Online dating

bitemebankers

I've not used match.com myself but have heard many tales of sharp practice from other users who have lost money unexpectedly. Unless you desperately want to use their site, I'd avoid it. There are plenty of other free dating sites out there. In summary:

plentyoffish.com - huge and free. A very busy website with many more users than match.com. Unfortunately it's a victim of its own success in some ways and has become a bit chavvy in recent years. Still, some people swear by it.

OKCupid.com - Not as big as PoF but light years ahead in design. This site is so good you might wonder why you don't have to pay for it. The matching software is more advanced than eHarmony or Match and it's free! The only downside is that there are fewer users than PoF so you might not find many matches in your local area.

Smooch.com - A bit of a meat market, IMHO. Still, it's free and I know a couple of people who have has some success with it. Worth a look.

NB - it's definitely worth setting up new free email address before signing up with any of these sites (apart from the most reputable like PoF or OKC) as you can unwittingly release a torrent of spam.

cottonhead

I was too embarassed to openly tell people, but I met my husband on an online site and we have been together 9 years now. Purely as I was looking for marriage and didnt want to waste my time hoping to just bump into a suitable match one day! Online I was able to get straight to the point and ask lots of questions that I wouldnt have felt comfortable doing face to face. I used a site that had a free offer at the time and I was happy with the service and it was easy to cancel. Believe it was called dating direct.

LutonGirl

I've used dating websites with varying degrees of success and found the ones that you pay for have far fewer chancers, idiots and serial sh@ggers on them! Met my lovely BF through Planet Rock dating. It's a "white label" site that feeds in members from other sites, including POF and others. Although I signed up via the Planet Rock radio site, he joined via Cambridge Evening News. Two years down the line and we are very happy.

LutonGirl

Cottonhead, I know just where you were coming from, I felt exactly the same!