Chicago, ILIt's Just Lunch is a dating service that claims to be for busy professionals only. The service sends people that it has matched, supposedly based on answers to questionnaires, out on casual lunch, brunch or drink dates.
The It's Just Lunch website claims that its employees are "first date specialists" who arrange "quality lunch dates and drinks after work for busy professionals in a discreet, no-pressure setting."
According to an article from ConsumerAffairs.com, It's Just Lunch is not all it's cracked up to be. In fact, many of the dating service's clients report having horrible experiences; some have been upset enough to file reports with ConsumerAffairs.com.
Among the complaints against It's Just Lunch:
The company does not run background checks on its clients, claiming that the clients are professionals and therefore do not need to have background checks run;
The company blames clients when dates do not go well;
The company refuses to give refunds even when dates do not meet minimum criteria;
The company either outright lies or omits information about the backgrounds of potential matches (including failing to disclose that a potential match was still legally married);
The company claims to only have professionals in its dating files;
The company claims to arrange dates based on client's requirements, but often fails to do so;
The company ignores calls or yells at clients if they complain about poor matches; and
The company asks clients to change their requirements for potential dates.
One client who booked a date through It's Just Lunch was told that her match ran his own landscaping company when in fact he mowed lawns at a local college and did not meet the two minimum requirements that she had set out when filling out her questionnaire.
Costs of joining It's Just Lunch can be up to $1,500 for 14 dates. The company claims that the dates are specifically chosen by It's Just Lunch staff to meet client's requirements. However, many of the people with complaints against the company say that It's Just Lunch promised that they had several people who met their requirements but then repeatedly sent their clients on dates with people who met few or none of the minimum requirements.
Former managers for It's Just Lunch go so far as to claim that the company is not at all selective about its clientele; they are simply told to make sales and take anyone who signs up. Furthermore, they argue that the company claims to have more clients than it does, and that employees are trained to lie about the number of clients. The It's Just Lunch website claims that each month they "arrange 50,000 dates for [their] 30,000 members worldwide." But former managers claim the number of clients is actually much lower than 30,000.
Perhaps most astonishingly, the former managers claim that rather than setting up perfect matches, employees of It's Just Lunch actually ask men to go on "favor dates" with women so that the company can fulfill the number of dates guaranteed in a contract. These dates are not set up based on client's criteria, rather they are done just to get the client out and fulfill contractual obligations.
A final, but serious, allegation against It's Just Lunch involves holding off on a customer's first dates. One former worker says that they were told not to ever send people out on first dates within three days of signing their contracts because, under some state laws, consumers have the right to rescind their contracts within a three-day period. If there was no date within three days, there was unlikely to be a contract cancellation in the allowed period.
If you have been a client of It's Just Lunch and the company has failed to meet its contractual obligations, contact an attorney to discuss your options.