United States: False love ads cost Tinder and Meetic owners $14 million

A carpetbagger in the dating industry. Match Group , the owner of major apps like Tinder , Hinge, Meetic, OkCupid, and Match, has agreed to pay €14 million to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). This is a way to " put a definitive end to deceptive practices ," BFM TV reveals, citing a press release from the institution published on Tuesday, August 12. In charge of enforcing the rights of American consumers and controlling competition, the US government agency launched legal proceedings in 2019 for " false advertising of romantic interests " against their very first site, created in 1995: Match.

Little known in France, the now thirty-year-old application allows users to send or reply to messages if they pay money. This is also the promise of a "free subscription ." offered for six months to anyone who, after spending six months on the app , "did not meet someone special ," which had alerted the American consumer watchdog. A sort of money-back guarantee for dating. In fact, other, more Cartesian conditions, such as sending a message to five different subscribers per month, were " not adequately disclosed ," the agency ruled in 2019.

The group also allegedly " made it difficult for consumers to cancel and unfairly retaliated against consumers who initiated unsuccessful chargebacks ," the FTC said in its statement. In addition to the hefty sum that will be paid to single victims, they are now required to " clearly and conspicuously state the terms of [their] 'six-month guarantee' . "

Another obstacle to romantic encounters: the scams spread on these sites. At the time of the complaint in 2018, the Federal Trade Commission had counted 21,000 reports of romance scams on the app, leading victims to lose a total of $143 million. And Match didn't seem to be ignoring these practices. Quite the opposite.

According to the Federal Trade Commission's initial allegations, users without a paid subscription were receiving notifications that they liked someone they could only discover by paying. This notification " sometimes came from accounts the company had already flagged as potentially fraudulent. " However, the settlement makes no mention of this case.