I just looked at my high school’s list of people signed onto Classmates.com for my graduation year, and some of my close friends that I’ve lost touch with are registered there now. I’m really tempted to join this website, but I have my reservations. Has anyone joined this site, and do you have any feedback on it? Good, bad, indifferent? Just a big scam? Did you actually get in touch with all your high school mates?
Thanks for any insight into this site anyone might have.
It’s a waste. Only paying members can contact you- if you try to post your email address in your profile, they will block it out.
I believe that featherlou is considering becoming a member and is asking if it is worthwhile. Why would they let you post your email and then ask you to become a member?
I listed my wife as well as myself and she has gotten an email from someone that is a member. For the life of me I don’t understand why someone doesn’t become a member and then distribute emails to all the other classmates, unless they threaten you with sending “Al” over for a visit.
I’m a member as are a number of others I know from high school. The site is a pretty good conglomeration of people from my graduating class, and we got our upcoming reunion together and back in touch with one another via the site. Nearly everyone I graduated with has shown up on it.
So if I sign up and pay my $36 American (too bad that will be about $60 Canadian), I can send emails to all the people that are listed on the site, even if they haven’t paid their $60? Am I understanding that right?
I thought about joining, then I remembered that I have no interest in seeing anyone I went to High School with ever again.
I stupidly signed up and gave my email address. My brother also did the same.
First of all, to answer featherlou, yes - you just give your info. You can’t really do much until you sign up, but once you have given your info, paying member have access to all the addresses.
OK…so why was I not happy.
Firstly, Classmates.com started sending me a couple of “reminders” to log on…then more and more until there were days that it seemed like all I got was nothing but messages from Classmates.com! Legal spam to the max.
Secondly, like 5-HT said, I forgot about the fact that actually, my friends were all a year older or a year younger throughout school, and those I wanted to keep in touch with, I did. So…yes I got a few “hits” but wow…
One was a born again Jesus freak who wanted to know if I had found Jesus yet.
One was from a guy who told me about his life and, when I wrote back that I have been living with my male lover for 22 years, did not respond kindly to say the least.
My brother had similar stories and we both decided that it was not worth it.
For him is was a waste of time.
For me, it was like re-living the worst of high school all over again…the same jock, wacko, small-town mentality I spent a lot of time and effort to escape.
Luckily, I had to change my email for other reasons about a year ago and didn’t let classmates.com know.
I have met a few people who are pleased to find long lost boyfriends or girlfriends…but from my experience - there are a lot of lying dogs out there you should just let sleep.
Ok this is one of the cheesiest things in the world, but my husband was a “lost love” of sorts, and I tracked him down via Classmates.com
We are one of “those” stories
I’ve gotten back in touch with several friends through Classmates. It hasn’t been a life-altering experience, but it’s been worth it for at least one.
Interestingly, every guy I ever dated in high school grew up to be gay. I wonder if it was something I said?
Well, I’m registered with Classmates.com, but haven’t “joined” up. One of my brothers did, however, using a credit card as payment. When the yearly membership was up, classmates.com simply charged the next year’s membership to his card without checking with him first, so he cancelled his membership. Classmates.com is probably not the only site that does that, so beware.
Fortunately, my high school alumni association is fairly active, and I’ve been able to keep in touch through them. Although … they decided to put out a book listing all the alumni – that is, those alumni who have signed up with the assocation – and had the publishers contacting everyone for what personal information to include in the book. The cost of the book was like $80! :eek: I don’t think I’m going to buy anything like that again! LOL That almost makes the auto-charge of classmates.com look good, eh? 
Another person here who has reconnected with a few friends from high school.
It was wonderful, but I let my account expire. However, recently I’ve been tempted to become a member again due to a couple of “new” people registering.
I joined hoping to connect with one particular person – who was no longer listed by the time I decided to join. I did contact a few people – one turned out to be a wacko who’d been nursing a thing for me for 30 years, which was pretty bizarre. Heard back from one other, but it didn’t turn into a correspondence. Wrote to 2 or 3 others who didn’t write back.
