eHarmony - rip off cancellation policy - £65 for 10 days use

eHarmony_warning

I'm a long term MSE user and forum contributor but to protect my identity, signed up with a new username so I could highlight an issue with eHarmony's dreadful refund policy.

After being single for a few months, I signed up to eHarmony for a year to expand my social circle. I carefully read the T&Cs, especially the 14 day "cooling off" period where they state:

If you cancel your subscription within the 14-day cancellation period, we will refund to you all payments that we have received from you for the cancelled Premium Membership without undue delay and in any event no later than 14 days from the day on which we were informed of your decision to cancel your subscription. We will provide this refund using the same means of payment that you used for the initial transaction, unless you have expressly agreed otherwise; and you will not be charged for this refund.
However, please note that if you have started to use the Premium Membership within the 14-day cancellation period, we will be entitled to retain from the refunded payment a reasonable amount (value compensation) to account for that portion of the Premium Membership that you have already received.

Fair enough, there may be some charges. I paid £143.40 for a years membership, a "50% off" deal too ;-0

After just a week, I realised that I wasn't going to meet many people there, the people they thought were compatible lived miles away and there are quite a few people registered in Asian countries looking for partners in the UK. That wasn't what I was looking for so I cancelled my membership well within the 14 days only for eHarmony to now tell me I must pay £130 for the personality profile they produced for me, but out of goodwill, I can have a 50% discount, so they will charge me just £65 and take this out of the fee I paid prior to refunding me.

I'm livid about this and taken it up with them, but they are not interested, they just spout the same reply. I offered a full months membership fee towards their "reasonable costs" but this was rejected. Next stop is my credit card for a charge back, but I wanted to warn people that there is no such thing as a cooling off period with eHarmony, they certainly want their money if you sign up then try to leave when you find their product isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Takmon

I would say it is never worth signing up to any kind of paid dating site/app when there are so many free ones available. Anyone with any sense will sign up to the free ones before they use any kind of paid service so by signing up to multiple free ones then you should quite easily be able to see everyone in the area looking to meet other people.

eHarmony_warning

Takmon said:

I would say it is never worth signing up to any kind of paid dating site/app when there are so many free ones available. Anyone with any sense will sign up to the free ones before they use any kind of paid service so by signing up to multiple free ones then you should quite easily be able to see everyone in the area looking to meet other people.

Thank you for your advice. I'm not sure if you are implying I don't have any sense (at my age, I can assure you, I have plenty). What I don't have though is a Facebook or any other social media account and any "free" accounts I have found generally need you to log in using an existing Google, FB etc account.

I'm also a great believer in "you get what you pay for" and my experience of the free side of sites like "Plenty of Fish" was their sea was full of scammers. I had thought eHarmony, with their nice TV advertising, would offer something a bit better. Sadly it doesn't but I was quick enough to decide to cancel under the terms I thought I had signed up for (and they sent me) but they have been very underhand telling me about additional terms "that appeared on the payment page", "that you signed by accepting other terms" etc. It is a very underhand way of doing business and through my post on this apt forum, I hope to save others money if they too want to exercise their rights to a refund if they also find eHarmony as poor an experience as I did.

Maybe you can give me examples of free sites you'd recommend?

Barny1979

Takmon said:

I would say it is never worth signing up to any kind of paid dating site/app when there are so many free ones available. Anyone with any sense will sign up to the free ones before they use any kind of paid service so by signing up to multiple free ones then you should quite easily be able to see everyone in the area looking to meet other people.

In my experience the free sites just attract the time wasters, the paid services you get more discerning people.

Takmon

eHarmony_warning said:

Takmon said:

I would say it is never worth signing up to any kind of paid dating site/app when there are so many free ones available. Anyone with any sense will sign up to the free ones before they use any kind of paid service so by signing up to multiple free ones then you should quite easily be able to see everyone in the area looking to meet other people.

Thank you for your advice. I'm not sure if you are implying I don't have any sense (at my age, I can assure you, I have plenty). What I don't have though is a Facebook or any other social media account and any "free" accounts I have found generally need you to log in using an existing Google, FB etc account.

I'm also a great believer in "you get what you pay for" and my experience of the free side of sites like "Plenty of Fish" was their sea was full of scammers. I had thought eHarmony, with their nice TV advertising, would offer something a bit better. Sadly it doesn't but I was quick enough to decide to cancel under the terms I thought I had signed up for (and they sent me) but they have been very underhand telling me about additional terms "that appeared on the payment page", "that you signed by accepting other terms" etc. It is a very underhand way of doing business and through my post on this apt forum, I hope to save others money if they too want to exercise their rights to a refund if they also find eHarmony as poor an experience as I did.

Maybe you can give me examples of free sites you'd recommend?

No that comment wasn't aimed at you, what I meant was that anyone with any sense (i.e. the kind of people you would want to meet) are also going to be on free sites/apps so no real need to use any paid services and this is general advice I would give to anyone thinking of paying.

I do have a Facebook account but I never use it to sign into apps/sites and I actually don't know of any free service that doesn't allow users to sign up directly (but most do give the option of using a social media account).

Personally I would say apps on a smartphone work the best because there are far more of them and they are quick and easy to use compared to websites. From discussions I've had with people I would say the top ones to use (in no particular order) are POF, Bumble, Tinder and Badoo. One friend had a lot of dates from using POF so that seemed to work quite well but yes as it's a free website and easy to sign up then there are more likely to be fake profiles. Another friend met their partner on Bumble and I met my partner on Badoo so definitely would recommend those. Tinder is just so well known and popular it's also worth a try but it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. 

eHarmony_warning

Just looked at Bumble, it's not free.

Takmon

eHarmony_warning said:

Just looked at Bumble, it's not free.

https://bumble.com/en/help/do-i-have-to-pay-for-bumble-or-is-it-free

Barny1979

eHarmony_warning said:

Just looked at Bumble, it's not free.

It is free, you have to pay to see women who like you, unless you mutually match

Tallaght

Loads of scammers on dating websites.

TimSynths

Tallaght said:

Loads of scammers on dating websites.

Ding dong!

eHarmony_warning

Barny1979 said:

eHarmony_warning said:

Just looked at Bumble, it's not free.

It is free, you have to pay to see women who like you, unless you mutually match

Thanks for the intro to Bumble, the "free" option is really just a teaser, I might as well sit at a bus stop and wait for the right person to pass by. Dating is a pro active activity and almost nothing in life is really free.

My credit card are processing a chargeback with eHarmony after I sent them copies of the T&C and my emails.

Back to Bumble and it's simpler, pay monthly, option.