Comments on: Algorithm-driven dating site Be2 raises €15m from Index

By: Jason

Jason — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:35:00 +0000

The Be2 site is a scam and a fraud. They have ripped me off 300pounds now. Do not whatever you do join this site. They lure you in with a 5pound deal and then quickly up it to 149pounds. Try to cancel and you realize your talking to a brick wall. THEY WILL NOT CANCEL YOUR CONTRACT. You end paying another 149pounds months later when you think it’s all over.
This company has been going for years getting away with this awful fraud and nobody is doing anything about it. They must be stopped before they hurt more people.

By: David

David — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 09:27:00 +0000

BE2 is 100% scam. The perpetrators should go to jail.

By: Rolfe

Rolfe — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 19:04:00 +0000

THE INVESTORS IN BE2 SHOULD CHECK OUT ‘GOOGLE BE2 SCAM’ THE DAYS OF THIS SITE ARE NUMBERED AS THEY ARE UNDER INVESTGATION FOR FRAUD IN U.S.A, CANADA, MEXICO. SPAIN, AND THE U.K. FINNLAND HAS ALREADY PASSED A CLASS ACTION AGAINST THEM. THE SO CALLED ALGORITHM IS A FRAUD. A VAGUE PROFILE OF A 67 YEAR OLD MAD RAISED OVER 20 HITS IN 5 MINUTES IN AN ATTEMPT TO GET CREDIT CARD DETAILS WHICH IS HOW THEY MAKE THEIR MONEY.

By: Defrauded

Defrauded — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 15:44:27 +0000

I signed up at their Singapore website http://www.be2.sg for a 6mth package. Then I had to move to Malaysia and found that there was no way to change the settings to get matches from other geographies despite them claiming to have more than 22m members worldwide. I changed my own location to Malaysia and got matches from Australia and NZ and obviously these matches are not likely to be bothered to date someone so far away. Asked them for refund of my unused portion and they said I had already used the service (with 5 months left?). I also found out there was no online cancellation of membership and I was supposed to FAX my cancellation to them. Then I found out that this site has been scamming people for years using exactly these techniques. I have told my bank to stop payment to be2 and also reported them online to the Singapore Police. Truly, these people must be stopped.

By: Paco Jaen

Paco Jaen — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 23:04:24 +0000

the same “modus operandi” in uk:

http://boards.thisismoney.co.uk/tim/threadnonInd.jsp?forum=98&thread=92454

i hope interpol stops this gang of scammers

By: Paco Jaen

Paco Jaen — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:14:58 +0000

be2 its a humongous FRAUD.
http://elfraudebe2.blogspot.com/2008/02/como-funciona-realmente-b2es.html

By: Oliver

Oliver — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 02:28:03 +0000

Yeah, I write from B2.

Sure you do.

These B2 merchants pop up all over sites complaining about crappy service.

I’ve dozens of message email notifications that members have contacted me, when you check your inbox most if not all are from the site simply telling you to check out that member’s profile.

I’ve got women “releasing their photos to me” but the weird thing is that these women are never the ones who have actually visited your profile.

This site is obviously made on a wing and a computerised prayer, with very few customer service humans. I get autogenerated email responses that tell me they are autogenerated, but encourage me to reply if their reply was incorrect. I am talking to a freaking computer. I’d rather speak to a call centre operative in mumbai.

Any other site, they have humans deal with your problem in less than a day. These guys “try” withint 48hrs, and I’m not holding my breath.

Serious tech faults with their site. I had a profile, with a silly name, just to see what the talent was like. The site happily too my trial payment via another vendor- astrology.com.

When I decided to actually fill out my profile properly, I thought I’d join the site with another user profile, a better name, etc. Trying to register actually on the site couldn’t be less customer friendly. When I stayed a basic member everything was fine. As soon as I tried to upgrade to a member that can actually read messages, I was stuck permanently on their payment page. There is a fault on their system that means payment keeps getting declined, and the stupid thing is, once you have entered into the upgrade section, it tells you have now become an upgraded member. This means if the system keeps running error messages when you try to pay, you are locked out of the system because it won’t let you even look at your profile until you complete the payment stage. There is no option to revert to basic membership. Now I’m stuck in limbo waiting for “customer service” to get back to me about their payment page error, unable to access my account with the serious profile where I actually filled out the many questions, and I have access to only the silly profile.

The error is clearly at be2′s end, because paying from their site does not work, but through another vendor like PayPal,Epoch or TrialPay does, this is what I used for the silly profile. I’ve called my bank numerous times and the error is definitely at their end.

This site obviously has only one intent, making money. It took off, and they made no provisions for supplying sufficient levels of customer service and making sure the site is without bugs/faults. Now they think they want to expand further??

Everytime I see a B2 agent on the web defending their company asking the customer to contact customer service I sit wondering when the hell they are going to actually serve me as a customer rather than running around the net trying to save their arse with this PR bull. The ads sound so personal, they sound more human than the sites that aren’t purely computer generated bull. Surely there has got to be something done about trading standards here.

By: Emma Jones

Emma Jones — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:30:44 +0000

Dear Col
I write from be2 customer services.
I am confident that if it has not already happened, you and your father’s e-mail will be answered. We have had a large number of e-mails this week and there may have been a slight delay in getting back to you. We aim to reply to all mails, at the latest, within 12 hours of receipt.
Further, any direct instruction to cancel or to delete personal information will be acted on immediately.
Please, if you have not had an adequate response already, write to me direct at opinion@be2.com.
Emma Jones
be2 customer services.

