Meetup

I was an organizer for a large group for professionals in New York City for a few years and WILL NEVER attend another Meetup anywhere again. Professional events resulted in such cruel and psychotic behavior that we even had to call the police at several events. Restraining orders, having to court, etc.

I completely regret all of the time that I spent trying to put on quality events. The stand up comedians here in NYC have it right - Meetup is for LOSERS who cannot meet friends in real life.

I used to use meetup to find new events and new groups and new things to do on a daily basis.
I would just browse the calendar for that day oe the upcoming days and find new and interesting things to do and groups to join.
Now i cant even navigate the app and they took away the BEST part of meetup... THE CALENDAR!
It looks like a pinterest board now. I hate it!
Hope th3se messages reach the owners and they acually do something about it

I met the most $#*!tyiest people while attending these groups people are very rude and unsociable and kick you off the group for their enjoyment the four years I was there, I was glad to give it up and go to other groups I wouldn't recommend them as they also money grab you all the time and if you don't do what they want or meet their expectations they then remove you from the group, nasty people!

... but Meetup did just that.
This is probably the worst upgrade in the history of app development.
I don't even know where to start... it sux big time.

I've often touted Meetup as the best thing since pockets. Not anymore This is absurd that they would promote RESISTing anything and for free?! I hope people do leave. I just did!

Despite so many negative reviews of their Update, Meetup has yet to respond to Organizers or reach out in any capacity. What a horrible Site! They could care less about anything other than revenue.

Meetup should be apologizing and OWNING UP to its paying customers for the disastrous job in executing integration of its new, very unstable, platform that is causing organizers like me almost more trouble than its worth.

Site FAQ does not update with the site's appearence. I just want to leave a group, ended up trapped inside for 15 minutes. If finding a button on that site takes this long, it deserves one star.

Why did they have to go all George Soros. Their software was barely tolerable, but serviceable. But this alienated a very large percentage (50%) of their user base. Incredibly stupid move.

If you want to create a new group they'll take your money but getting the page working & expecting support is another thing - they have absolutely no customer support. Absolutely infuriating.

Meetup for Event Hosts is an ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE! If I didn't read these reviews I would still be certain someone has hacked my account and is undoing everything I post. GET IT TOGETHER! WHAT A WASTE OF TIME!

Nasty people in this group, snotty and exclusive. Don't bother to join. They will make nasty comments about you later on. Mean rotten girls there. Maybe cause they are fatties?

Some MeetUp groups are ok IF YOU TRUST THE PEOPLE IN THE GROUP(S). Also, I find that groups are safe if they meet at a public venue. But, the downside is that there are some groups that meet at their homes and are focused on sex -- not just TALKING about that either, but DOING it. Some of those sex groups even allow underage children to join. I even saw things with my very own eyes. I was very disgusted. MeetUp as a whole is awful, but like I said, it is better to meet in public places, and NOT at peoples' homes! That can get dangerous. You don't know what they're really after. Are they trying to rob you? Are they trying to kill you? Do they want to have sex with your children? You don't know! If I could, I would give Meetup.com ZERO stars!

I would not recommend joining a Meetup group as the organisers can (and do) ban you for whatever reason with no recourse -daring to RVSP, changing your RSVP or even asking a question online and you're banned. Querying this with the organisers cuts no ice either as they'll ignore you and don't even bother going to meetup HQ itself as they'll point you towards the TOS which requires a law degree to interpret. You might do better if you've had to pay a subscription to join as then you'll have a contract with them but don't bank on it. A more un-user friendly association I've not met.

They have slowly taken away features and the new site is horrible. The app has lost a lot of features too. Our groups will be moving to another service.

I recently posted a weight loss challenge and was VERY clear and direct about what we are doing and when/where it was taking place yet MEETUP thought it was too vague and sent me an email saying it needed to be adjusted. I responded asking what I needed to change to make it accurate with what they want on the site but never responded and instead removed my group from the site COMPLETELY. This would cause me to completely restart creating the group. I can't call any phone number as it or an email to communicate DOES NOT EXIST! Pardon my french but that just sounds like a $#*! HEAD COMPANY

I joined a group on meetup in April 2021 called Hiking Friends & Fun located in Flower Mound, TX. I attended at least 70 events with the group. I became personally involved with the organizer who had only recently become the organizer ten months prior. Whenever he decided to end our "dating/using", I attempted no further contact with him. I continued attending the hikes for another month as usual. After attending a hike on Sat 01/14/23 I received an email that I was removed from the group. In the meantime there was hearsay from a mutual friend of ours which was negative. I never attempted to contact the organizer after we were involved. I left it alone. I attempted to contact the organizers of the group for an explanation & the main organizer who is Ravi had blocked me on meetup. The co organizer who I had attended hikes with several times was very short with me claiming he was not aware & never offered to find out or anything. There was allegedly a post on social media about the organizer which I was never privy to. The organizer & other members (personal friends of his) slandered me after I was removed from the group & attempted to get me kicked off of meetup simply for not wanting me in other shared groups. I am still thinking of filing legal claims against this organizer.

