Meetup

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.

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!

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.

In my opinion Meetup simply SUCKS. In my opinion they don't care about anyone either. I wish the State Attorney General would investigate Meetup's practices and find enough evidence to indict those who own and/or run the LLP. I believe they are incorporated in the State of Delaware but any States' Attorney General's Office could take them on, and I wish they would. Just my opinion though.

To those that write negative reviews about meetup. There are literally hundreds of meetup groups in your local area if you live in the suburbs, in or near a major city. The larger ones have over a 1000 members and a dozen or more organizers and may have several events in the same week, sometimes at the same time. You have to put yourself out there and try different events, meetup groups, different organizers. You can't just go to a handful of events and pass judgement. Yeah, there will be some clicks in some meetup groups but there is also friendly people a few new people joining all the time too.

Also picking the right type of event to attend is important too. If you want to meet and talk to people with common interests, for dating or whatever pick a event where you can actually talk. A group walk or hike, dinner, happy hour, pool party, gallery tour are a few good choices. Don't attend some dance or band night meetup where you have to scream over loud music- not conducive to casual conversation & meeting people.

Meetup is what you make of it. Yeah you may attend some bad events, meet some people you don't like, but you will also find your group and people you like to be with. I made lots of friends, met my girlfriend, made business contacts- all though meet-up groups. You have to take the long view, look past your nose, put yourself out there, it is so worth it when you do.

I met Yiqian Zhou through meet up.com, and discovered that he entered into the United States to attend Rowan University from Shanghai, China in 2005-2009 and 2009-2011 to earn a Bachelors and MBA degree. He entered the country using factitious and fraudulent documents, which was supplied by a Chinese company to recruit Chinese students to Rowan University up to 2009. The University has not done anything.

He currently resides in the Virginia or Maryland area and is working for Innovative life Solutions in Hyattsville, MD *******750). He used the same factitious documents to gain employment through this employer, who sponsors him. Other contacts that may be helpful to you is Gisele Jones-Human Resources Rep. At Innovative Life Solutions and most importantly, Tim Torry, the foreign student representative at Rowan University. Tim's number is *******105. Yiqian Zhou's number is *******776.

Updated - meetup.com replied to my email, and refunded the amount in few days. So, bumping up the rating from 3 to 4.
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Hi,

I had started a meetup group couple of months back for a Kids sports meetup in my area. I closed the group about 2-3 weeks back due to no interest to attend meets from the members. When closing the group, I elected to close my subscription and also to permanently remove all members from the group (i. E. not to nominate anyone else as group subscriber to continue the group). I have written an email to the meetup billing support team today and hope they will refund my amount without any fuss.

Some complaints about meetup.com regarding closing a group:

1. I searched my email account and message section on meetup.com. There is no confirmation email/message about closing the group. If anyone wants to close their group, I strongly suggest to take screenshots of the closing process as there is no other confirmation.

2. I had deleted my credit card details from meetup.com while closing my group. My card has still been charged. I think meetup.com secretly maintains card details even though your account->Settings->Payment Methods section may show that there are no saved cards

3. If anyone closes their meetup group, I suggest check back your account after 1-2 weeks to ensure there is no 'Payment Due' notice.

I had an awful experience with this company. The information on their website regarding their subscriptions is vague to the point of being careless and possibly even deceitful. They mention nothing about their very complicated process of unsubscribing and their overworked customer service who are consistently delayed in responding to your issues.

I applied for a 6 month Organiser subscription in December and decided to try out the Meetup Pro free Trial in January. The following was not made clear to me
- that by moving to the Meetup Pro Free Trail, I was cancelling my original Organiser subscription and would have to pay for another 6 month subscription if I chose to go back. They said I received a discount for the unused months but I still ended up paying for months I did not intend to or agree to.
- In order to get out of the free Trial I would need to contact their customer service well in advance of the cut off point so that would have time to manually close the groups I had started and change my subscription plan before I was automatically transferred to a paying subscription. Individuals do not have control over their subscription as on other platforms. Not realizing this, I wrote too late and due to their slow response rate, I was automatically transferred and billed for 455dollars. They eventually refunded me but because of taxes and conversion rates I did not receive the correct amount back and there is nothing to do about that. The entire process was very messy, took a lot of time and many emails and I do not recommend it to anyone.

They also forgot to take me out of some sort of automated billing system so I received a bill for another 455 dollars a month later which was very confusing. Thankfully no money was charged from my account.

Avoid this platform! There are much better ways to create events or advertise..

Meetup is the worst company ever! I tried to contact them for help with stopping a payment and their response time and system was an absolute joke! It's obvious that no one works together and I kept receiving emails from different people asking me for different things and then when I would respond that person would never get back to me and then when I would write another upset email I would just get a new person asking for the same thing, it took about a month to get anywhere and then they just told me they could not help! It's ridiculous that this company is too lazy to have any type of phone service to help their members, they could not understand the situation through email but yet I could not even have the chance to explain it over the phone! And they say they have great email customer service! That could not be further from the truth, I flit like I was dealing with untrained circus monkeys instead of people! This company just wants to take all of the credit, and take your money and have absolutely no responsibility! Their departments don't communicate at all, and they literally just don't want to deal with any drama so they use the cop out that they are just the middle man! You have seriously pissed me off and I will try to spread the word about your company anywhere I can and as often as I can! You treat your members like crap and I think other have a right to know!

I organize two meetup groups myself, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to find any link anywhere to even contact meetup for help, it is so extremely frustrating! Shame on them for selling their subscriptions but never providing any help at all!

Feel smart, now?:-)

And people... join my FB page, " Meetup.com is a scam site "!

https://www.facebook.com/Meetupcom-is-A-SCAM-SITE**************/

Group organizer was allowed to bring male to meetups that had a restraining order against him for sexual assault. Meetup HQ made aware and said it's not their problem.