Meetup

You can use facebook groups to manage your group/club/meetup for free. No need to pay $20/mo to subsidize meetup.com's political agenda. #resist meetup.com

I am a single woman who is 58 years old. I searched out speed dating in NYC.
This is what I saw;
From Meetup.com: This event is for Men ages 43-58 and Women ages 40-53.

WHY ARE WOMAN REQUIRED TO BE YOUNGER? I want answers Meetup!

Went to what was meant to be a London Fashion and personal styling group. I have a vintage clothing company in Holland Park and I was keen to meet other industry people and or Stylist's. Alas that was not to be... I was very disappointed to discover it was just a rouse to get people to fill a very expensive venue while it was having a "quiet period" before the Christmas office partying event began.
We were shown to the room where our expected Fashion Networking session would begin. No one from the organisation was there to welcome you or to help conducting the event. Usually when you attend these events there is someone to kick the event off by introducing a member or speaker who can help others mingle. Instead we were greeted by another event, indeed 2 other events - "The Christmas Jumper Party" - full of fat 20/30 something junior office admin types and a "Meet n Mingle" dating event, so the 2 guy's who were trying to chat me and my friend up said.
I feel that we were duped by the organisers who clearly were merging all events so to mitigate against low numbers. I did not meet anyone who was there for the London Fashion and personal styling group... no pleased WILL NOT BE BACK!

I am the Organizer of two Meetup groups, one of which is now in its third year and very popular. The Meetup concept and overall implementation is very well done. I have the following questions and comments for the Meetup organization:
1. Why do you implement new major features to the arrangement or operation of the Meetup system without giving a heads-up to your Organizations first? For example, your roll-out of the payment system WePay; you not only rolled this out to the masses without forewarning your Organizers, you also removed the ability to accept Paypal for these fees in the same step. What a blow to your Organizers!
2. Meetup does not allow Organizers to "make a profit through Meetup" by charging a high group membership fee (in the eyes of Meetup corp.), but yet welcomes and supports Organizers who are clearly only using the Meetup system as a front to upsell their members to other services, such as speed-dating events and matchmaking services. Why the discrepancy?
3. The Meetup technical infrastructure at times is unstable and disjointed. For example, lately it has not been working properly with MS Explorer. Come on; this is a major browser. Another example: often at times it will chug and chug while waiting for the site to load. Professional sites such as Google never seem to experience such issues. Please upgrade your programming capabilities.
Thank you, but I truly do not expect to hear back from you on these issues…after all, I am a mere Organizer, the axel on which your system turns.

As a group organiser, I can honestly say that I agree with all the experience's listed here.

The same thing happened to me just like the rest of the reviews. Absolutely ridiculous!

There was a time when Meetup was about facilitating meeting like-minded individuals. From 2007 until about 2015, I greatly enjoyed using both the site and going to meetups regularly, and more recently was a paid member hosting my own meetup group.

Sadly, things appear to have taken a turn for the worse. As of 2018, the website's usability is poor. In the interface, there is a lack of feedback and consistency when performing basic actions such as joining a group. How do I browse meetups by category? Is it even possible to do that?

Perhaps more concerning is the company's decision in 2017 to support political activism in the form of the #Resist movement. Personally, I have no strong opinion about American politics in general, nor about Donald Trump. For this reason, I resent the idea that a company uses its international members' fees to support grassroots political activism. In conclusion, I have decided that Meetup shall no longer be receiving my money. In my opinion, the company needs to grow up a little and act with greater professional integrity.

Promoting their openly biased political agenda turns me off to no end. Will never use their site again. The hate from the progressive left is astonishing. Hope their company shrivels up.

Total waste of time with organizers who couldn't properly host a meetup if their lives counted on it. People who attend these meetups tend to have the intelligence of a potato. Wierd people who have no lives. Stalkers, tons of creeps, wierdos, wannabes, hippies, you name it.

I'm not sure what the company was trying to accomplish with its September update but from nearly all of the reviews, it clearly didn't work. A reply from the company is in order. Terrible update.

So the past couple years I'd become a bit of a shut-in. I was looking through the Google App Store and I came across this. Decided to take a chance on us a little over a year ago and I don't regret it one bit.

Meetup is basically an app it helps to connect you to public events that may fit in with your particular set of interests. It helps me find a board gaming group in my area that meets up once a month. Once every couple of weeks we have a community clean-up, this popped up on my feed once the trashtag challenge started to become a thing. So it really helps me to get out of the house every now and again and it's connected me to some pretty cool people.

The only reason I put up a four-star review in lieu of a 5 is because of the fact that I do live in a rural area oh, so the fact that I have anything coming up in my feed at all is quite astounding. I would recommend this for anybody looking for activities so long as you live in a slightly more populated area.

If you're curious, go ahead and give it a shot. It's free and it definitely helps if you're looking for something that's out of your daily routine.

I have been a Meetup organizer paying dues of $200/yr for the past 13 years. As of this writing I have 5,048 members and 1,949 5 star reviews.

Meetup support sucks and is one of the worst companies I have ever dealt with, very poorly managed, and the Meetup.com platform has bugs as far back as I can remember. I have complained at least monthly for years.

