E-Harmony’s Matches are Dead Wrong
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I’ve been an online dating “lurker” since my divorce. I joined eHarmony on last year’s very depressing Valentine’s Day.
I was still living at my mom’s house which is out in the woods. There were no men in sight except for the biker across the street.
I took the eHarmony personality test. Be careful with this, because once you take it - you never get another chance. Make sure you’re awake, relatively chipper and feeling completely open and honest with yourself.
After the test eHarmony served up my first seven matches. I was excited - “Look, an inbox full of men! Just for me!” But I couldn’t see the photos. They wanted my money. But at the time it wasn’t in the budget - at all - so I started sifting through the descriptions.
One guy actually sneaked his e-mail into his profile, “EHarmony is expensive,” he wrote, “E-mail me at dude@dude.com.” Yay! A guy who likes to beat the system. I like that so I sent him a lonely Valentine’s Day e-mail. Days later there’s still no response. I had even attached a picture. Hmmmm. I forget about it and try to stomach my first virtual rejection. It stings a little.
Three months later I get a response, “Hi, this is Carlise, Dan’s friend. I am checking his e-mail because he actually died in a car accident last October.”
My heart cries for Dan for a moment and then my sympathy for he and his family is replaced wtih anger at eHarmony. How could they do that? Then it hits me. The “matches” on eHarmony are not paying members. Many just popped in, took the personality test, and then never returned - or even worse - died.
I still became a paying member. I’m was too tempted by all of those new “matches” they e-mail you every morning. So after I spent over $100 to activate my account I was like a kid at a candy store - hurrying to scope out every man’s photograph.
I didn’t think one of them was cute. I e-mail a few any way but never got responses - because they’re probably inactive accounts. I e-mailed eHarmony asking for a refund. They told me my matching preferences weren’t broad enough, that I should be open to dating people of all ages from all over the world.
After receiving over 155 matches, only one led to a lunch date, and that was a complete failure.
Bottom line: don’t waste your money on eHarmony.
My friend Abby, my bestest single mom friend, had three very interesting and very good looking dates from Yahoo Personals last week.
The reason Yahoo and Match are better online dating sites than eHarmony:
1. They’re inexpensive.
2. You can see rough dates of when matches last logged in (although both sites should improve this feature).
3. You can control your searches, don’t let a computer match you - especially if 80% of those matches aren’t even active on the site.
See my other online dating entries for more background on this and some very important online dating tips.
Filed under: Dating online
I found a survey that gives a lot of the same details you mentioned. You should check it out, I thought it was fascinating.
http://blog.globaltestmarket.com/2007/11/16/fun-online-survey-is-online-dating-now-an-accepted-part-of-our-lives/
I dislike eharmony too! Im a baby boomer, I chose a niche dating site called http://meetwealthyboomer.com which caters to my age group.
BTW, yahoo personal is not a bad website. I like it. I make lots of friends there.
You seem like a nice woman and you deserve better, but I am responding mainly because I HATE EHARMONY.
Indeed, eharmony does truly suck. I spent THREE NIGHTS SOLID filling out their voluminous questionaires and when I got thru. I finally finished it in ***great anticipation*** of the lovely person I would meet that would end my loneliness.
In one paragraph they said they could not match me. This is in spite of the fact that I have good kids; they and my large extended family love me and each other and we have all lived generally wholesome middle class lives. (the kids are now adults)
So, does it mean there is no one else in their “great” database that comes even close, or that their matching method stinks?
Or is it that I am a *REALLY* twisted person … probably weirder than ozzy osborne and his fine family. Thank you so very much e-disharmony.
Ray,
People always say you meet people doing things you like to do, so I found meetin.org and meetup.com and just started doing things I like to do. I meet a lot of great people and I’m always having a good time. These are not dating sites, just group activity type sites. I’ve been dating a great woman for 7 months now, and hey, she likes most of the same things I like,, go figure, because we met doing those things.
I had the same experience. I gave up on online dating altogether.
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You think you wasted your money. Hey I paid 2,000 to get hooked up with a married man through Lifemates.
I cry with you sister.
Holy Sh*t!!!!! 2K! and you didn’t get your money back?
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