GREENWOOD VILLAGE - Many couples who are now married met online, and some folks who want new friends go there as well. Fun4Singles.com is one of those sites, but the dating website is getting bad reviews from customers and a bad grade from the Better Business Bureau.
The Greenwood Village-based business offers fun activities for singles in 34 cities across the country, including Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Washington D.C. It's been registered with the Colorado Secretary of State's office as a business since December 2004.
The company website has plenty of testimonials from happy members, but not everyone is happy about Fun4Singles.com.
Becky Lowe from Milwaukee, Wis., says the website convinced her. She says it was "legitimate, because it was all over the place and the website was very well done."
She paid $80 for a six month membership on http://fun4singles.com.
"It is difficult to meet people nowadays, and so I was getting into the winter sort of, 'OK, I need to find some way to meet someone,'" Lowe said, "[I] went online and looked for a few different places. [FunForSingles] looked really exciting. I found it online and I explored it a little bit and it looked really promising."
The website says the company is made of a small group of event planners who have years of experience putting events together.
It's not a dating service, rather a place for single people to make new friendships, establish relationships and have fun.
"When you go on the website, you click on the events you'd like to sign up for, and I'd signed for total of about five in two months," Lowe said. "And every single one had been postponed or cancelled due to 'lack of enrollment,' they claimed. It was really strange that they were all cancelled or postponed."
The Better Business Bureau gives FunForSingles an F rating. It turns out Lowe is not the only one complaining. According to the BBB, customers across the country say, "events are always either postponed or rescheduled but never end up taking place."
Click here to read more BBB reviews.
"This company has unanswered complaints," Ran Hoth, president and CEO of the Wisconsin Better Business Bureau, said. "We've actually had 53 complaints in the last 36 months. We haven't been able to get a response on the last 28. So, the company is clearly not answering its customer complaint issues."
"It can't be that common to postpone events and have no voice, nobody to talk to about it. It just can't be that difficult," Lowe said.
Fun4Singles.com doesn't offer activities in Colorado, even though its founder and president Christopher Malone lives here.
9NEWS knocked on Malone's door to ask him about the complaints, but no one answered. He called 9NEWS Crime and Justice Reporter Anastasiya Bolton back and declined her request to speak on camera about his company's record.
Malone did agree to a phone interview with WDJT-TV CBS58 in Milwaukee.
"One of the things we're very careful of - it's stated not just in the terms and conditions but also on the website - if you look at the 'about us' section, about the events, it states the events that do not have a minimum of five members signed up will be cancelled or rescheduled. That is specifically so they know that is the policy," Malone told the Wisconsin station.
Lowe and another member who shared their stories said they called some places where the events were scheduled only to find out the businesses had no idea anything was going on.
"We've had a lot of different organizations to schedule parties throughout the year, never heard of those folks," Rock Bottom Manager Ryan Hartman told the Wisconsin station about a Fun4Singles event that was supposed to be going on at his restaurant.
"I find that's very unfortunate because the whole idea behind Fun4Singles is to be something positive," Malone said. "Certainly there are areas where the service needs improvements, that is being focused on. Nobody should join Fun4Singles and feel that there's no support."
But customers like Jessica, also from Milwaukee, aren't having any fun. Jessica declined to give her last name or show her face for privacy reasons.
"If I would've called and I wasn't able to get a hold of somebody, I wouldn't have signed up. That's my mistake," she said.
In his telephone interview, Malone also says he didn't agree with certain problems and complaints.
"I talked to the BBB, I spoke with the woman who's in charge of our account to find out what can be done about that report so that it would be more accurate," Malone said. "There is a lot of complaints in the report that are actually situations that have already been handled. It's a matter of not having updated the Better Business Bureau."
The BBB serving Denver and Boulder told 9NEWS the woman Malone says he'd spoken with has not worked for the BBB since December 2011.
The BBB also had no record of the conversations Malone said it had with the agency, but says it's possible that conversations took place but were not documented.
"Nevertheless, it doesn't appear that Mr. Malone has responded to any of the company's unanswered complaints or contacted anyone recently to try to get help in doing so," Megan Miller, spokesperson for the BBB, said.
Miller also told 9NEWS the last record the BBB had of Malone reaching out was in 2006, when he updated his address and requested a complaint to be resent to him, which the BBB did.
He said he's also addressing complaints about the company's lack of response.
"There are some changes that have been made and I'm still working on that," Malone said. "It's one of those things I just need more dependable people to be able to handle that in the quicker manner."
Malone says the company is implementing a new policy that penalizes people for late cancellations.
"What Fun4Singles is about is putting events together that people can sign up for, as long as there's enough people signed up for that event, it will take place. If they would like to meet other singles in their area by going to the movies or by whatever the event might be, that's the purpose of FunForSingles," he said.
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