I signed up for Match.com about a week ago. I am an above average looking guy in my early thirties. So far I sent out 278 messages and received 3 responses (!). No girl initiated an email with me; the emails I received did so in response to my email, and they made no effort to continue the conversation. In other words they did not ask me a question is response. I received 4 "winks," which are methods that non-subscribers can use to contact others (in addition subscribers can use "winks" to communicate with members). And 3 of those winks turned out to be from from Nigerian scammers! I did get 1 notification letting me know someone "likes" me, but it was from an unattractive obese woman.
Here is one screenshot (notice the ads):
Here is another screenshot after scrolling down:
I deleted a couple "winks" and that's why it says 1 next to received winks above. Notice all the winks I sent, and all the emails, and the number 445 by their turn.
Why does this phenomenon exist on match.com (and other similar sites)? It exists because there are likely a lot more men than women on this site, and attractive women gets tons and tons of emails from guys who will initiate communication with dozens of women a day. Guys are lucky to get one email from a woman (who actually initiated the conversation). Also I believe that there are a lot of fake profiles on this site, and on top of this there is no way to know whether or not the person you are contacting is a paying subscriber or not! On Match.com, only paying subscribers can send emails. So on this site you will spend time emailing people who will not be able to respond to your email! This also explains my experience; many, many members I emailed did not respond because they were not members. Match.com has no problem with people like me wasting my time though, because from a marketing perspective they use subscribers to recruit non-subscribers so Match.com can make more money.
Just recently (about a week after being a member) I talked with Match.com customer service and asked for a refund. I signed up for a 3 month agreement. They said no, and basically I wasted $71.97 on this site.
Another complaint I have, besides the ads (why are there ads on a pay site?), is that there is a lot of marketing to encourage the user to go to costly "stir" events put on by Match.com,
In sum, buyer beware!
I met my wife on Match. Things online are much like the bar scene. If you're not getting responses, you're probably a 5 going after 8-10's. Lower your standards, or write a more interesting profile/send better emails. I'm slightly above average looking too, but never had significant problems. Maybe a 20% return rate on initiated conversation.
ReplyDeletePoint is, the problem isn't Match, or the other people.....
My experience mirrors many other guys.
DeleteLook at the "your turn" part of the above post. I am waiting for 445 women to make their turn. I get told quite a bit, by both guys and girls a like, that I am good-looking. I am probably a 7 or 8 and have been mostly messaging girls who are in my league.
Zero (0) girls have expressed interest in me via email after sending out 278 emails that I sent. I contacted a total of 445 girls and only 1 non-Nigerian scammer initiated anything with me and and as noted she was obese.
My profile was fine, and includes the fact that I have a graduate degree. The site is broken for the reasons I mentioned.
No, there's clearly something wrong with this website. I'm also a male in my 30s. I was a member for 7 months (about August 2012-March 2013) and sent out in excess of 100 emails and attempted every possible way to communicate. I first signed up solely to contact one particular young woman and wrote a heartfelt email (as I tried to do with each one, emphasis on also trying to be witty, funny and coherent spelling), and didn't realize until some time later that I'd been put on a "not interested" list.
ReplyDeleteIn the first month I was on, I got precisely one reply (and the young woman didn't carry on the convo beyond that) to an outgoing email. I had to try another approach... to just simply IM a person out of the blue, and one person replied, and it was pleasant enough, but she never replied to me again, giving no reason. Months went by before I could get ahold of a second person (and believe me, I lowered my standards. Too much, as a female friend told me). Again, pleasant enough convo, but out of the blue she announces, "I'm engaged", without having bothered to tell me at the start she was in a serious relationship, so as not to waste my time (and she said she was "leaving" Match.com). Turned out she was lying about that, as she still had an active account (and clearly checking) for some time after (I've still been sent her profile a year after the fact).
The only other person who emailed me directly (unsolicited) was a very unattractive, obese young woman who could barely string together a coherent sentence. Anytime one gets an email as such, they tend to set off alarm bells that they're a Nigerian scammer (and when I was at the defunct Yahoo singles, every person I made contact with was a scammer). Even one girl of only "borderline" looks turned out to be a scammer, so it wasn't an issue of being taken in by a pretty face.
