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Anyone traveling Hwy 199 two weeks ago had to notice all the short squatty signs stuck in the ground advertising a website, Azle Singles.com.
The white cardboard signs are about two feet high with the word “Single?” printed in large black letters above the web address. Most of them had been stuck into the grassy median and along the shoulders at virtually every intersection along 199 from Lakeside to 730 North.
What sort of business would advertise like that?
A call to the city of Azle’s permit office revealed that whoever put the signs up didn’t have a permit to do so.
“I know they don’t have a permit to do it,” Madra Messick said, “because I issue the permits.”
She said anyone who sees the signs is free to “pull them up, because they’re not supposed to be there.”
A quick Internet search found the domain name AzleSingles.com is registered to IMAT Group – in India. An address, telephone number and an email address are all listed, all in India.
But this reporter doesn’t speak Bengali, Hindi or any of the other 15 national languages of India, and trying to understand English spoken in any of the country’s 1,600 dialects would likely result in a very expensive long-long-long distance charge.
So I emailed them. That was two weeks ago, and so far there has been no response.
Jimmy Duvall, code enforcement officer for the city of Azle, said Azle Singles.com has been “doing this for a while” and the city’s computer department has done a full workup.
“We can’t find it to be a legitimate business,” he said.
He suspects the company is located somewhere in India and that the website is handled by someone in Dallas or Irving.
“But they won’t give us any information,” he added.
Lake Worth has experienced a similar problem with signs littering their streets advertising LakeWorth Singles.com.
Jay Martine, Lake Worth’s code enforcement officer said he picked up around 50 of the signs about six months ago, and again two or three weeks ago.
He also suspects the company is located “possibly India or Pakistan,” he said. In Lake Worth, as in Azle, the signs are illegal.
A call to the Better Business Bureau found no complaints against AzleSingles.com or LakeWorth Singles.com and after a quick Internet search, Cindy at the BBB said she thinks it’s a “local dating service”
“I keyed in FortWorthsingles. com, Lakeworthsingles.com and Azle singles.com and they all had the same information,” she said.
So this reporter filled out the form on the website and in a couple of days received a call from Jackie, who left a call-back number on the answering machine.
A reverse check of that number revealed that AzleSingles.com is also Great Expectations – a dating service located at 1300 South University Drive, Suite 502 in Fort Worth.
A search on the BBB website revealed that Great Expectations started in Fort Worth in April of 2001 and a file was opened with the BBB for them in July of 2001.
That file said the company has an “unsatisfactory record due to unresolved complaints.”
Most of the complaints allege “high-pressure sales and misrepresentation of services.”
Over the past 36 months the BBB has processed 25 complaints against Great Expectations – six of them in the last 12 months.
It was time to return that phone call.
Jackie answered, explaining that she’s a “marketing rep.” I identified myself up-front as a reporter for the Azle News.
She said AzleSingles.com is a subsidiary of Great Expectations, which “has been operating for around 30 years with 52 centers across America.”
Besides the Fort Worth Branch, they have branches in Dallas and Houston. She also said that in the DFW Metroplex they have “5,000 members” – all of them “educated, many travel a lot and need some way to date.”
“We have a 95 percent success rate of members finding relationships,” she said.
When asked about cost, she said she couldn’t release that information.
“What we do is set up personal interviews with people who show interest,” she said. “Then we do background checks to make sure we don’t sign up felons.”
She went on to say that Great Expectations is “the only dating service that does background checks.”
“They don’t bring their own pictures either,” she said. “We take our own to make sure all the profile information is legitimate.”
In answer to the complaints found on the BBB website Jackie said “our members are all self-paced.”
Great Expectations doesn’t “match-make or set up blind dates,” she said, and no contact information is ever released until both parties give consent.
As she explained it, members are told to “put themselves out there and meet people.”
“But some just don’t,” she said.
The company also has the member sign what Jackie said was “a binding contract.”
“Some people get all jazzed up and get the jitters when they get home. Then they ask for a refund.”
When asked if the company offers an “opt-out period” Jackie said to “call back in an hour or so and talk to the membership rep.”
And when asked about the posting of the AzleSingles.com signs, she said, “That’s a recent thing.”
“We found we were lacking in some cities” and needed to bring more attention to our service,” she said. “In small communities there’s not a lot to do.”
Jackie also said she didn’t know how many other small community dot-coms her company is hosting.
And when told that the signs are being posted illegally, she replied, “I assume that our director has made some sort of arrangements.”
“Who is your director?” came the next question.
“His name is Jim Halpine but he is always traveling and hard to get hold of,” she said.
At this point Jackie said, “I don’t know if I can give out any more information. You could be a competitor.”
I assured her I wasn’t, but she didn’t want to answer anymore questions. The “membership rep” turned out to be Eva, who was unavailable for the next two days and never returned messages.
Great Expectations may be the oldest dating service in the nation, but research revealed that in August of this year, Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett filed a civil lawsuit against them for violating Pennsylvania’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law.
The lawsuit follows an investigation of dozens of complaints in Southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware and accuses Great Expectations of falsely inflating the number of singles available for dating and misrepresenting the success rate, costs and other important aspects of their service.
Another suit was filed in 2005 in New York by two women who claimed they were overcharged for the services they received. One paid the company $1,000 for a six-month contract and the other nearly $3,800 for a 36-month contract.
That suit claims Great Expectations violated every mandate of the “Dating Service Law” except one – the provision of a three-day “cooling -off” period with right to cancel.
And without a permit they have no right to stick all those little signs up all over the cities of Azle and Lake Worth. That’s certainly a way to get attention – but not always the kind of attention they wanted.
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