True Begins Expiring Free Lifetime Memberships

(onlinedatingmagazine.com - March 11, 2005) Online dating service True, in a move that is annoying people who helped True become a major online dating service, has started expiring memberships of people that were given a free Lifetime Membership when they signed up within the first few months of the service's existence.

"True is displaying a new low in customer service and customer satisfaction," one upset user told Online Dating Magazine. "They promise you in the beginning a free lifetime membership then they expire it less than two years later. What kind of lifetime membership is that?"

Many online dating services, when launching, offer free lifetime memberships in order to attract users for the first few months of the service. On November 5, 2003, True opened its doors as TrueBeginnings.com, promising such free memberships to charter members. This year True started expiring those free lifetime memberships with no explanation and only 24 hours warning to charter members. When inquiring, users sometimes get a response like: "While reviewing the accounts of those members who signed up before March 26th, 2004, we noticed that a number of them had not accessed their accounts in over 45 days. Based on that information, we believed that you had already found someone and no longer needed our service, or that you no longer wanted our service."

"I'm sure that, after 45 days of inactivity, True doesn't expire memberships of people who paid in advance for an entire year," says Joe Tracy, publisher of Online Dating Magazine. "True honors the full year just like they should honor the lifetime memberships of people who helped them become successful. This is probably the biggest blunder so far this year of any online dating service."

This isn't the only controversy True has been a part of this year. True is finding itself facing a backlash from the industry for trying to make states force online dating services to do background checks of all members. True trying to force its method of online dating onto other services, through state laws, has other dating services joining together to fight True.