Santa Cruz County DA Sues Match.com

Press release from the DA's Office:

The Santa Cruz County District Attorney Consumer Affairs and Environmental Protection Units, working in conjunction with the California Auto Renewal Taskforce (CART), have brought an action against MATCH GROUP, INC. The Delaware Company with its principal place of business in Texas, owns and operates the world’s largest conglomerate of online dating services sites, including well-recognized brands such as Match.com, PlentyOfFish, OkCupid, and Tinder.

The 20-page Complaint filed demands $10,000,000 in penalties. It alleges that Match.com violated the California Dating Service Contract Law and the California Auto Renewal Law by engaging in unfair and unlawful business practices. Match.com engaged in a pattern and practice of designing a signup and cancellation process intended to hook in consumers and make it difficult for them to extricate themselves from the contract. They used actions that included misleading billing characterizations, non- conspicuous auto renewal disclosures, elimination of required cancellation disclosures, and imposition of a long and tedious cancellation process.

California requires dating businesses to provide a 3 day right to cancel and a copy of the complete contract to be available to the consumer. Federal and state law require businesses to make automatic renewals clear to consumers, and to get their “express, affirmative consent” before collecting any money. However, many businesses still do not follow this law.

“Dating services is one of the areas in consumer protection in which companies take advantage of consumers by getting them in and not letting them out,” said District Attorney Jeffrey Rosell. Santa Cruz County was part of a previous statewide action that obtained a $1,200,000 judgment against the dating site, eHarmony.

This press release was produced by the DA's Office. The views expressed here are the author's own.