Make Friends Online

This site is now the pits! New owners took over in November and immediately raised the prices horrendously, they own a couple of sites in Ireland and have tried to change MFO to match that in looks and price. Originally is was free then the owners started charging, but for an annual price of £59.95 it was worth it for the friendship aspect. After a year's continuous membership you got a loyalty discount so you only paid £29.95 per annum - even better! And for those over 60 after a year, you got it for £9.95 p. A. The first we knew of the new owners was when someone wanted to renew and saw the rise in prices. An annual membership was showing as £144 with no discounts. A lot of heated exchanges took place with the owners finally posting a message on the forums that they valued the members loyalty and would honour all discounts: therefore we would all pay only what we had paid the previous year. Success! NOT! The Accounts section of the site has been taken off so we could no longer renew and we had no idea of the membership charges anymore. Members were informed they had to mail Admin from their external e-mail address, give a phone number to be contacted at and then renew giving their card details over the phone. Some members tried to make contact through the site and got ignored, until finally getting a mail stating the new rates would be applicable. When members pointed out that their posts on the forum stated that we could all renew at the old prices, they turned round and said that it had only been until the end of 2009. Now this wasn't mentioned in any of their posts! The only way you can see any type of charges is where they have taken something from their Irish site - Premium Plus. With this you can have your photo highlighted and get unlimited messages: in total this would add about £25 extra per month. We already get unlimited messages as Premium members which we are now classed as. Standard members (non-paying) can now mail anyone they want, the only limitation is they can't give any form of contact information in that mail and they can't access the message boards. Before, they could read most of the boards, although not post, and that encouraged some to become paying members. So now the Premium members are subsidising the non-payers. Members are leaving in droves, absolutely disgusted by the treatment by the new owners, and those that are staying after their membership runs out stay on as Standard so they can still be in contact with their friends.

I'm pretty sure what they are doing is illegal due to the fact that we have no idea of charges etc. Keep away from this site at all cost.