Just decided to sign up for a 6-month membership on Match.com last week. I’m interested in hearing from anyone who has experience with the site as a subscriber.
By way of background, I found OKCupid to suck completely, so I deleted my profile several months ago and never returned, promising never to use a (free) online dating site again. Shows you how well I stick to things, huh?
So last week I uploaded some photos and wrote up a profile on Match. Within a couple hours I had a wink from someone reasonably close, geographically. Not really my type (a bit young for me), but I decided to give it a go. We met for coffee on Sunday morning. She was interesting, but we didn’t click. I figured I’d give it one more shot and asked her to a movie that evening and she accepted, but later called me to tell me her ex-boyfriend wanted to get back together. (Total excuse, but I admire her desire to not hurt my feelings.)
Since then, I’ve had one wink from someone WAAAAY outside my geography (like 6 states away) and nothing else. I’ve written two dozen e-mails and sent about half a dozen winks. Nothing. Crickets and tumbleweeds.
I’m interested in how much effort you might have had to put in to secure a single date. (I know this is likely to be different for different people, but I’m going for ballpark here.) I’m also interested in any tips or tricks of the trade anybody might be able to offer up. Finally, are there other services you’ve found to be better? (Other than OKCupid, I mean.)
I sent out over 200 messages on Match.com without getting a single reply. Not one. I actually had some people here vet the profile (which is apparently a favorite activity of some posters–if you want some constructive criticism you’ll get all you can handle) and the general consensus seemed to be that it was fine–funny, even–and I just needed a better picture. And yet, no response.
I dunno…some people seem to have great success with it. For me, it was like fishing in the Great Salt Lake. It looks like something could be alive in there, but it’s just those damned flies.
Match.com is useless if you’re a guy and you’re not a slimeball.
Guys who are slimeballs will sign up for multiple accounts, post pictures of models instead of themselves, and write automation software to email as many women as possible. I’ve dated women who have told me horror stories of emailing some dream guy only to have a toad show up on their doorstep. These guys clog the inboxes of all the potential women, and your mails get lost in the shuffle.
All the single guys in my office signed up for match at the same time. I’m the only one who ever got unsolicited email from women, and I’m pretty sure that’s just because I’m really tall - anyone who did a search and restricted their criteria to 6’5’’ and above will only get a handful of hits.
I gave up on match and focused on meeting women in reality. I recommend the same.
Interesting. I had heard this was going on, but didn’t get the sense it was widespread. So I guess you have to be a spammer, huh?
Hey, I’d like to, but I work such insane hours it would be very tough to meet people outside of my industry. It takes soooooo long just to meet someone who might be a potential match, go out on a date or two and figure out if there’s compatibility there. If there’s any way I can turbocharge the process, I’d like to.
So far I have sent 12 emails and gotten 0 replies.
I have had several emails from women in Russia and S. Africa. The women in Russia certainly seem like a scam of some kind to me. (I emailed one to tell her that although she was quite pretty, I was not interested in a long-distance romance. She emailed me back with a long detailed account of her life, letting me know that she was really looking forward to meeting me.)
It may be that I am unattractive, or that my profile is poor, I dunno. I suspect may be that I have checked the “don’t want children” checkbox. But maybe not.
I’m on there now. Second time in as many years. The first time I went on a handful of dates with a few different women and was fortunate enough to meet someone that I dates for over a year. It ended a few months ago but we remain friends. I joined again about a month ago and have been on another handfull of dates. Nothing to write home about. But this time it’s a little different. Maybe because my heart is just not in it this time around. Maybe because I’ve not met anyone yet I’m excited about.
I know for a fact that match (as the lawsuit claims) plays the kinds of games described. A good friend of mine was employed by their Canadian counterpart and she was the mole at some of the sponsored speed dating events and had a profile up. She was seriously involved with someone at the time and had no intention of dating anyone she met as part of her business development efforts. But she is beautiful and certainly kept the men interested.
As for what you can expect… you’re odds are not better or worse than in a bar. In fact potentially better because not everyone in bar is available and you have a chance to polish your act online as well as put your best face (photo) forward. I’d say it’s worthwhile given the price and potential. But it’s not a sure thing and you have to have pretty thick skin as most of your initial contact emails get lost in the ether.
If you think the folks here are brutal, it’s nothing compared to what the kids on the dating scene will do to you. The most flaming Pit thread weak green tea to the triple ristretto of a bad first date.
