I finally did it…put a profile on Match.com. Actually, it’s been kind of depressing: I’ve gotten zero responses, which has to be a first for a woman under the age of 75, according to everyone I’ve asked.
So I asked a couple of friends to search for me, and given ridiculously specific info (my zip code plus my age, with 1 year on each side, which turned up a total of three women, none of which was me), none of them could find me unless they searched using my screen name.
So there seems to be a technical glitch of some sort. I sent an e-mail to their help desk at got back a canned response that"profiles with photos receive more responses!," which was completely useless, since I have a photo posted.
But now it occurs to me that I’ve gotten several e-mails over the past few days that didn’t immediately look like spam from the addresses or headers, but when I opened them up, there was no text in the body of the e-mail. It’s a Yahoo e-mail account, so what are the odds that my problem has to do with a communications glitch between Yahoo and Match.com? Any other ideas?
Match.com just gave their site the Hiroshima treatment a while back and my profile got it’s “hit count” set to zero. It hasn’t incremented since. Granted Zoidberg was never the hottest property but he always used get to get browsed about once every three days. It’s been a month and still zero. Something is wrong with that site (or me).
Eva: If it’s any consolation, I got no responses either when I was on match.com. OK, I’m a guy…but I sent out 20 e-mails and not one of them received a response.
OK, but this is a technical question…I noticed the same thing about match.com searches when I was on it. A friend of mine had registered a profile, then forgot about it. We went searching for it later, and couldn’t find it, putting in very similar criteria as the ones you mentioned. Eventually, she found the e-mail that contained her screen name, and we found it that way.
Why is it happening? This is a WAG, as I don’t work for any internet dating companies, but I think match.com’s matching and searching facility is messed up. I say that because I work with people-search engines every day at work, and I just don’t encounter problems like that with a search engine like Experian or AlumniFinder. (Also because I used to get the most wildly inappropriate matches marked as “100% Match!” with them, like people who were looking for never-marrieds, guys with kids, or African-Americans or Asian-Americans, when I’m a divorced white guy with no kids.)
On another board I frequent people have posted the same problem; one guy made minor changes to an existing profile, and it took three days to update. He dropped match for another service at that time.
Another guy let us know that the search criteria is screwy; if you say “any” for any of the choices rather than listing several options for eye color or whatever, you get no matches. If you leave out one option (no selecting all) you have matches.
I didn’t get very many responses when I was on match. Men tend to be visual and I’m not a 25 year old blonde who wears size two; I’m a cynical brunette who’s pushing 40. On the bright side, I can get into a size 12 (not that it looks good yet) and after I lose a few more pounds they’ll look good. My guess is that since I’m a couple sizes smaller, I’d have better results now if their search engine was more effective.
I don’t think online personals work for everyone, but I think your problem is a reflection of their search engine not workingi properly at this time. Your empty e-mails were probably replies sent without text.
In case you were wondering, it isn’t impossible, I also don’t get responses. Then, I don’t get the equivalent of responses in real life, either - so the results weren’t surprising.
Still, it could be a result of the search critera and/or a problem with yahoo as well.
I doubt it’s an issue of nobody being interested; I put essentially the same info in the Reader, and got 40 responses inside a week. I think it’s a screwed-up search engine or something.
Try craigslist.org One friend of mine got 50 responses in the first hour.
I agree that match.com is spooky. I think that some sites don’t date their ads & I think they keep ads up that have email that no one answers to because they don’t want to have an empty site.
I ran into bugs in match.com’s system as well. I could get email from match.com’s administrators and their stupid newsletters, so they had the correct email address on file, but if I sent someone a message and they attempted to respond, it would only get back to me about 1 out of 4 times. They made three completely ridiculous claims while I was on the phone trying to figure this problem out: 1) “there are no bugs in our software”, 2) “the problem is due to the fact that you have a dash (’-’) in your email address…you should get a different address.” and 3) “You pay for the ability to send email, but receiving it is free. Since you’re able to send email without a problem, we’re providing the service you paid for, so we won’t give you a refund.”
Claim 3 just blew me away. What good is emailing a girl I want to meet if she can’t email me back? After escalating to the idiot’s supervisor, they grudgingly refunded my most recent month of service (despite having paid for 5), after which I promptly deactivated my account. They’re not interested in fixing problems. They just want your money.
I did try mentioning my real email address in my messages and explaining that it’s more reliable if people mail me directly, but I can hardly blame anyone for being wary of that. After all, the system is designed to prevent me getting their real email addresses and bothering them forever, so I probably look like some kind of nutcase that’s trying to get them to email me directly so I can get their address. “Sure, there’s a bug in match.com. A likely story, psycho.”
match.com’s search engine was completely screwed up anyway. It definitely had some incomprehensible behind-the-scenes matching criteria that skewed the results. And there were bugs in the profile editor. Because you get eliminated from the search results if you haven’t updated your profile in a while, I used to occasionally open my profile and just add or subtract a period from the end, and I had to be extra careful to proofread it because sometimes it would just randomly delete chunks of sentences from the middle, making them into complete nonsense (which I left there for a couple of weeks once, not having learned of this bug yet…I’m sure I grabbed the attention of all the girls who are turned on by illiterate guys).
