BRUSSELS – Dating app Tinder has promised to tell users in the European Union why they are being charged different fees for the same service, after Brussels opened a probe following consumer complaints from Sweden and the Netherlands.
A network of consumer authorities that took up those complaints “found that Tinder applied such personalised prices without informing consumers, which is in violation of EU consumer law”, the European Commission said in a statement on March 7.
“Personalising discounts without explicitly informing consumers is unfair as it hinders them from making an informed choice,” it said.
For instance, a 2022 study in Sweden showed that Tinder applied 36 different price levels, charging some users the equivalent of US$3 (S$4) a month, while others were asked to pay as much as US$36 a month.
The users in Sweden and the Netherlands were offered only the subscription fee automatically determined by the company, with no possibility for them to compare it against the other prices.
Until April 2022, younger users were often offered discounts on Tinder’s premium service, while older ones were hit with higher fees.
The commission in July 2022 opened an investigation against Tinder over its practices.
In its statement, it said that after dialogue with the company, Tinder vowed that by the middle of April 2024, it would cease personalised pricing based on age without informing users clearly beforehand.
It also undertook to tell consumers that the discounts it offers for its premium services are automatically differentiated and to explain to them why that happens, for instance, because they declined to purchase a service at the standard rate.
The commission said the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network, which took up the Swedish and Dutch cases, would monitor how well Tinder lives up to its commitments.
California-based Tinder is owned by a Texas company, Match Group, that runs a number of other dating apps around the world, including Hinge, Meetic, OkCupid and Plenty of Fish.
Match Group says Tinder has 10 million paid users worldwide but the number is slowly declining. It also says it integrates artificial intelligence into some of its services.
In Europe, the group has 4.5 million paying users for its apps. Tinder, worldwide, brought in US$1.9 billion to Match Group’s global revenues of US$3.4 billion. AFP