I had some slightly better “success” (if you define success strictly within the confines of obtaining acknowledgement of my existence but don’t require an actual date to qualify for benefits) with Spring Street (the guys on Fark Personals, The Onion Personals, Nevre Personals, et cetera) but last time I logged in they changed the whole setup and now you have to pay a monthly fee instead of per message and somesuch, and they seem to now have a much reduced selection of young ladies of the appropriate age in my vicinity. shrug Oh well, I don’t like sharing the Sunday paper with someone anyway. :dubious:
Well, things certainly picked up today. One wink from someone new, plus I got an e-mail from the person I went out with. I had asked her about whether the Match.com experience is significantly different from the female side of the equation. She said she had gotten a few spam-like e-mails from people that turned out to not be real.
I’m going to stick with it for now, but I put a reminder in my Outlook to cancel my subscription 6 months from now, so I’ll remember before they auto-renew me.
Huh. I signed onto Match.com a month or so ago, and I’ve had pretty good luck so far. This may or may not be entirely due to the fact that I’m female. I’ve also send out plenty of winks and e-mails (mostly winks). Only a few people got back to me, of course, and a couple of those just sort of dropped out after a while, but of the three face-to-face meetings I’ve had so far, no one has misrepresented themselves.
I had a choice between eHarmony and Match, and after checking out both sites, decided to go with eHarmony. Match just seemed like a meat market, whereas eHarmony seems more personable.
I’m into my second month, and so far, I’ve met a few guys who appear to be okay. No one I want to spend the rest of my life with or anything, but okay just the same.
I can’t get over the fact that it’s so conservative. :eek:
Not that I’m looking for a booty call site… just you know… people have no edge or expression of original thought to the point of every profile sounding cookie cutter identical.
My experience has been very good. I put up a profile just before moving to Atlanta (just before October) but never initiated contact with anyone. Had a few winks and emails, some of which seemed nice and some of which weren’t my type, and now I’ve been dating a really great woman for about a month now
The notion that eHarmony is significantly more conservative than Match both frightens and intrigues me.
Personally, I’m disenchanted with the whole online dating thing. I don’t think anyone knows how to match people up in a reasonable manner. I think OKCupid’s ideas are fundamentally good, but they haven’t got clue one how to implement them, and I’d be surprised if they employ any QA at all.
Unfortunately, due to my circumstances at the moment, this is the most reasonable avenue for my meeting women. I’ll keep plugging away where I am for now, but the minute Google launches a personals service, I’m there.
I remain unimpressed with Match.com. I don’t remember the last time I got a reply to a message, nor the last time someone wrote to me at all. I get a wink every now and then, but usually from guys well outside of my geographical area. I haven’t paid for the service in several months (I got tired of paying to be ignored), but I keep an up-to-date, searchable profile on there. Maybe someday I’ll subscribe again.
Like Stranger On A Train, my favorite service used to be SpringStreet. I liked the interface, the vibe, and the pay-per-message setup, but they got taken over by FastCupid, which bites the big one. I forfeited the credits I had and deleted my profile entirely within a month of the changeover.
In SpringStreet’s absence, and not being Christian/conservative enough for eHarmony (which I checked out), I’m back to OKCupid. It’s definitely not for everyone, but the best dates I’ve had in the past year were through there (including one short relationship at the start of this year). The common complaint with OKCupid is that it is geared toward 20-somethings and under: there are very few men in their late 30s/early 40s on the site. Still, it’s free and the tests are kind of fun, so what the hell.
I might check out the Yahoo Personals someday, but until then I’m with ultrafilter in waiting for Google to launch a service.
If you cancel today, you will still get your full six months. They will cancel it when the time comes, not immediately.
Santa Barbara is a fairly small dating pool. In my month of membership on match, I sent out about twelve emails and got two women to write back. After a couple of emails they disappeared. I received three real winks (and a handful of spam winks) but none of them tickled my fancy but at least I sent a “no thanks” note.
You may want to find a dating site that is more tailored to you as opposed to something as generic as match.com. Do a search and find one that is geared towards people of your religion, hobbies, interests, or physical type. I am signed up through a tailored site and I have gone out on at least 30-40 dates since I signed up several months ago. I haven’t been paying much attention to the account for the last month or two, but I still get responses every now and again without any searching on my part.
This reminded me to try the tall personal dating sites. I have an annual tradition where I check out the tall sites, laugh my ass off at how useless they are, then forget them. These sites have more bugs than a South American rain forest and more spam than Hormel. When I finally wade through all the registration nonsense and constant pleas for membership upgrades to the search section, inevitably I find there are only 2-3 women registered within a 50 mile radius of me.
Bah! A pox on Internet dating! Meet people in real life, sez me.
