It’s Just Lunch… Or a Dating Service Scam? Revisited
July 13, 2007 by Sean Kelly
Filed under Business
Back in February, 2007, we wrote about the It’s Just Lunch Dating Service franchise, asking if It’s Just Lunch… Or Just a Franchise Scam?
According to a good post on The BizOpp News, the New York Attorney General’s Office believes it’s the latter. According to the post, the nationally franchised dating service It’s Just Lunch International and three of its New York franchisees have settled an action brought by the New York Attorney General for charging customers more for social referral services than allowed by state law.
It seems New York General Business Law §394-C provides that ‘social referral service contracts’ may not require the payment of an amount greater than $1,000, and must provide a three-business-day right to cancel a contract without a fee (as well as other restrictions). According to The Bizopp News:
Many of the customers of It’s Just Lunch paid $1,500 for two six-month contracts that were signed at the same time. This practice was merely a device for circumventing state law limitation on fees of $1,000, according to the New York Attorney General.
The company’s contracts also violated state law by prohibiting consumers from filing lawsuits against the company and by failing to include many consumer-friendly provisions, such as a guarantee of a specific number of social referrals per month, the suit alleged.
The franchisees—located in New York City, Albany, and Williamsville—agreed to stop charging customers more than the $1,000 statutory limit, to bring their contracts into full compliance with the state law, to provide three free referrals to customers who paid more than $1,000 and signed contracts on or after January 1, 2006, and to pay a $6,000 fine and $1,000 in costs each.
The franchisor reportedly paid a $45,000 fine and $2,000 in costs to the state and agreed to implement policies and procedures to ensure that future New York franchisees understand their obligations under the state law.
HAVE YOU HAD ANY EXPERIENCES – GOOD OR BAD - WITH IT’S JUST LUNCH OR SIMILAR SERVICES? WE’RE WAITING FOR YOUR CALL COMMENT…
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Sean;
I apologize for not linking to your earlier story, and will update the story with the link.
I’m looking into purchasing one of the open franchises of Its Just Lunch and would greatly appreciate it if anyone would drop me comments on their experiences–good or bad, to give me some perspectives. [email address withheld]
Editor’s note: Please feel free to share your experiences with brenda on this forum. Our policy is to withold email addresses or personal contact info for several reasons.
My bad experiences revolve around Craig’s List and Yahoo, and various other Russian sites. All these sites are loaded with spammers and Yahoo appears to have numerous fake females. You cannot get these women to even identify themselves, even for cash. They are simply deaf models posing in a shopping mall, trying to lure you through the doors. When you do finally get contacted it is only from scammers that eventually hit you up for money and the whole western union thing. What a waste of time and money.
Follow-up to Jim’s post from christian-dating-service-plus.com. Amazing! Just checked out the Fred Ezra Company (ezracompany.com) and honesty online (honestyonline.com) sites and Jim is correct, it’s the same company. Real estate sales family turned expert background screeners. I put a call into a friend at Oracle and he told me Mark Ezra still leases office space to them. He’s there national account manager. I called Glenn Meltzer, the President of the Fred Ezra Company and he told me the same thing. These companies are only going to take our money and make false claims that its now safe to go on dates with people because they checks someone out form there real estate sales desk.
Patty
I wanted to let everyone know about this dating service that I recently was a part of and why NOT to sign up for it.
I signed up for the year membership which costs $1,800. Pretty extreme, but you can take it however you want. When I first began I decided this would be a good investment into my future to find a wonderful woman to spend the rest of my life with. The dating world is not easy here in Chicago and the typical “bar” women are far from the best. So this was another option other than the online dating scene.
Anyway, throughout the year membership I went on over 25 dates with different women, so I feel I am experienced on how this works. IJL leads you to believe that they have the perfect matches for you, which they don’t! They call and tell you about the new match: What they like to do, their looks, their activities, their travels, etc… After hearing basically the same description for each woman, I eventually told them to not waste their time in telling me about the details. Every one sounded fantastic, until you went out on the date! Out of these 25+ dates, I would say that only 2 were good looking. Only a few (6) could hold a conversation, and many had completely different views/likes etc…and weren’t even close to a match. It is very frustrating to go through that many dates throughout the year and not find 1 woman that I would like to date. This service had no idea of what I was looking for, after several conversations stating what I was in search of. They only meet with you once and somehow they “know” you. You have to explain your likes/dislikes over the phone to someone you have never met. Supposedly, there are a group of people who sit in a room and go over all the different profiles to match you up. I think they just grab the closest match and that’s who you will be meeting. There was never a good match and then after complaining several times, IJL had the nerve to ask me to sign up for another year! Crazy! I haven’t even spoken to the woman who interviewed me initially (Since I signed up). You would think that she, being the one who “knows” you, would do her best to advise or help in any way possible. She explained that she knew exactly what I was looking for, and I believed her. Unreal. IJL doesn’t even show you a picture of the person you are about to go on a date with. If they did that, it would have saved the woman and I a bunch of time. There were very few good looking women, and the ones that were good looking, couldn’t hold a conversation or didn’t have the same likes/dislikes as I. And I’m sure that everything is vice versa as well….if I wasn’t the woman’s type, it would have saved her time/money. I wanted to let you know that I wasn’t the only one. Several dates (10) that I went on said they hated the service as well and they weren’t listening to what they wanted. Some tried to cancel the membership, but IJL wouldn’t let them. Throughout the 25+ dates, there wasn’t 1 compliment about IJL. Only complaints.
Anyway, to make a long story short:
IJL DOESN’T LISTEN TO YOUR NEEDS
IJL DOESN’T ADVISE YOU ON DATING, OR HELP WITH MATCHING
IJL DOESN’T MATCH YOU WITH PEOPLE THAT YOU CAN RELATE TO
IJL DOESN’T MATCH YOU WITH GOOD LOOKING PEOPLE
IJL ISN’T ANY BETTER THAN ONLINE DATING, WHICH IS MUCH CHEAPER
IJL DOESN’T FULFILL…SIMPLE.
So, in conclusion, if you are considering this service, take my advice and don’t waste your money. IJL has been more of an annoyance than anything else. No one seems to know what they are talking about and they are just reading profiles….you could do that online for much less than $1800 + all the food and drinks that you have to spend when you go on these dates. Back to the real dating world….in fact, already have 2 dates lined up WITHOUT the service! Good luck.
The last comment was probably 4 times longer then the article …
I joined It’s Just Lunch in Vancouver, British Columbia recently and it was the worst experience of my life! This spirited company quickly became my biggest headache. I not only did not get the dates that I asked for in a 3 hour assessment prior to joining, I didn’t get all of my money back when I had enough of the crap! I think I will stick to online dating websites!