Instead of doing a search by specific criteria, try browsing for the ad instead; all women between age X and Y within 25 miles of Z.
I’ve found that there are certain profiles that I find through browsing that aren’t included in my matches, even though they meet my match criteria and I meet theirs.
I think one reason why men don’t get many responses is that some women have free accounts, and can’t mail back. Try browsing around for a few months, and see who the regulars are; the women who always show recent activity, or who disappear and then reappear after a little while (their profiles were likely hidden because they met someone, thus they were able to get contacted). Women also get swamped in responses, and can pick and choose among the best. Thus, match.com hunks have it rather good, while average guys and those who are “below average” for lack of better words have a tougher time.
Oh yeah, I forgot about the incident on match.com that convinced me not to continue with it. As I said, I sent out 20 e-mails with no response. But I did get one e-mail sent to me, from a woman who claimed to have gotten my e-mail address from the site. Problem–my e-mail address was, of course, not posted on the site, and the communication did not come through match.com (those messages have, or should have, “match.com” somewhere on the sender line). The woman also claimed that she didn’t have a profile on match.com. I e-mailed back, asking her how she managed to get my e-mail address if she didn’t have a profile on the site. (In hindsight, I should have blocked any e-mail from her right away.) Fortunately, I never heard from her again.
The whole thing was spooky enough for me to drop out from the site, and to delete my profile. Probably not coincidentally, my spam count increased significantly after I’d registered.
Eva Luna: If you placed a ‘free’ profile, why not just resubmit the same info as a ‘new’ ad (with a different username and email - not yahoo, if you suspect that’s the problem)? Seems easier than looking to the match.com admin for help…
ntucker said:
“I could get email from match.com’s administrators and their stupid newsletters, so they had the correct email address on file, but if I sent someone a message and they attempted to respond, it would only get back to me about 1 out of 4 times.”
Just being nosy, but how did you find out about the 3 that didn’t get through?!!
One girl I hadn’t heard from had just put up a new picture, so just as I was about to give up completely for lack of responses, I sent her a second email saying, “If you’re not going to write me back, I must humbly request that you stop getting cuter.” * She responded that she had written me back before, so I got suspicious and created another profile with a hotmail account to do some tests with. After verifying the problem, I called support and they listed several girls that had written me back in the previous few months (all but one of which was by then gone from match.com), none of which I had received.
*Everybody now: “awwwwwwww”.
** And as much as I hate to admit that match.com actually did work in spite of itself, we’re still going out 10 months later.
Because as insane as the following statement may sound from someone who is trying to revive her love life, I’m actually trying to make my life simpler, not more complicated. And two e-mail addresses is quite enough to have to check regularly (one work, one personal).
This match.com stuff is just getting to be too much of a headache. So far, they keep sending me my “matches” via e-mail, and they all seem, well, YAWN. I may just blow it off and stick with the Reader.
Eva, if I can ask … what’s your match.com alias? No, I won’t write … you’re probably geographically undesirable. I’m just curious about what other Dopers have in their profiles.
(BTW, my SDMB name is my match.com name. History: Elmwood Avenue is a street in Buffalo, New York that I’m rather fond of.)
I’d rather not post my match.com screen name, because I’d rather have control on an individual basis about who gets my identifying info, especially my photo (and nothing personal; I don’t have my e-mail address posted in my SDMB profile either, but if someone requests it for a specific reason, I will generally e-mail it to them). It’s not the same as my SDMB info, though.
I’ll post the text of my Reader ad, though:
“ENJOY THINKING/ FEELING? SWF 34 seeking guy who enjoys using all his brain and senses, book smarts a plus. Likes: international politics, language (foreign and domestic), travel, culinary experimentation (creating and consuming), open-mindedness. Please be unusual, empathetic, have at least one passion in life, and enjoy the road less traveled.”
The other thing I actually like about the Reader is that they don’t require you to post a photo, and not many people do (they actually didn’t even accept photos until a few months ago). I’m not particularly shy about my appearance, but I find it forces people to concentrate more on substance. My first ad did include a brief and non-detailed physical description, and I got some real wackos responding.
As it turns out, this isn’t actually a very good test. In my situation, that test would have passed with flying colors. It was responses to my messages that weren’t getting through. I suspect it has something to do with a bug in the “this person can’t email you unless you’ve emailed them first” logic. (initial contact with someone must be through the web form. after that (or maybe after they respond), you can email them using their match.com alias from your email program, and the system forwards it to them as long as certain criteria are met).