Sidebar Poll: If you could pick one dating site to use, which would it be?

Comments

1. Kris C says:

   October 26, 2008 at 9:31 am

   I’d pick Date.com, because I met my husband there! But I discovered it after using True, Match and Yahoo (and briefly, eHarmony) and it was the best fit for me because the guys seemed a bit more “genuine”… I think I had been on True & Match and met too many players, and goofy though they were (one man with a long beard & overalls offered to be my huckleberry, another wrote me long poetry… LOL!) they seemed more “real” than some of the pretty boys on the other sites. Good luck with the never-ending-till-it-does quest to find the right mate for you. ))

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2. Suzanne B. (Crunchy Green Mom) says:

   October 26, 2008 at 5:58 pm

   I love Plenty of Fish.com. I found the guy I’ve been dating on there, and I have tried a lot of others but, this one seems to work the best for me. It is fast paced and easy to use.

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3. Frederick says:

   May 7, 2009 at 4:16 pm

   I have had no problems with strictly online dating sites such as Match.com, but I was burned pretty badly by Great Expectations in St. Louis. Here is my story.

   After seeing several of Great Expectations’ (GE) ads online and in newspapers, I searched for them online, found their website, and filled out a basic form with my contact information. Their St. Louis office phoned me the next day to arrange for me to come in for a “consultation.” The woman was polite but gave me very little information about their service over the phone, saying they preferred to do an in-person presentation. I went to their office and was first shown a 15-minute video giving an overview of their service, after which I met with one of their employees to discuss the program.

   After she described how their service works, I told her that I was interested in meeting women in the St. Louis area between the ages of 24 and 35 (I am 33) and asked about how many female members they had in that range. She wouldn’t give me a number, but kept saying “We have new people signing up every day.” I told her that if they wanted me to spend the exhorbitant amount they were asking for membership (over $5000 — yes, you read that correctly), I needed to know that they had a large enough member base for it to be worth my money. She then told me that I could also use their service to meet women through their centers anywhere in the country, or even women who “visited” St. Louis. I repeated that I wanted to know approximately how many female members they had IN THE ST. LOUIS AREA and within the age range I specified. I finally got her to reveal that they had about 125-150 females in St. Louis within that age range.

   The contract they wanted me to sign says all over it that there are no cancellations or refunds for any reason, so I emphasized once again that before I would agree to sign up, I needed them to be honest and very clear with me about how many members they had within a 24-35 age range, and in the St. Louis area. They assured me that they had 125-150 women in that category, and better still, that they had about 20 new women signing up each month within that age range in St. Louis. They also told me that most of their female members in this age range did not have children, which is important to me. I signed up and paid $5,295 for a “lifetime” membership.

   After completing my profile and sitting for my photos and video, I went home and logged on to their site to search their database. The searchable age range closest to what I sought was 18-35. I was shocked to discover that there were only 20-25 members in this range — and this includes the “inactive” members. When I narrowed my search to ACTIVE members in this range, with no children, the number quickly shrank to 16 — a far cry from the 150 I had been told. Off by a factor of ten, in fact! Even worse, when I did a search of 18-35 year old women who had signed up in the last 60 days, there were only four. FOUR! (I had been told they averaged 20 new women per month in my age range!) In addition, despite my being told that all members “must” have photos and videos in their profiles, at least one-third of the profiles lacked one, the other, or both.

   I called the GE office immediately to ask whether I was missing something or perhaps not using their database correctly. The woman who answered the phone performed the search as well and came up with the same numbers. I asked her for an explanation and she had none, saying I would need to speak with their director, Rhonda, who she said would definitely call me back within a day. She didn’t. I made numerous phone calls to their office trying to speak with Rhonda, and each time I was told “we don’t know where she is or whether she will be in today at all” or something along those lines. Finally after nearly two weeks she returned my call.

   I explained to Rhonda that the number of members in my age range in St. Louis was nowhere near what they had quoted me and asked for an explanation. She flat-out denied that they had quoted me inflated numbers despite my insisting that there is no way I would have paid over $5,000 to join a service with so few members my age. Instead, she tried to distract me with suggestions that I try dating women who live in other parts of the country or who are well above the age range I said I was interested in. (Even their receptionist had agreed with me that most men aged 33 would not seek to date women aged 40). Because our phone call resolved nothing, I decided instead to make an appointment to speak with Rhonda in her office. For the next SIX WEEKS I tried to make this appointment, but her receptionist would never tell me when Rhonda was going to be in the office and wouldn’t make a special appointment for me because, she said, it was “too far for Rhonda to drive from home.”

   In the meantime, I have filed with both the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and the Missouri State Attorney General’s office to try to get my money back. In doing so, I discovered that Great Expectations is not even accredited with the BBB, where they have a “C” rating and 22 complaints on file. They also have numerous compalints with the MO State Attorney General’s office. Digging deeper in my online search, I found that there have been many similar complaints from all over the country about GE misleading people. I have also talked with several of GE’s current and past members in St. Louis, all of whom have felt misled and cheated by the company.

   Now, Rhonda claims I just need to “give it more time,” but the rate at which GE enrolls women in my age range is far too low to justify the $5,295 they charged me. If their membership was growing or turning over at a reasonable rate, I woudl be happy to give this more time. But no reasonable person would pay $5,295 to join a dating service that had 1 or 2 potential new members each month.

   The bottom line is that GE is probably the most unprofessional company I have ever dealt with. They grossly exaggerated the number of female members they have in the geographic and age range for which I expressed interest; they don’t return phone calls; and they are clearly trying to keep me from speaking with their director. They even charged me an extra $160 for copies of the photos they took of me, and two months later I still haven’t received them! I suspect they knew that I would not have paid $5,295 if I knew the truth about their numbers. But they should have been honest about their membership numbers and allowed me to make a decision on whether to join based on accurate information. This whole experience has become an absolute nightmare for me, and I would really like to help prevent others from being misled the way I was.

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4. match sites says:

   June 1, 2009 at 9:29 pm

   Is it me or the previous comment was about 20 times longer then the article ?

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