So for the last 5 months or so I kept sending out the emails, trying IM, etc., but I never got so much as one reply. Not one. Since I have some health problems and don't drink, I don't do the "bar scene", so online is the only viable option for me. I specify that I wasn't looking for a hook-up, but a REAL relationship or friendship (isn't that what young women complain about today that men aren't into ?).
I wrote a complaint letter to Match.com telling them that their website only managed to give me 7 months of additional heartache. Not a single date out of it, nor a friendship, out of scores of attempted contacts. Their little dog and pony show cost me over $100. What a sucker I am.
Oh, and btw, I tried the equally phony eHarmony. I filled out their ultra-long forms on two different occasions, which took me a long time to do, only to have them "reject" me for dating material (as if I should go off myself from the gene pool). Thanks for nothing to them, too.
D.J. Jones,
DeleteThanks for sharing your experience.
Aren't guys like you part of the problem? If the average guy is sending out 278 emails then the average girl is getting 278 emails. She'll just get a swollen ego from all the attention and then respond to the best looking or richest guy (who will probably just want sex or be a scammer) and ignore all the rest. Do you really have a lot in common with 278 women on a site like this? I sure don't. These sites would work better if they restricted the numbers of emails sent out. Guys would only email women they had a lot in common with and had a good chance with and all the female egos would be kept in check with fewer guys emailing them.
ReplyDeleteI am both part of the problem and not part of the problem. When guys are not getting responses it is logical to continue to send out messages to play the numbers game. There is no “penalty” in doing so, in contrast to being in a bar, where each failed approach lowers your value a bit in the eyes of observing women. Of course as I discovered even sending out great numbers of emails is a waste of time (and in my case money), because other guys are doing the same thing.
DeleteThe ultimate responsibility falls on the site since guys are going to act in our best interests given the confines of the site. However Match is broken, like so many other online dating sites. Match limits the number of emails that guys can send to about 50 or so over a 24 hour period; however, this should be reduced to maybe 5 over a 24 hour period, which would keep the attractive girls plenty busy. Also the site should indicate whether or not women have more than 5 unopened or unresponded emails in their inbox. From Match’s perspective the downside is that to “only” allow guys to send 5 emails is that they are no longer able to waste a lot of time emailing “ghost” profiles with the hopes that those “ghost” members will become paying subscribers. This damages their marketing and revenue, at least in the short term, but dissatisfied customers, such as myself, are spreading the word, so over the long term it is probably not the best strategy if they want to grow their revenue. Additionally, if guys are only on the site long enough to email 5 women it means that they are less likely to click on Match’s ads. eHarmony has been relatively successful because they have throttled matching, however they too have a lot of ghost profiles.
Post up your profile!
ReplyDeleteI don't want to give up my privacy. I'm not attempting to contact anyone at this point, but am keeping up my profile to see if I get any responses, and I plan on posting an update to let my readers know whether or not I did.
DeleteFor more information about how many messages attractive women get, you may want to look at this post:
http://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-trial-a-4-month-online-dating-experiment/
The issue with the sites on their end is that they all make their money with searching and not with finding. There is no incentive to make things more effective so long as the paying audience feels they have a chance. Any chance. Humans are funny that way; men even funnier. There was a study years ago where they search for candidates for a mission to Mars with no (!) chance of coming back. It would not even be attempted. Response rate of volunteers next to zero. Then they changed the offer: Mission to Mars and we will try all we can to bring you back but have to be honest that the chance to make it back is less than ten percent. Volunteer rate went to about 30 percent. On a ten percent chance to make it back alive.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I think the same dynamics apply on ODS that apply in real life: It's all about looks and age. It does not matter that (as on OKC) you are a 96% Match and only 4% Enemy. If she does not "see" herself having sex with you ever, she will simply not respond. If she us 30 and looks for "24 to 34" and you are 35 she will simply not respond. She might if you were 23 but that is different. Because you (me) are up against the specter of ill manners and lecherous old men she conjures up in her mind. And so, unlike in real life, you cannot woo her. She will not let you. At the office you can leave a single rose on her desk every other day. In the online world that is considered stalking... :)
People can always supply success stories, but many of the success stories are from years ago when online dating was relatively new and was still a decent way to meet people. Now you just get a lot of attached woman looking for an ego massage or trying to redirect you to a pay site, not to mention psychos and fatties. I still think if you can nut up and ask women out in public you are far better off, because few men will approach and you'll stand apart. My eharmony experience has been the same, just a whole lot of nothing, and I suspect most profiles are trial weekend women. I'm going to cancel my credit card so my next two payments don't go through.