Not the worst $30 I’ve ever spent, but I’m not going to renew, despite their blandishments.
BTW – I’m on MSN, so haven’t gotten the level of spam DMark had – get like one email a week from them, which provides a link so you can see the new sign-ups. Some weeks I check it out, some weeks I just delete it.
I’m registered, but I’m not a paying member. I keep my eye on it to see if anyone I care to talk to pops up. If a certain few ever do, I may consider it. The fun part for me is looking at the photos some people have registered. Oh my God. I nearly wet myself the first time I looked through them.
I took a look at the listings once and saw several of my old friends listed. I joined and sent email to some of them but only got a few responses----maybe we weren’t such good friends after all. I thought it was worth a years membership, but I didn’t renew.
When I saw a few names listed that I really wanted to contact I signed up. We exchanged a few emails with each other but didn’t exactly become pen pals. But it was worth the cash just to find out “what happened” to them because netiher one goes to the reunions.
Two others who had dropped off the face of the earth who I really wanted to hear from did not respond. Oh, well.
I let my membership lapse because I had all the email addresses I could want and thankfully they did not charge my credit card for a second year. Yet.
I’m registered and (but not a paying member)
I have gotten e-mails from several “lost” friends over the years from the Classmates listing.
I have also hooked up with a couple of people that I had lost touch with via their message board. (I posted, then someone answered back and gave me a valid e-mail).
I do get 1-2 e-mails per month from them. No biggie.
I joined, but let my membership lapse some years back. The few people I’m most interested in hearing from haven’t registered. The ones who are on my class list weren’t particularly close. And the 3 or 4 emails I sent went unanswered.
I did hear from my first Navy boyfriend thru that site, and I got an email from another friend who I’d lost touch with, but neither of them write any more either. So all in all, it wasn’t worth the hassle to me. I’ll check in there once in a while on the off chance that the few I want to find may have signed up, but so far, no.
I was a member of FriendsReunited (the UK counterpart of classmates.com);
I had been vainly attempting for many years to contact a friend (one of my closest childhood friends), I managed to track down his sister and asked her to pass along a message with my contact details, but nothing happened, the years continued to pass…
I joined up at FriendsReunited, but didn’t find him.
Someone else from my class emailed me, asking for my potted history, which I gave, enquiring politely for the same in return.
Nothing, stony silence.
Then, suddenly the friend I had been looking for signed up, I paid the extra fee to be able to send a message to him, but there was no response.
I let a month pass (in case he was abroad or something), then checked back, he was gone - his details no longer listed.
Now suspecting that he was actually avoiding contact, I emailed his sister again, who replied very apologetically that yes, he had (some years ago)deliberately broken contact with all of the people he knew at school and was very cagey about it all.
In reality though, I suspect this was nothing more than a comforting lie and that it was only myself tfrom whom he sought refuge; why sign up at FriendsReunited at all if you have consciously shunned all of your classmates?
I withdrew my membership and closed the book on that part of my life; I will content myself to live in the present day.
I haven’t joined the site, and probably would never do so.
I went back to read the message boards for my elementary school only to find a thread all about me. They wondered where I am, okay, that’s fine. Then one person posted stuff about how I did something stupid in elementary school and how they and another old school friend still laughed about it. Another posted that they were skeptical that I actually learned how to apply makeup. (I moved out of that school district at age 11 – it’s rather reasonable that an 11-year-old could be clueless about how to use makeup and could do stupid things, no?) I’m not sure anymore that I’m particularly interested in getting in touch.
I was a paying member for the last two years, while I was organizing my 20 year reunion. I found it to be worth the money, since I was able to make contact with many people I hadn’t found any other way. I never had any problems with spam. The only thing I received was an e-mail everytime a new person from my school entered their information.
If no one else has answered this: Yes, if you are registered you can send messages to anyone who has put their information on the site, even if they haven’t paid.