By: Col

Col — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 04:58:12 +0000

My 80 year old father joined this site, inadvertently. I found out about this when I saw a $235 deduction from his credit card, paid to Be2. I have his permission to monitor his spending and accounts. He assured me he had no recollection of joining Be2 and certainly no recollection of agreeing to pay them such a large amount of money.

He has sent messages to the customer services email and I have sent one. Both emails have requested his registration be cancelled and money refunded. Nothing heard from Be2.

There is something badly wrong with that sort of “customer service”. I suggest anyone caught in this situation do what I’m now doing and that is to have your bank cancel the credit card. It seems that is the only safe option.

By: Karon

Karon — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 00:34:48 +0000

This site is scary..I was asked by someone I had not even met to give him money….$2500.00..b2 sends profiles that are not filled out..so you do not really have any info at all except their hair colour,eye colour and their height?….What the heck is going on here?

By: Michaela

Michaela — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:55:37 +0000

Dear Mr. Vandyck,

I´m Michaela from be2. I´m sorry to hear you weren’t completely satisfied with be2. Responsive customer service is very important to us, so if you feel that there is anything be2 could do to improve your experience, please let us know. At opinion@be2.com you can explain the issues you mentioned in greater detail. We will do our best to investigate what happened, give you more guidance on how to get most out of your membership, and resolve the issue.

Best wishes,
Michaela

By: Björn Vandyck

Björn Vandyck — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:51:09 +0000

I have had a very bad experience with this site. 15000000 profiles they state. Only when i searched availeble profiles i only mannaged to come up with 50 or so, including 3 different countries in my search. They sent me profiles that dont exist, weird messages by people that dont exist and they make you end your membership by fax. Hardly any good info is availeble on their site, they just keep redirecting you ending up where you started. Its a scam if i ever saw one.

By: Online dating

Online dating — Sat, 16 May 2009 00:56:22 +0000

I guess the number of users online is not a factor. What’s important is that they are happy!

By: suibian8

suibian8 — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:36:52 +0000

i receive lots of messages which i have never experienced at other sites. i spent lots of time trying to know more about them. finally i find out they are all scammars. i guess B2 has special offer to africa scammars.

By: spammachine

spammachine — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 02:16:19 +0000

this site sucks. i signed up for be2.com and got 20 emails from individuals supposedly interested in my profile and thought “wow! i was never this lucky on match.com”. well guess what? 19 of them were spam. it seems the only “algorithm” here is a sawed-off shotgun marketing strategy (i.e. NO strategy).

and they seem to randomly assign physical attributes to you for which i have still been unable to find out how to change (there’s apparently no way to do so — the UI is crap and customer service never got back to me).

so now i too will be setting up my own “algorithmic” (oooo…) dating site as a front to con greedy gullible venture capitalists in to making me an overnight millionaire and then run off the next day to become an international playboy instead while my spamtastic site rots to the ground leaving them VCs clutching their balls.

By: The Rush To Monetize The Internet…AKA Watching Turtles Screw : TechGrits

The Rush To Monetize The Internet…AKA Watching Turtles Screw : TechGrits — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:07:34 +0000

[...] real or go home.” But they are still handing out money. Just look here, here, here, here and here (I could go on, but you get the point). The total they are handing out is [...]

By: Steve Patrick

Steve Patrick — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 06:35:24 +0000

Please note that there are MANY complaints about not being able to cancel subscriptions in a timely fashion and getting the run-around from “Customer Service”. My personal experience supports that view and, although I’m hoping for the best, my gut tells me this is another Bre-X.

By: Nick

Nick — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 13:59:08 +0000

I have had similar comments about the geographical sarch. However, don’t forget that they are coming from Europe and ZIP codes do not exist in Europe. Things will be eventually added. I wish them all the best

By: dc_publius

dc_publius — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:33:57 +0000

I really wonder whether some of these TC articles are Paid Reviews and the person writing them just paraphrases the press release without spending more than 5 minutes checking out the site. I mean come on, the site’s ‘advanced search’ doesn’t even let users search by geographical location, and there is no traffic and plenty of fake spam profiles.

By: chase

chase — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:33:12 +0000

I think a dating site can work if it stands out and has additional value and add-ons that it can charge to increase revnue.

By: john

john — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:26:41 +0000

Yet another stupid matching algorithm.

Can I not just talk to who I want and decide for myself? Questionnaires are dumb.

By: Jason

Jason — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:52:15 +0000

Nick M, that’s funny. You guys are a bit harsh, don’t you think. They haven’t done anything wrong, have they?!

By: Tony

Tony — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:53:50 +0000

Mike,

You still need to change be.net to be.com in the description field.

By: Be2 fills up treasure box, raises €15 million | Startup Meme - Technology Startup and Latest Tech News

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:04:27 +0000

[...] in a variety of personality traits and uses them to find matches that best fit their liking has raised €15 million from Index Ventures. The service is pretty interesting as it grabs in data from the [...]

By: November 13, 2008 | next media update

November 13, 2008 | next media update — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 18:32:39 +0000

[...] Algorithm-Driven Dating Site Be2 Raises €15 Million from Index TECHCRUNCH As the downturn bites, VCs are putting more into the companies they feel most confident about rather than the spray-and-pray approach of the last three years. That, combined with companies that have proven models, and developing revenues. The latest example of this is the €15 million investment from the European VC Index Ventures into Be2, the Munich-based global dating site. But this is not your average dating site. This bases its business on an algorithm which identifies specific personality traits and characteristics and uses them to match potentially compatible partners. Source> [...]