* beware match.com scam *

hogweed

Although there are undoubtedly a few success stories with any dating site, what most people don't realise is that match.com are a massive rip off, as follows.

Match.com encourages you to sign up “free”, and “view millions of profiles”. The first problem is that the vast majority of the “millions” aren’t members at all – they’re simply people who have “registered for free” and left their profiles on the database (Match.com don't make it easy for you to remove them).

WHAT YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND IS THAT THESE “MILLIONS OF MEMBERS” CAN NEITHER SEND NOR RECEIVE EMAILS FROM YOU – SO, EFFECTIVELY, THEY DON'T EXIST.

My research suggests that over 90% of their “members” are in this category, so actually unavailable – so I feel that using them as an inducement to join is fraudulent.

But it gets much worse than that. When you actually part with your money, naturally you then want to start contacting the millions of members. As I've said, 90% of them can’t BE contacted as they haven’t paid for membership, so can't receive messages.

But even that isn’t the worst bit – if you KNEW which profiles represented actual, active members, you wouldn't spend half your life emailing them in the forlorn hope that you’ll get a response. So I asked Match.com to tell me how I’d know which profiles represented actual, contactable members, and which were effectively non-existent people.

Their response was thank you for your valued enquiry, unfortunately this facility isn’t available, thank you for being stupid enough to part with your money.

In other words, they won’t even TELL you whether you can contact a particular person or not! So you waste days or weeks drawing up a short list, composing careful emails, send them off... and you will never know if you’re sending them to a real person or not! Most of the time you won’t be.

This absolutely stinks. It’s a total rip-off, preying on lonely people. Don’t be one of them.

blinko

Hi mate

I have been on match and had loadsa dates, I agree with the above but you get that on any site.

But there are real people on these sites and they do exist

Not that I'm sticking up for them, there are much worse sites out there that have fake members as above and send you fake messages which you need to pay to read and then of course the member is gone etc

Happend to me on datingdirect , a member of staff contacted me just before my sub was about to run out. So I renewed it and guess what, never heard from her again !!!

what can you do, only learn from it.

maybe try guardian soul mates its slightly more mature

AlwaysWorking

I think you're wrong. A friend joined it and had lots of responses from men in her area (Belfast). She went on a few dates and 18 months later is still with someone she met through match.com.

Without wishing to seem cruel, you're assuming the people weren't members because they didn't respond to your emails..there is another possible answer......

MrsTinks

I'll move this over to the vent bent & heavensent board I think

Best of luck finding someone OP (it IS possible - I have a husband and a gorgeous daughter to prove it although I didn't use match.com )

ellies_angel

I met my partner on Match almost 3 years ago and we are happily now living together

hogweed

AlwaysWorking wrote: »

I think you're wrong. A friend joined it and had lots of responses from men in her area (Belfast). She went on a few dates and 18 months later is still with someone she met through match.com.

Without wishing to seem cruel, you're assuming the people weren't members because they didn't respond to your emails..there is another possible answer......

Heh - no, being originally from NI myself, I'm not that naive - but with long experience of internet datign (including quite a few successes myself) I know that almost all genuine participants will respond with a polite "no thanks" if they do exist.

The fact is that, on match.com, most fo them don't.

If Match.com dispute this, let them mark all members with a simple "Fully-paid-up" flag if they are; over 90% won't have it.

Although you might get lucky on Match.com, the fact remains that it's a con.