Make sure in your dispute that you put that you did call to cancel before the charge would have taking effect during normal business hours but the phone was not answered. Be polite, but push, and you will get the chargeback from your bank. File all appeals if they decide against you, and if it really pisses you off keep calling until you get a CSR that will help you.
But hey, this is why classmates never became facebook, when the obviously had the inside track for years…
I signed up for free, but I was very annoyed at the very small amount of services that allowed while still receiving teasers for what I was “missing”. I considered paying the fee, but I changed my mind right away when I Googled and saw all the complaints. At that point, instead of an actual profile picture, I posted an image saying that I was no longer there and advised Googling for the complaints. I also included my email on the image if anyone wanted to contact me.
Bull!
Any business that has to ‘trap’ customers into renewing like this can hardly be called “legitimate”.
I’m sure many don’t have to. But it apparently adds to their bottom line, so some do.
Whether that makes it worse or not is up to you.
It’s not really a scam, but it’s pretty sketchy. I signed up for Classmates.com’s trial gold membership to find someone I knew, but I was aware of their renewal policy and cancelled it the minute I found who I was looking for. Basically the default mode is always renewal. If you try the trial membership and don’t cancel after a week, you get charged automatically.
It’s stupid and they’re bastards, but there you go.
A guy I know makes a reasonable living this way… he has a local business directory website which he gets firms to sign up for on a direct debit or CPA; he carefully pitches the price to fall below the commonly-set audit levels in big firms, so that the payments will go through without too much scrutiny (often anything under £500 will be pre-approved up to superviser level, but will often get missed with the 100s of other payments going through the books.
Lots of his revenue comes from firms who probably don’t even realise they are paying him.
This.
For things like these I use gift visas. Dispute that, suckers!
Anyway. Classmates.com? With Facebook being free and having a much larger database? Why?
Not quite what happened. The transaction was Jan 14, it posted Jan 19, and I saw it on my online account statement Jan 24.
Nobody knows that but you.
The same tactic is used by Sirius radio and Norton antivirus. Signing up for anything with any kind of subscription service has now become a game of ‘find the auto-renewal box’ to make sure it is unchecked.
It is all there to make things easier for the customer, of course. 
I’m more than a little late on this post, but the same screw job charge of $39 just happened to me. After a returned ‘you lose’ email from customer service, I called 206-301-5700 and got a nice CSR. I started out a little surly, but was angry at the time.
She rebutted my request for a refund twice, as in ‘I’m sorry, but you did agree to auto-renewal when you signed up’…
I said I wouldn’t accept that and it was poor business practice and who could I talk to next?
She said she’d make a ‘one-time exception’ and refund the pro-rated amount of $37…woohoo! It pays to bitch (and be a little surly). Good luck!
ah. Banker’s hours.
All of a sudden there is this $39 charge pending on my credit card, which happened to be maxed out at the time and it turns out to be Classmates.
Why? I ask myself. More importantly, How th’???
I have disputed the charge. It is in process right now. Also told Classmates
this not authorized, got same form letter others have shown.
Emailed them back saying “this doesn’t work for me, I have to have a full refund right now.” I guess I’ll see what happens. Glad to see I’m not alone.
I second this. I keep getting random emails from Classmates and Match.com trying to sell me subscriptions. I sign up for plenty of networking sites during a free period, but never give a credit card. I’ve been scammed before. Lesson learned. I’ve seen plenty of folks putting email info on a profile pic.
“Bull” back at you. Lots of online subscription services do auto-renewal as a matter of course unless you cancel it. Ancestry.com comes to mind immediately. So does the New York Times. If you’re too unorganized, lazy or unaware to either check the “no auto renewal” box or to go to your account to manually stop the process, then you’re going to get charged. That’s why all online businesses have the “terms and conditions” clause that you agree you have read before you pay. It’s true that some of these make finding the cancellation page less than intuitive to find, however.
Oh hell: semi-zombaic thread.
Related question:
It is very easy and inexpensive to set up websites for alumni to find each other, and easy to find such sites via Googling. Given that, I’ve wondered how a paid Classmates.com model can work. Maybe my memory is faulty, but I dimly recall a years-ago alumni site for my High School which ceased to operate (due to a Classmates.com intervention?).
I’m going to go out on a limb and say, increasingly common or not, including an “autorefund” clause in your TOS that you hope the customer doesn’t read isn’t a particularly ethical business plan.
I have a little more sympathy when it’s a paid service. The slimiest punks ever at this was freecreditreport, where you didn’t pay anything up front, but the multiple, hard-to-read TOS pages you had to click through included a mention that you’d be charged if you didn’t deenroll in time.
Classmates is scammy. I get notifications that particular people have left messages for me, but when I check with said people (who happen to be Facebook friends) they have not, in fact, graced Classmates with their presence much less left me a note.
I don’t like them either. I became a member back when I was helping organize a class reunion, but cancelled the membership immediately after. They still send emails six years later about people leaving messages and the like. Hey, I’m in the book.