eHarmony is not even worth the free profile
Written: Jan 21 '05 (Updated Mar 11 '05)
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Updated on Mar 10, 2005 to include some data I found: "in 2004, eHarmony had 6.5M subscribers, up from 1M in 2003. Of these only 150K were paying members, which was double that of the previous year." This would definitely explain why you can't get much benefit from eHarmony. Online dating companies really need to admit what percentage of their members are paid subscribers.
Updated on Jan 22, 2005 to include subscription pricing and a little more text on the Closed user interface and searching.
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eHarmony is such a poor concept. I wish I'd researched Epinions before trying eHarmony, because it would have saved me time and a little self-esteem. If you're reading all these negative Epinions about the service and you're still not convinced to avoid it, read on...
eHarmony has these great commercials that lead you to believe they have an edge -- a profiling system that will help identify your perfect mate.
Don't believe it.
Because eHarmony is pricey ($50 for 1 month or $250 for 1 year), I decided to take a test drive. I filled out the free profile and uploaded some pictures. Because of the length of the survey and the fact that you need to sharply downsize your pictures' file size in order to upload them, it can take 1-2 hours to go through the whole setup process. That complete, I waited to observe how the system worked.
The profile questions are much different from those on match.com. Instead of asking you about your activities, it asks you questions like: "What are 4 things your friends say about you? What are 3 of your best life skills? How do you spend your leisure time? What are five things that you can't live without?" While these are all good questions, they are all free-form text, not checkable boxes. So you can't use them for searching. And it doesn't collect specific info like activities, hobbies, income range, or even target age (it decides that for you).
You want to find another tennis player? You can't search or browse that way. In fact, you really can't browse at all. A search for potential matches will only get you the ones that eHarmony feels are suitable for you. It's like shopping in a store where you aren't allowed to see any of the merchandise!
After eHarmony does all the matching for you, it feeds you about 3 matches at a time. Unless you subscribe, you cannot see their pictures. If you try to find more matches, it tells you there aren't any, that they search every 24 hours amongst new subscribers, and "their extremely strict criteria" is what makes eHarmony a powerful tool in finding your soul mate. They tell you that they help weed out the 99.7% of the people out there who are incompatible with you. You don't get to participate in that decision at all.
Sometimes eHarmony sends you an email that you and so-and-so would be a great match. Then you go to the website and find out that the other person already Closed you out. You can't even read the other person's profile so that you can get an idea about why you were rejected so quickly.
I really found the Closed user interface to be humiliating at first, particularly since I was responding to an email that raised my expectations. It would make more sense if eHarmony just checked with one person at a time. Instead, you have to look at a big "X" on your list of matches, and when you click on the person who closed you out, you get a message that "So-and-so has decided to permanently close communication with you at this point for the following reason: No reason at this time." I don't know who would consider this morale boosting.
Also kind of alarming is that it takes your real name for billing purposes, and then posts your real first name when listing you as a match. I thought it would use my login name. And the system wouldn't allow me to change the use of my first name.
Having been on the trial period for a few weeks, it is obvious to me that a high percentage of the users are like me -- just test driving the system, and therefore unwilling to subscribe unless they are matched with someone compelling. But since you cannot see anyone's pictures, it's pretty hard to get motivated enough to subscribe.
I can't believe this service will remain in business very long.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Location: Silicon Valley, CA, USA
Reviews written: 30
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me: Retired HP Software Development Manager and soccer mom. Demands quality in products.
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