five years before. I immediately contacted the credit card they charged and explained what they did. I had never authorized "automatic renews" with my previous subscription, five years before, and they had not been Memory Lane (with their new rules) back then, either.

When they changed over to Memory Lane they automatically renewed old subscriptions and were refusing to credit people their money back even though the renewals were unauthorized by the customers. My credit card promptly disputed it on my behalf and issued me a new card. I won the case! Now I see they are no longer calling themselves Memory Lane but Classmates again. They are shady and clever. I recommend no one have anything to do with them. What a scam they have going.

DO NOT subscribe to this product. If you do, watch the tactics they employ to renew for an entire year without your approval. I would subscribe for a couple of months at a time just to keep in touch. I have NOT and would NEVER subscribe for an entire year. Somehow, they claim I resubscribed one month ago (MAY 2017), which I did not! And my credit card was charged $48.00 for an entire year subscription. When I called to have my credit card credited I was told that I did not read the disclaimer stating that I was responsible for the cancellation or renewal was automatic. Again, I did not knowingly resubscribe in May 2017. I will be filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and my credit card. I cancelled my subscription even after the representative informed me I would lose my $42.00. NOW does this sound like somebody that intentionally subscribed and wanted an automatic renewal?

Classmates.com has been hacked. When you get emails from the real Classmates.com they have pictures of people, not necessarily that you remember but something should look like it came from YOUR high school yearbooks. The names they list should be familiar. When you get the fraud email they have generic pictures and the list of classmates listed is totally foreign to you. The email is only about a half page when the right email tells you how many people tried to contact you. The last time you were on Classmates and other things that are familiar.

The fraud email looks very authentic but it's very short. If you get a Classmates' email and are not sure go directly to Classmates.com and never, ever, ever enter your payment information unless you are on the Classmates.com website. Also if you sign up make sure you turn off the automatic renewal in the accounts section and delete your cards at the same time or as soon as they have been charged. If you don't you will be here making a complaint while Classmates is spending your money. There is absolutely no refunds. Period.

Classmates.com changed their format. I'm not sure of the exact date but it had to be in the last year or so because all of a sudden a pic that I had loaded that was originally cropped from the neck up was published to the internet uncropped showing way too much cleavage which I obviously was NOT intending to upload WHATSOEVER!!! They will NOT remove the pic & now I have lost jobs & many chances to obtain jobs because of this as I am in the healthcare field!!! My reputation is RUINED by this!! I was wearing a low cut tank & had used a crop tool that used to be on the old format & when I checked my account it was still posted as cropped but they downloaded the FULL LARGE image in a very LARGE pic onto Google search so that everyone who does a search of my name sees a massive inappropriate pic of me!! WHY would they do this??? Are they now trying to turn this into some kind of sick dating site or something??

If I could give them -5 STARS I would. I will now be getting my lawyer to help me rectify this situation & sue them if possible for loss of income & all the stress they have caused me & my mortified bosses & family! You can even see the original neck up cropped smaller photo further along in the pics posted with my name! They did this on purpose! I'm FURIOUS! They will PAY!!!

Personal Opinion... Due to the EXTREME high number of Classmates "Complaints" online, I am not sure that any "agreement" from Classmates will hold me as a member without a lawyer behind me. What they say and what they do, are two different things altogether. The premise is good but the method for a paid subscription is very worrisome. At the end of your trial period the cost doubles and you will be the one to continue to pay it with little, if any, choice. I am against the automatic withdrawal of funds from my bank account by ANYONE, at ANYTIME for any reason. This is what Classmates plans after its trial ends.

They have also placed a hefty debt on my bank account and you can't get through to them. Judging by everyone else's experience, they will refuse to refund, but I'm taking this to the fraud division of my bank.

I have been a member of Classmates for over 10 years. The last time I renewed was in 2015 for $31.83. My credit card has changed since then. Much to my surprise I see a Pending Charge for $63.66 for another 2 years of membership. No notification of renewal. And somehow they acquired my new Credit Card Number. I did not update the information. This is totally unacceptable and deceptive. Besides that the price doubled. Very disappointed.

I signed up for Classemates.com in 2016 since they had a half price special for the year. So I signed up just for the one year or so I thought. Anyway, I was recently charged a $48.00 renewal fee for 2017 for which I did not knowingly authorize. I called Classmates.com to get a refund and was told that when I signed up that I signed up for automatic renewals. I was also told that renewal fees are non-refundable. I probably accessed their website maybe 2x in 2016. Why would I want to pay $48.00 for another year?! After hanging up on the Classmates representative, I promptly called my bank to dispute the $48.00 charge.

This time, I have lost the capability to use the "All Yearbooks" search option, or to advance from an initial page display to the next page. This means that if there are 50 schools attended by people with the same last name as the person of interest, I can only access one page of 10 schools. Under the old scheme, the school lists were much longer.

When I try to advance to the next 10 schools, I get a nag claiming "Oops! We can't find what you're looking for." It has been two weeks since I noticed the problem. I'm suspecting that the company is punishing me for "not so positive" comments about their increasingly clunky website. As far as I know, there is no way to identify 'paid members' who are the only ones that search capability works for so I can ask them to try their search features.