In the past 2 weeks I have received complaints from three people who have joined my group, but I am not receiving notices from Meetup of said members request to join, so that I am unable to accept said requests to join my group. It is my policy to require interested parties to be accepted by me before they are able to become official members of my Meetup groups. If there are 3 people who have joined but not received by me to be accepted, I can only assume there are others. These three have notified me personally. It has been at least 2 weeks since these members asked to join and be accepted.

Before and since these three people have notified my of their completed registration, several have joined and been accepted by me. However, these three have not been received by me. I do not accept nonmembers to attend my hiking and kayaking events due to the inherent risks for safety purposes. However, since these three people notified me directly that they joined, I had no choice to make an exception, since the problem is with Meetup, not the members who join.

If I stop paying dues, Meetup shuts me down. The only leverage I have is to complain to Meetup support and post negative online reviews.

I AGREE WITH THE "ONE MAN'S OPINION" AS I WAS DROPPED FROM MEETUP FOR NO REASON AT ALL; NO REASONS GIVEN, NO PLACE TO FIGHT, NOTHING. I THINK THAT MEETUP SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED BY THE GOVERNMENT FOR RIPPING PEOPLE OFF.

You can't "rate" meetup.com.
It's just a website that facilitates peoples' desires to MEET other like-minded people.
If you are crazy, judgemental, paranoid or full of yourself DON'T JOIN A GROUP AND THEN COMPLAIN ABOUT YOUR WARPED PERCEPTIONS.

You can't rate the website, but you can rate a individual meetup group that you've been in, but what's the point? What's the likelihood that anyone using Site Jabber is going to be attending the EXACT SAME GROUP as you?

The few meetup group organizers that I have met and had the opportunity to chat with, always lament about the crazy people that join their group and then complain, whine, $#*! and generally wreak havoc in what is supposed to be a group of people that simply want to share an activity/interest with other like-minded people.

There ARE meetup groups for dating, just as there are for introverts, East-Indian singles 24-33... whatever you want, so don't join a group for over 40's and then complain that everyone is over 40.
Jeebus.

Way to go meetup.com... Let's just take away the first amendment and while your at it, just force on your members all the other goofy beliefs you have on tap.

I have nothing nice to say about Meetup. Let me just give you the #Facts and by stating the facts with Meetup will automatically place in you on their $#*! list bc your words are Conservative. I have created harmonious and enjoyable events and there were ppl who did not RSVP but had the intention to bring their negativity to a sophisticated party. I had reported accts that had vile nudity as their profile pic and Meetup attacked me by banning me instead of solving the issue. Meetup allows bad behavior if the acct appears to be liberal left. I have not brought politics into until now. But Meetup has shown me prejudice bc I hold a higher standard and support those who enjoy class and sophisticated events. This is why when you decide to sign up with Meetup. The members do not attend or engage in discussion bc they are silenced when they have done nothing wrong or never went against these policies. https://help.meetup.com/hc/en-us/articles/*******532-Usage-and-content-policies-Rules-for-using-Meetup

THE NEW DESIGN SUCKS IN ALL REGARDS. What the hell are these people thinking? HOW MANY TIMES MUST I CLICK ON THE LOGIN LINK TO LOGIN?
The website is seriously hard to navigate because it slow and clunky as heck. The design sucks. Half the time, I have no idea where I am or how to navigate the site because the design and functionality sucks so bad and slow. Shame. If I designed something like this at work, I would be fired.

Is Meetup insane? What twisted logic causes an internet company to create and enforce such hostile policy against paying customers?

On Tue, Oct 11,2016 at 11:58 AM, Meetup HQ <*******@meetup.com>­ wrote:

Hello Bill,
We are writing about your Meetup group, Makers of Phoenix, because we noticed you are hosting online events. Meetup is committed to bringing people together in real life to do what matters most to them. Thats why Meetup groups that are primarily about online interactions are not permitted.

In order to comply with our policies, more than half of your groups Meetups should be local, in-person events. You may host a webinar or online discussion as long as, overall, at least 50% of your Meetups are in-person.

Please review your upcoming Meetups and make sure at least half are in-person. If necessary, remove online Meetups or add in-person Meetups. If you cancel any upcoming Meetups, please issue refunds to members who paid you. You do not need to alter past Meetups.

In 2 weeks, we will review your group again. If your Meetup continues to focus on online interactions instead of in-person activities, it will be closed.

Please see our Help Center information on these recent policy updates. You can also read our Community Guidelines. We reserve the right to remove groups at our own discretion per our Terms of Service.

Thank you for your commitment to Meetup.

Signed up to attend this "Advanced Intermediate" meetup group. The co-organizer, Brad is the person who puts down the lines for these courts located at Twin Dolphins, Huntington Beach, CA. Well, this organizer is not very nice. When potential players RSVP to play, they go into his waiting list and from there he cherry picks which players he wants to allow to play. Now, in concept one would think Brad is recruiting only the best advanced volleyball players, right? Well, not exactly. Brad is one mean and hypocritical person because in his group there's players who cannot meet the minimum skills to play even regular intermediate volleyball level, let alone "advanced intermediate" as he calls his group. To me it's interesting how can get away with treating people in such a rude and ugly manner and still be allowed to have a meetup group. If you're looking for a place to play fun volleyball with friendly people, DO NOT sign up to play with Brad's "Advanced Intermediate" volleyball group in Huntington Beach, CA on Saturday mornings at Twin Dolphin courts.