ReplyDeleteRight. Back in the day, OLD was way more innocent. Now, as time has gone along, women are having it drummed into them that every guy is the next CL killer. I've only heard of one of those guys myself, so it beats me where the rest are hanging out much less the next Jody Arias.
DeleteI was really close to signing up for Match and putting my dormant profile to use. It got some pics favorited and lots of views, but after sifting through potential favorites, I have 18 on that list and only two I'd really consider messaging...if that would even guarantee a reply. That side, most of the favorites I have left on my list made it easy enough to find them online via other methods. So, why bother paying for the chance to get "read: deleted" by two women, one who I've seen before who is lying about never being married before?
Either go import a wife who will just be glad you are better than what she has in her native country or pray that you find some non-socially awkward women out there.
Oh, by "other methods", I mean that women are pretty solid creatures of habit. They will usually reuse a profile alias on other (free) OLD sites or Twitter, Pinterest, FB, et al. I have not bothered to try picking up women via FB, so do with that what you will.
DeleteALL DATING SITES are useless these days because ALL WOMEN THINK THEY SHIT ICE CREAM. I don't know what has caused this belief in women, maybe it is social media, but they all feel that they are the princess from that Disney movie 'FROZEN', and that no men are good enough for them. Anyways, with our insane man-hating divorce laws it would be suicide to even think of wanting to get married to anyone. Heck, even dating and risking a false rape accusation is getting too dangerous, so maybe it is actually a GOOD THING that women don't want to date us guys anymore, it prevents us from going to jail for a rape we never committed.
ReplyDeleteI have tried to get a refund from an auto pay from these crooked scamming fucks. The site is purposely difficult to navigate, you get strung along like we dont understand and are auto replied to with answers to what they assume I am trying to do. I asked to delete my account and refund a payment on the day it was taken. I finally found a contact number only to get a fucking recorded message and disconnected. I sent emails requesting refund only to be responded to 4 days later. I am dealing with complete idiots selfish nonlistening idiots. Was told that if I initiated a complaint with my banking institution for the refund that my account would be deleted and my payment card would be blocked from using it for further payments! Are you fucking kidding me? I am only one of many I am sure to have issues. Thes fucks act like they really need your money, nothing but a scam!
ReplyDeleteMy Experience with Match - Thanks for putting up this blog - You are spot on about the HUGE number of female accounts on match.com that are not Viable. Not only that I have "winks" that show up on my account from un-viable, phantom accounts, match.com intentionally "matches" me with accounts that cannot respond, and also match.com will not inform me that this is the case. Also, it became obvious to me that these phantom accounts that match.com keeps around, may very well have been paying members at one time, but have been long gone by the time I was sent a "match".
ReplyDeleteHere is a little support from a chat that I had with match.com -
Me: When I get someone's profile posted as a "Match" on my account, does that mean that they are a paying member? I just got one that said, in her bio, that she is not a paying member.
match.com : Unfortunately the site is not designed to divulge whether or not a member is Free or Paid.
Me: So, you match me up with someone who is not a member?
match.com: However, we do have a feature wherein you can still communicate to them even the member has no active subscription. We offer you the Reply for Free feature.
Me: How do I get to the "Reply for Free" option?
Me.info: Will I be charged for that service?
match.com : Reply for Free is $25.41.
match.com: Yes, it will charge you.
Me: So is it true that you send me members that I cannot communicate with unless I pay an additional fee?
match.com : That's correct. Although these members are not normally able to read and respond to messages, they are notified that messages have been sent to them, which often leads them to become paid subscribers.
Me: That is very deceptive of you. Can you match me with only paying members, or mark those unpaid members such that I can see that they are unpaid?
match.com: Unfortunately, that feature is not available. We always value customers who are keen to give us their feedback. I will be sure to pass on what you have told me to our product team
me: You have a "send" button" that suggests that I can send a message, when, in reality, I can send one, but it will not be received.
match.com: Though they have no way to access it, We make sure that members are notified about it, which often leads them to become paid subscribers.
Me: It leads me to believe that a large number of your accounts, ones that you portray as viable, are disabled, encumbered, and not viable, at all.
match.com: I'm sorry if you feel that way.
Me: Feelings aside, it seems to be the truth.