Meetup

With meetup.com's new settings (currently set as of January 2017), your activities are public information to anyone with access to the internet. So if you are going on a hike with just a few people, or opening up your home for a meetup (e.g., for professional networking, hobbies or a children's playdate), the title of your event, date, time, and the number of people going are information available to anyone in the public searching on meetup.com, not just your members. If the title of a posted meetup event includes the location, then predators will know where to go and when--which is not good if you are a small group, or have kids, or will go into remote areas (e.g. For hiking), or will be in a private home (which is never a good idea with strangers in any case). If you omit the location from the title, predators can still see an easy target, request to join, and once joined, can find out the location of the meetup. Meetup.com is about meeting up with people, including those you don't know (for recreation, professional purposes, etc.) In the past, you can limit your risk by providing meetup information to just your members, but now you are exposed to an unlimited number of people on the internet. I've contacted Meetup Headquarters, and they refused to change the settings so that your event information can be kept private because they want others to know your group's activity so they can join if interested. In other words, they want more people to join meetup groups. The bigger the group, the more sponsors it might get (and therefore perhaps more money goes to Meetup). But sponsors BEWARE. Most members of a meetup group are INACTIVE--they don't even visit the group's website anymore. Here's how sponsors can verify this. Request to join membership of a meetup group. Once a member, click on "members" and click on "last visited". You will then see the members who have visited the website in the last couple days, weeks, months, or year. The bigger the group, the more INACTIVE members there are. Therefore know that the number of membership is meaningless before you pour money or freebies into the group. As for security, Facebook Group is a better alternative since you can keep your group information private with them so far, and it's also free (unlike Meetup, which charges organizers). I'm moving my group to Facebook Group, and hope others heed my warning about meetup.com. Check out horror stories about Craigslist.com to know the types of crimes that can happen. I've written to Meetup Headquarters about this danger, and they refuse to allow people to keep meetup information completely private. Having been put on notice about the dangers means that's negligence, or recklessness, for which they can be sued if something should happen. PLEASE don't use meetup.com for children's events, or to go into remote areas, or to go into a private home for an event.

I tried meetups several times and neither time was worth it...

The first time I attended what sounded like a great group - but the guy who set it up did not bother showing up. The PR made the group sound like a lot of people would show up and about 30 people did. The location was in what was supposedly public space but private security informed us that to have so many people there required a permit so with no leader we moved on to a restaurant and had lunch with some of the group members.

With no leader bothering to show up and chased off from the meeting location others attending could not find us. If I had it to do all over again I would have skipped the lunch since we split the ticket so those who ordered expensive items got a free discount from those of us who ordered moderately priced items.

There were no interesting gals there but I struck up a conversation with some interesting people. It turned out one was some sort of a cult nut who tried to force me into going to see "something wonderful" (without any explanation) so I balked. This might work with kids but not me. So add to the above dysfunctional mix people recruiting for cults at meetups...

So we have a group the leader does not show up, get thrown off of the location and the 30 people who showed up tried to improvise not a good deal at all...

I'll usually give anyone a second chance so I figured another meetup might be interesting about a year later... Recently I saw an ad on craigslist from a gal I had met briefly at the second meetup I tried. She was attractive so I replied. It was obvious the person placing the ad was not the gal (someone took her pictures from the meetup site and posted them pretending to be the meetup gal). I got suspicious when chatting with the CL fake and thought I could reach the gal through meetups. I contacted the gal and she was pissy (keep in mind I only briefly chatted with her in the past and so did not know her well).

Anyway I can see why someone wanted to get even with her by using her meetup photos to pose as her on craigslist because she came across as a $#*!. Had I known I would not have bothered trying to help her out by informing her someone was impersonating her on craigslist it was not worth the hassle...

If you add up my personal experience with meetups you should run for the hills and save yourself a lot of hassles.

I recently joined this group and was in for nothing but put-downs and judgemental views from the "leader" of the group.
Many people, including myself, stated that events aren't organized and that for a "meet-up" group the organizers don't do much to make that happen.
I'll say!
When I couldn't find ANY ONE of the 206 members that went to a festival that occurred recently I voiced my concerns about the fact that there was no meet-up time and no meet-up place... the "owner" of this group had the audacity to tell me that his intent was for this to just be for informational purposes only and that he was "too busy" to deal with the group and that he didn't mean to create it as an event, EVEN though he stated "Come join us" in the headlines and even what headwear he would don in order to be more "recognizable." So there IS an "us"?
After I made my claim about the fact that there was no meetup group to speak of, despite having to RSVP for a "supposed" group meeting in the park, he began creating scenarios in his head, saying I'm not from Calgary so how about he explains to me how "Calgary culture" functions [excuse me!?!?!?!]. He continued to say it was my choice to be sad and miserable [and I said this WHEN?] and that if I wanted to "meet-up" with anyone then I can "feel free" to "volunteer" to wear a sign in order to draw people to me.
I'm sorry, but who picked HIM to be leader of a MEET UP group!?!?! This person goes under the simple name of "Atul", has a short, square face, has a triangular nose, wears sunglasses in his photo and baseball cap. If you do choose to go along and join his group just be aware that it's his way or the highway and anything you try to bring to his intention will not only be put down, but he will put YOU down, DISRESPECT you AND put the ENTIRE blame on YOUR shoulders!
He has written comments [like the ones stated above] to other members and quite frankly, I don't know how the group continues to exist.
So that has been my experience. The choice you make about this group from here on out is yours!
Oh, and one star is WAY too many for the disrespect and arrogance I experienced. Simply ridiculous!

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Details on last complaint:
Additional Notes

Complaint: My email was changed with meetup.com by a hacker. I called and they said they could not help. They would not give me the email of the person pretending to be me, and stated again that they could not help. Only allowed to email in, which has already been done with Incident #*****and led to an absolute fail of finding a solution. Now, my groups, and one that I organize are subjected to comments I do not make or actions I do not make by someone pretending to be me. Meetup does not care. My credit card/billing information for the monthly dues I pay for organizing the Winning Resume Strategies group is also at huge risk by the person who figured out my password and changed my email in the system.

Desired Settlement: I want meetup to restore the original gmail.com address for my meetup groups and to prosecute the person that hacked into my online identity and assumed it. This is a serious legal matter and the people at Meetup HQ do not seem to understand this since I've been brushed off both via email and phone. Please rectify immediately.

Consumer Response: Better Business Bureau:

I have reviewed the response made by the business in reference to complaint ID ***********, and find that this resolution is satisfactory to me and the matter has been resolved.

Sincerely,