Sarah C.

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.