So I tried out Classmates.com for the heck of it a year ago, site pretty much sucks so I never really even go on there. I get an email about being charged for auto-renewal. I emailed them right away to ask them for a refund since I had no plan to use the site. After having to send 2 more emails they finally tell me there are no refunds, and that I can just make it so there is no auto-renewal next year. What a load of crap from this site. No renewal reminder or anything beforehand. Horrible, horrible way to run a website. I will be sure to spread the word, as well as contact my credit card company. No wonder no one uses this site!

I think I would have had given this new team of customer care people. I became a member of Classmates way back in the year 2000. At that time, I did not want to keep paying the monthly fee so I purchased a lifetime Gold membership. At that, I was told that once I paid for that membership that I would not have any further fees. Just what Gold Membership.

Now I visit this site every so often and have been able to send and receive emails, everything inclusive. I have shown them emails from 2006 and 2007, both of which state "Been a gold star member since July 2000." Now I keep getting messages back from, the customer care team saying my membership expired. They have already emptied my email incoming, and I have some of the sent emails left. I sent them the email where it states that I am a Lifetime Gold Member.

This is the first time I have been back to this site, only to be told my membership has expired, I beg to differ, I was sending and receiving emails in 2006 nothing was said about fees. First they said they didn't have a record of me, as soon as I send them the email stating that I was a lifetime gold member (apparently still alive) then they said that they do see that I am a lifetime gold member, yet now I expired 10/31/2001. I refuse to pay for something that I already paid for 16 years ago LIFETIME.

When I joined classmates, I joined for only 3 months just to try it; however; the company did not make it clear that they would continue an automatic draft from my bank account without my consent after my 3 months' trial. So, without the company's reimbursement, I dropped my membership.

I signed back up because I kept getting emails about someone visiting my profile and signing my guest book. In order to see who was trying to contact me, I had to join. 5 times someone named John ** signed my guest book. His profile has no picture and it shows him to be a part of the same high school class as me. When looking at my high school yearbook, there is no one by that name that went to that school. It appears he was hired to provoke people into joining in order to see who was signing their guest book. Brilliant scam Classmates... It worked! And no refund! Even better!!! The only person trying to contact me on Classmates DOESN'T EXIST! GREAT!

I set up a free account with Classmates.com several years ago. I never got much use out of it, because I was not willing to pay to get access to messages and to see who had viewed my profile. I hadn't signed in to the account for at least 3 years. My husband notified me today, that $39.00 was charged to our credit card and set up as a recurring monthly charge. I told him that I did not sign up for any of the paid services through Classmates. I got on their website and went to Account Information and it showed that there were no credit cards on record associated with my account. I went ahead and terminated my account with them and I think I will cancel my credit card as well. I don't know how they got my credit card information but I sure didn't authorize an organization I haven't even used for over three years to take money from my card.

First, THANKS for all of your reviews as I was going to renew a really old account today but these reviews stopped me. Was going to attempt setting up a reunion-type get together. After failing to find a few people on social media sites I thought maybe Classmates.com would be helpful. Despite having IT experience I was unable to figure out how to browse schools easily & realized you cannot add schools to search without adding yourself to the school. I don't get the clumsy layout.

Living in a huge city some students went to more than 1 high school & a group of 10 friends could potentially be in 10 different schools. So sounds like Classmates end game is for users to pay to put their own data in their database. How can you check multiple schools? The site is cumbersome & difficult to use. I mean who would use Classmates exclusively anyway - so why would a user pay to search when you can find a lot more info on google or Facebook? They would do much better if you could search easily & then get a paid account to actually contact them or view extra albums. But searching for just a name should be easier.

My wife erroneously ordered three copies of the Nitro High School 1967 yearbooks from Classmates.com. My wife suffers from Parkinson's Disease and is easily confused. I returned the two erroneously order yearbooks to Classmates.com. A Classmates representative called and indicated that the yearbooks were printed upon demand and Classmates.com has a no return policy. I explained my wife's special circumstances; i.e., Parkinson's Disease and much to my surprise the Classmates.com representative (David employee number **) told me that Classmates would not accept my wife's erroneously ordered yearbooks, Parkinson's Disease notwithstanding. I asked David for his supervisor's name (Joanne) who I was told does not take customer complaints.

Any company that treats its customer with this level of arrogance and disregard should most certainly fail. The fact that David refused to even consider asking his supervisor for special relief in my wife's case tells more about this company than all of the advertising in the world. I highly recommend that any potential customers stay as far away from this company as possible. They do not practice even a modicum of standard customer service.

Have asked 6x to cancel this subscription with no reply or success. Continue to have them deduct payments from my account.

