Are there any legitimate/honest matchmaking services?

Factual Questions
1

This might end up in another forum but it’s a question so I’ll start it here:

  1. Are there any honest, legitimate matchmaking services?

  2. Anyone tried “It’s Just Lunch” or heard of anyone who has? (I know, data isn’t the plural of anecdote.)

When I become single early last year and got onto dating sites I was, with amazing rapidity, beseiged by sales calls from a company called Lifemates. The most cursory research turned up approximately fifty thousand complaints that all amount to “they take your money and you never hear from them again, or if you do they grudgingly set you up with someone who doesn’t meet your criteria.” The price for Lifemates varies from $1500 to $5000, depending on how much they think they can soak you for, and they offer no guarantees. I ran like a scared rabbit and told them to stop calling me.

Anyways, fast forward to today. My sister sent me a link to “It’s Just Lunch.” I said what the heck, filled in a contact form, and they called today. The basic model is they promise they have the most wonderful women and if I’ll just give them $2000, many awesome dates will be mine. In fact, the woman said, she had someone in mind! Someone beautiful! She lives nearby! No problem with my having a kid! She’s freakin’ gorgeous!

Being both inquisitive and skeptical, I asked what manner of guarantees they offered - e.g. a minimum number of dates, something. Er, not so much. The saleslady did seem very nice and sincere, but that was clearly a question she did not like answering. I left it with a “well, maybe we can meet next week, I’ll let you know.”

Now, I looked up some review for this service and sure enough there’s mucho complaints, although, again, data isn’t the plural of anecdote, I don’t know how many clients they have, and particular offices seem to get all the complaints, so I’m open minded about this. See, my skepticism is this; any service that doesn’t specifically define what the service provider is to provide, in an objective manner, has no rational incentive to deliver the service. If Moshe the Matchmaker is to be paid upon a successful date or marriage or something, they’re motivated to make good matches. But if they’re simply paid up front and the service agreement amounts to “we’ll try our best, dude” there’s no obvious reason why they should bother; their energy is better spent making more sales since, by definition, “we’ll try our best” is undefinable and could constitute one date with an ogre.

2

So, you’ve found that two matchmaking services, out of the thousands out there, are dishonest, and this is leading you to conclude that they all are? What’s your standard for “legitimate”?

3

No, I found one was.

I guess we’re headed for GD, but do you have an answer to either question I posed?

4

I tried one a few years ago. While I think that they were honest and were trying their best, they were terrible at it. My own matchmaker was as dumb as a bag of spatulas. She once did set me up with someone that she was not at all confident that I’d like – and accidentally set me up with someone amazing.

5

I’m thinking the honest ones will probably be religious in nature. Along with some of the not so honest ones.

6

That’s an interesting point. Regrettably I’m an atheist. :slight_smile:

7

OkCupid is a data-driven service. Nate Silver at the New York Times analyzes their data occasionally. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/magazine/nate-silver-wednesday-night-is-right-for-loving.html

They publish an interesting blog. Some of the less scrupulous services keep women’s profiles up indefinitely. That creates a sort of vicious circle, as guys write detailed notes only to receive few replies. So they end up spamming – which tends to drive women away from the service. Which encourages more spamming.

I haven’t used them, but a female friend of mine did with some medium term success.

ETA: More fun analysis: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/01/online_dating_advice.html

8

I tried Just for Lunch 15 years ago when I think they were just getting started. It was awful. At that time, there was a set number of lunch “dates” that I paid for. What I found was that the ‘matchmaker’ set up dates just so she could reach the magic number and earn the fee. None were even remotely compatible. I complained that this was just an assembly line and got about 25% of the fee back. I met my husband the old-fashioned way - he was my mechanic.

My sister used Harmony.com. Since (I think) you are in control of who you date, you may have better luck. She did, as she is now seeing a really nice guy who treats her well. They’ve been going out for about 16 months now and we are hoping for a ring this Christmas!

9

Yeah, if you’re looking to find a mate among a selected group of similarly-minded complete strangers, I don’t see why you would want to patronize an expensive human-mediated matchmaking service rather than a nearly-free online dating site.

I know that the human matchmakers (sales reps) are advertised as providing a valuable personal touch to the screening process, which is supposed to increase your chances of finding someone you like, etc. etc. But as you’ve discovered, a sales rep may be far less interested in your compatibility with your dates than in just setting up enough random pairings to earn their own fee. And in any case, a sales rep you’ve just met is not going to know enough about you (or about your potential dates, for that matter) to do much better than random guessing about who you should meet.

So, although I haven’t any experience with matchmaking services myself, ISTM that none of them can really count as legitimate if what they’re claiming is that they do a better job of selecting compatible pairings from random pools of strangers than the participants themselves can do on the basis of standard dating-website profiles and that sort of thing.