It allows BUSINESS NETWORKING groups that openly state they are about selling and marketing products, but if you start a DISCUSSION group for freelance translators and interpreters to meet informally face-to-face at a public venue of anyone's choice, you're thrown overboard because your group "exists solely for the selling and marketing of products and services". Doesn't get any worse than MeetUp.

Meetup.com has recently set up site and country-wide meetup groups encouraging social resistance 'for democracy'. The groups are called "#resist". These groups are free and sponsored by the Meetup Community HQ (i. E., 'the board'). They flooded members' feeds the other day with political propaganda encouraging people to join these groups due to "concern over where the government is headed". The original banner, which is now gone, also referenced the current election outcome as a key motivator to organizing these groups. Unlike facebook, you cannot block these banners or these groups from showing up in your feed, and unlike facebook, group organizers are charged a fee for this site. This is absolute political propaganda and pushing a political agenda on a site which is supposed to promote diverse interests of many groups. I asked them to similarly sponsor groups for unification, but they have not replied yet. I will "#resist" Meetup and move my group to Facebook if this propaganda and agenda pushing continues... I cannot support any site that promotes social disharmony or discord through resistance movements!

Recently meetup introduced event topic tags. When setting up events, you need to pick 1-5 topics that relate to your event.

The PROBLEM is they auto populate with 5 random tags that have nothing to do with your event. You have to manually delete 5 tags one by for each event or delete then manually add again the right tags.

BIGGER PROBLEM - They also automatically added tags to existing events that again are auto populated and have nothing to do with your actually events. Example: English lessons showing German Tags or Hiking etc. you need to go into each and every events and delete one by one each tag then add the correct ones.

NIGHTMARE WEBSITE... This is just one of many problems. The repeat feature on events is also broken, Not Working.

One star is too much credit for this service.

I originally started a group on Meetup for a community service organization (Lions Club). I am the current president and thought it would be a good outreach vehicle. After a year, it did not generate enough interest, so I decided to cancel the group and my membership.

In the meantime, Meetup electronically transferred money from my debit card before submitting the renewal bill to me for approval. I've tried to cancel and dismantle the group I started as well as my personal account. I followed instructions on their site and asked for a refund. I emailed for verification. The return email was a "special offer" for a 30% discount. There is no help-line telephone number. The e-mail address took a lot of searching to find. Processing according to their instructions is not much more than a loop that frustrated me so much I am not sure if the request went through or not.

The best I could do so far is issue a stop-payment with my debit card company for any future charges Meetup might submit.

DO NOT USE MEETUP!

Why is it now necessary in this new Meetup system to download the attendance list for each event in order to get a print out of those attending? Another antiquated idea that's been incorporated into this new system which seems to have re-evolved from 2002. The previous system worked very well and everyone seemed happy with it. Now as an organizer all I hear are complaints from my membership. Speaking of membership, any new membership has basically come to an abrupt halt. Since the new site roll out, in the last 3 week I have 2 new members. The previous 3 week total was 18. I think that says it all.
What happened to the message board announcements? We used to get alerts on the main page when a new announcement was put up.----------

Since writing this review of the new Meetup, I've come across an alternate solution to the Meetup dilemma, it's called "The Groups Place". I started a new group on this new format and so far I am very impressed. Now I have something to fall back on when and if I remove the 3 Meetup groups that I organize. Give it a try, so far it's free to both members and organizers.

I ran a very popular Meetup group for 2 years. I invested a lot of time organising the meetings, findings venues, communicating with my group. Then with minimal warning Meetup shut down my group. When I complained they did not respond at all. I don't actually think there is any customer services there. It is run by an algorithm and an automated service. I was paying for this service - i was a CUSTOMER and yet this was the way they treated me. Meetup was taken over by WeWork in the end of 2017. I think WeWork has a very different agenda to the original Meetup. The most important thing to remember is that when something goes wrong Meetup is COMPLETELY unresponsive. You can send any number of emails to their support address and they will just ignore you... Oh and then the final irony, a week later it sends you an automated survey 'How did we do?' You didn't! You didn't do anything!
Be aware if you are considering investing your time and money into creating a group. There is a HUGE risk that Meetup will just wipe it all out at the press of a button - and that will be the end of it. Meetup is 'tech arrogance' at its worst.