I am disappointed in Meetup.com's ethics. This week I 'stepped down' as Organiser of my group, handing over the leadership to a lovely woman in the group who I know will be enthusiastic and continue to nurture the group:-) I had already paid Organisers Dues (fees) up until 23 September 2013. I also ticked the box that asked me if I wanted to transfer this payment over to the new leader. She accepted the position as Organiser, but was charged $42! I was alarmed at this charge, but several emails between myself and Meetup.com to clarify this, just resulted in their 'apologising' for the "confusion". There shouldn't have been any confusion. They were double-dipping, and would not refund the $42 to my friend. They obviously didn't 'transfer' my payment (til September) to her. They then told me that any payments made relate to the person (Organiser), not the Group. Had we known this upfront, I probably would have remained as Organiser until my payment had expired in September. Up until this time, I have had good experience with Meetup.com. I have thought it to be a good networking site. But they have now lost my vote by their dishonesty and sneakiness.

I was an organizer of a few groups for a few years and hosted around 100 events with 95% having great reviews. When a few female members who were psychotically jealous of me because they were desperate cougars and the men were attracted to me and not them decided to start ruining my events meetup kicked me off the site (claiming that I was barred for life). After what I went through dealing with the mentally unstable and desperate people of New York City that are a part of meetup (had to call the police twice, strangers started yelling for no reason at events, adults over-drinking and puking on others, stalkers, people not paying for their meals, really sleazy and creepy men, etc. etc. You wouldn't believe what I've witnessed) there's NO WAY IN HELL that I would ever want to be a part of this site ever again. Not one employee at meetup ever asked for my side of the story- what a horrible business with extremely poor customer support. Back in the day... crazy people like this were sent to lunatic asylums... now they all belong to meetup.com.

As an organizer for many years, unfortunately I can only say that the experience has been a bitter one... forget about the occasional weirdo that might join the group you're paying for as an organizer, it's the complete and utter lack of touch and empathy from Meetup HQ towards us their paying customers. Over and over they don't get tired of making the point that they don't care a bit about and understand what you have to say and what truly works to run a succesful group for adult people. The feeling you get is that Meetup HQ is run by a psycopath together with a bunch of teenagers. All they care about is that their website looks good, hiding and many times disappearing the many complaints organizers have posted. For instance, organizers used to have a forum to post questions, concerns, etc. but due to the fact that lots and lots of organizers were posting complaints about their platform, website, constant changes, etc etc etc, Meetup HQ had the brilliant idea to silence everyone and got rid of that forum... instead of perhaps listening for a change to its paying customers.

As a member, it's easy to join and is free. So far no really terrible experiences. I've used it for years.

However, I decided to become an organizer. What I didn't know before I hosted was they charge you a monthly fee. This is how they make money. However, they gave me a discount so I decided to test it out for six months. That's not my complaint though.

I had an issue with some members in the group. I wanted to ask the community of organizers on Meetup how they usually deal with general situations like mine. I couldn't find any other forums but the one on their site. I searched for a similar answer and found none, so I submitted my question to the forum.

I got a reply shortly after from their community manager stating that they couldn't post my question, but did not specify why. He just gave me a generic statement that this was a community forum for best practices. How was my question not about best practices? However, he continued to offer me some generic advice I found unhelpful.

I got the feeling that because my question was negative, I wasn't allowed to voice it. They wanted to hide it and didn't want to make others in the community aware of what could happen in their groups. What an incredibly discouraging experience. It made me feel isolated from other hosts, and unable to turn to anyone for support. What's the point of "meetup" if you can't turn to your community?

My thoughts about this company: be weary of anyone that tries to hide something from the community especially when it relates to safety. I'll be cancelling my account when my six months is up.

I have attended many meetup groups and have NEVER been scammed. It is a free social service, similar to okcupid but offers more then just meeting singles. After each event members are able to comment and rate the events so if someone wanted to scam you they would have to make tons of profiles to make the group seem legitimate. Read the reviews for the meetup group, view the photo's of the events, contact the venue where the event is taking place. If your afraid of getting scammed (which is crazy) then do your homework to make sure the group is real. It cost money to start a meetup group, you need a paypal account, and members can easily contact the owners of the site to report any problems. This site is a great free service. I have started a meetup group, you pay a monthly fee & it is a TON of work. No one becomes rich for owning a meetup group, there are much easier ways to scam people out of money.

As for the emails you get, CHANGE YOUR PROFILE SETTINGS. It is so easy, I don't receive any emails from meetup.com because my profile setting are set where I don't get promotional emails. Also if you have google, make a social events folder. That way you can view the emails when you want to and they won't be in your main inbox. Meetup is such a great site, not every group is great, but that would be a little much to ask for.