I had the "automatic renewal" recently charged to my card for $39 after my previous one year membeship was 9.95 and the card they charged to had the wrong expiration date. I don't recall ever selecting an automatic renewal selection nor do I recall getting a notice about it. I have now had to file a dispute with my credit card company and have read many other similar complaints.

Three years ago I joined Classmates.com on a 1 year manually renewed membership. I was dissatisfied with their service and did not plan to renew. I went to their website to make sure my membership was canceled whereupon they pulled their deception, they offered me a two year GOLD membership for 1/2 price and promised I would be much more satisfied with that membership.

Was I ever a sucker! I thought 'oh what the heck' for 1/2 price for two years and they say it is better...why not!

Well it was not better...same old webpage with 90 million ads and pop ups on it, which made it very slow to load even with broadband. I had decided that the next time they approached me I was definitely going to cancel, and I wondered why they had not contacted me. I thought that perhaps I had forgotten my renewal date and perhaps they would contact me this month!

I went to my credit card website for an entirely different purpose and that is when I noticed they had automatically billed me for another 2 years...

That is about as deceptive as you can get, especially when you consider that I am legally blind and can't read that fine print anyway!

I just want to get this out to the general public so someone else won't get cheated like I did!

Three years ago I joined Classmates.com on a 1 year manually renewed membership.

I was dissatisfied with their service and did not plan to renew. I went to their website to make sure my membership was canceled whereupon they pulled their deception, they offered me a two year GOLD membership for 1/2 price and promised I would be much more satisfied with that membership.

Was I ever a sucker! I thought 'oh what the heck' for 1/2 price for two years and they say it is better...why not!

Well it was not better...same old webpage with 90 million ads and pop ups on it, which made it very slow to load even with broadband. I had decided that the next time they approached me I was definitely going to cancel, and I wondered why they had not contacted me. I thought that perhaps I had forgotten my renewal date and perhaps they would contact me this month!

I went to my credit card website for an entirely different purpose and that is when I noticed they had automatically billed me for another 2 years...

That is about as deceptive as you can get, especially when you consider that I am legally blind and can't read that fine print anyway!

I just want to get this out to the general public so someone else won't get cheated like I did!

For the last 2-3 years I have been getting sent someone else's account in addition to my own. Now I can't even get on mine because it doesn't register as my account

I signed up for a 3 month membership. At the end of the 3 months, they signed me up for another membership. We exchanged some emails, but it boils down to this. They say I agreed to let them auto renew the membership and they are not going to return the money. We should begin urging Congress to stop this deceptive practice. Classmates.com could have included anything in their fine print, but the spirit of the agreement was a one-time 3 month deal and nothing else. Reputable companies like GoDaddy.com advises you numerous times that a membership is going to be auto-renewed and give you many opportunites to opt out. There should be a law making prior notification a mandatory practice.