After several years off, I decided to sign up again in 2015. I was not aware I signed up for a renewal. I think they hide it in the receipt as I NEVER sign up to auto renew anything. Now they have billed me for a full year. I have disputed it with PayPal as that is the way they billed me. The account information they have online shows an old cancelled credit card. I must have paid through PayPal, although I cannot find a receipt. In any event that is the way they billed me. They are a ripoff. DO NOT EVEN EVER SIGN UP FOR THEM. IF YOU DO, MAKE SURE YOU DO NOT SIGN UP FOR AUTO RENEWAL. Think they make millions this way. People dispute and they refuse and then the customer does not think $40 is worth the fight. $40 times how many?

I was researching old yearbooks on this site. I did not sign up for any type of membership; I then received "an urgent message from Microsoft..." basically telling me that they detected that I had a virus/spyware and I was to call an 888 number so that they could walk me through the cleansing process. I immediately called my tech person and it was, as suspected, a FRAUD... "they" prey on this site because so many older people are on it who become afraid when they get that "alert" and these poor people end up paying to remove the hackers. CLASSMATES.COM has been hacked – stay off this website if you don't want to completely mess up your computer.

I have been charged 3 times by Classmates.com for a monthly membership that I NEVER signed up for... I was a victim of identity theft. First time it happened in March 2016, I called them and explained I never signed up, to cancel the membership and to credit me back. They flat out refused. I called my bank, we cancelled the card and had a new one issued. Then again in May 2016 I was charged again with my NEW credit card number. Same thing. Classmates.com refused to cancel the membership I never signed up for and refused to refund my money. My bank once again cancelled my new card, reissued another new card and credited me back.

Now today, I was charge AGAIN. And again Classmates.com refused to cancel the membership and refund me. 1) I never signed up for this service. I explained over and over to them that I didn't do this. (2) HOW are they continually obtaining my new credit card info? This company is very shady and should be put out of business. They are purposefully ripping people off and have no qualms about it.

This is the most despicable company that I have ever done business with. They automatically renewed my membership - twice - without authorization. When I disputed the charge, they lied to the credit card company and refused to refund the membership, even though it was less than 30 days into the new year's membership. I had logged into the account in over a year because I thought I had successfully cancelled the account the previous year. They do not send renewal reminders, even though they claim they do. And, they charge you a full year's membership no matter when you cancel. Apparently, they are so money hungry that ethical business practices are lost to them.

I had signed up with this site because they had a half priced deal for 3 months, which I had signed up for only! At the end of that 3 months my Paypal account was charged $15.00 for another 3 months which they claim I signed up for auto pay which I never did! These people are common thieves and they should not be allowed to do business. Not only that they constantly send emails claiming classmates are clicking on me and trying to get you involved with their B.S. This site is a complete rip off as far as I am concerned! I even tried to get a refund the day of auto-renewal and they would not do it... thieves with very disreputable business practices!

This is the worst site. I had to sign up, and once I had signed up I realized I could only add one high school. I moved a lot as a child, so I had two separate high schools. I wrote the site off as a waste. Two years later I receive notice that I paid them. I tried to log into the site, cancelled recurring payments and sent an email asking for a refund. They claimed they had sent me a renewal notice 30 days prior. I went back through my emails, not a single notice. They still refused to refund. Avoid this site at all costs.

I think a total of 8 schoolmates had subscribed and very few used the site after enrolling. Probably because they find the site as big a joke as I had. I unsubscribed from them after a few weeks but also had $'s taken out of my account and told I could not get a refund. Hopefully, they will be out of business soon.

My experience is similar to many others. I paid $7.50 on March 14th, 2016 and found that I had been charged $15 received on 6/13/16 by CHECK CLASSMATES, INC. CHECKCARD ** CLASSMATES, INC. ** WA ** RECURRING. Merchant category code: **. I called 206 phone number and I asked why did they bill me since I have never approved recurring payments for anyone. First she told me, by signing up for 'Classmates' you automatically agree to recurring payments. After showing my angst at how they take advantage of the elderly, she said she could refund $9.00, but I still had to pay $6.00. After calling back and asking to speak to a manager, and threatening to report them to the Better Business Bureau, he said he would refund the whole amount. I haven't seen the correction yet, hopefully we'll get in few days. Just sending a warning to all.

I cancelled my account to Classmates several months ago. I removed my profile and everything about it. That is when the problem started. I learned today [Sunday, June 5] that my account was billed by them for something I no longer have and I am in no way associated with. Repeated attempts to contact them proved futile. All I got was jerked around and denied access. Today they had the nerve to send me an e-mail thanking me for setting up a free account when I had in fact done no such thing. I have already filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. If you're thinking of joining... DON'T!

I signed up for the Classmate.com 3 month membership. I paid with my bank card and the transaction went through with no problem. They took the money and continue to block access to my Classmate.com. Ripped off.

I joined Classmates using my PayPal account. I did NOT authorize them to automatically bill me every year. However, they just billed me for year two. I tried to get PayPal to NOT pay this, but Classmates told PayPal that I authorized to be billed each year. I DID NOT DO THAT. I did not get my money refunded.

I made the change the last day of my subscription, but they still charge my credit card and will not reverse it. I will be dealing with this through VISA, but I strongly advise people not to use this site even if they offer a bargain price. You may be charged in the future once they have your credit card number or Paypal account.