6 Things I Hate About Eharmony
How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways…
1. Billing themselves as the premiere destination to find and marry your long lost soulmate, Eharmony is in the business of selling you a dream, and failing miserably at delivering on those expectations.
But hey, don’t take my word for it…just look at the statistics: Over 6.5 million paid subscribers. Estimated number of marriages so far? 10,000. Now I’m no math wiz, but according to Eharmony’s own data, 1 in 650, or 0.15% of subscribers actually receive the benefits that this site is selling.
I used to think music was the poorest performing industry with just 1 out of 10 signed artists turning a profit for a record label, but Eharmony’s track record is worse!
Wow. With a product performing as poorly as this, Eharmony should bring in one of those Phd experts for credibility. You know, one of those old guys who’s published like 9 books on the same subject. Oh, silly me…Eharmony already has one!
2. Dr. Neil Clark Warren (the sites founder, and “relationship expert guy” you see in all the commercials), clearly smokes crack , as evidenced by this quote:
“the reason we have encouraged people to wait a little while to exchange pictures, is so they won’t make such a strong early judgment about a person based exclusively on external factors.”
Wow, that’s brilliant Dr. Warren! I mean, if you want a dating service filled with unattractive, insecure people, your model is PERFECT!
Of the rebellious vixens who go against Dr. Warrens wishes and actually DO upload pictures, the site is discouraging enough that over half the women on it never display them. So what if attraction is based on looks? You dare question the good Dr.’s judgement?
This “feature” CRIPPLES any ability to know who you might even be interested in…ah, but fret not, Eharmony has a built in matchmaking system!
3. The matching system SUCKS.
a. You have no control over who you meet. Eharmony uses their own proprietary compatibility tests for that. If you think you prefer blondes, or older men, sorry kiddo. Apparently Eharmony knows better than you do about what you’re looking for.
b. The automated introduction process is completely impersonal. It consists of multiple question and answer sessions that tell you nothing about a person (“your idea of a perfect vacation is…”), over and over again.
c. By the time you’re done with this grueling interview style questioning (which can take days, weeks, or even months), the eharmony system finally allows you to “Email” each other…could anything be less sexy and spontaneous? You can meet someone on the street, get married, have a baby, and get divorced in the same amount of time it takes you to meet 1 person on Eharmony.
4. The profile format discourages any uniqueness or creativity. The stock questions are obvious. Aside from the pictures (which usually aren’t visible), every profile looks the same!
5. Because Eharmony markets itself by playing on customers marriage fantasies, it attracts a shitty subscriber base. There are more lonely, needy, depressing people on eharmony than any other paid dating site.
6. It’s expensive. How expensive is it? It’s more expensive than the next most expensive mainstream dating service out there. The fact that it’s also one of the worst makes for a bitter pill to swallow.
As if finding a date wasn’t challenging enough for most people, Eharmony has the balls to sell you a soulmate. As a result, the experience is anything but fun and casual. From the questioning, to the safety policies, the whole experience is deadly serious. I’ve never had less fun on an online dating site.
Don’t be fooled by the glowing reviews. Eharmony has a massive affiliate program, and with thousands of websites sending traffic their way, it’s all about the $$$$.
Bottom line? Far beyond a mere sorry excuse of a dating service…Eharmony is a waste of life.
February 15th, 2008 at 7:59 am
Couldn’t agree more with many of the points you raise. I have recently skewered eH on my own blog. Perhaps you’ll see you are not a lone voice in the wilderness!
=)
http://doubtingmoab.blogspot.com/2008/02/eharmony-good-bad.html
February 25th, 2008 at 7:25 am
I WOULD agree with most of your comments, however- having been lonley for the 3 years I put off signing up and now having the oppisite problem- 3 amazing beautys wanting to bear my offspring, I CANT agree.
May 5th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Could not agree more. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate eHarmony. Everyone I have met has turned out to be a huge liar. Hate, hate, hate, hate. Where’s the compatibility? I can’t see any. Plus most of the men live thousands of miles away from me, even though I live by a major city smack in the middle of the USA.
It’s probably great for men to meet women since all they want is warm flesh, but if you’re serious, forget it!
January 29th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
I hate myspace as well. All the guys are liars and try to model themselves as “marriage material”, as do the girls I imagine, but I wouldn’t know… It’s the kind of thing that someone sells you in a box and you take it home and sit it on the table and you spend the rest of your life wondering if it’s “working” or not, and since I’m still paying for the site, it’s obviously not working.. What a crock of horse shit…Pardon my french, but the latest match, Kiran hadn’t called in days, and I wondered why, and he says, oh well I’ve been talking to someone for hours a day.. I met them through eharmony..Blah blah blah… And I hung up on him, because he’s just another asshole in the pile of 600 matches, 600 matches and I’ve got nada, zero, zilch, it’s like they scraped the bottom of the barrel..It’s all so fake and phony…
January 29th, 2009 at 9:40 pm
sorry.. i was thinking of myspace..so i typed it… what a sorry horrible thing to do..my fault really..
February 14th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Read this and all the comments. eHarmony is CRAP! Do yourself a favor and save your money. Google some free sites but just be careful and use your common sense.
February 26th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
i agree 2000%. i couldn’t even get matched on eharmony cuz, i fall into the 20% of people that can’t be matched. no, i am not a lesbian. i love men. my best friend created another profile of me and got me match and what waste. i basically had to lie to get a profile match. whatever happened to just meeting men (or women, if that is what you’re into) the old fashioned way. worst part is that i am told by countless of people that i will NEVER meet anyone if i don’t online date.
February 28th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
I, too, fell into the 20% of people who are deemed “unsuitable” to match with any other human in the world. Thanks, Dr. Warren, for that shot of confidence! I’m actually starting to feel nostalgic for the “old” method of being rejected… by a real person whom I’ve met!
March 4th, 2009 at 3:40 am
Okay, that’s an exaggeration…and I know how to spell “illegal.” I just seriously hate that website and wish I could get it offline. One of my dearest friends met someone on there and to say he turned to be at liar is an understatement. There are no more real safeguards on eHarmony than on any other dating site….
And if you think about it, the whole premise of eHarmony’s personality testing is flawed. The system is based on self-reporting…assuming that someone who really wants a compatible mate won’t be lying. But that doesn’t account for the fruitcake. And…the disconnect doesn’t have to be that the other person is lying. If people don’t really “know” themselves, and put down what they imagine themselves to be, that’s the information used for matching. And how can eHarmony, or any website for that matter, protect against that???
March 26th, 2009 at 9:52 pm
I agree with your comments above, seems like Mr. Warren has his own ponzi scheme working to the max! Tell your friends not to buy into it, it is all about the money.!
March 28th, 2009 at 11:55 am
Another unsatisfied eHarmony customer here wanting to vent some. I’m the classic ‘nice guy’ who is into intellectual pursuits (OK, I’m kinda nerdy) but I am thin and about a third of women I know find me attractive (not including my Mom!). I’m thoughtful, have a decent job and look young for my age so I went into this with a very positive attitude. It didn’t take eScamanny long to deflate that.
I joined and at first got no/zero/0 matches … they had some sort of technical mess up with my account. They fixed it when I complained … but isn’t that what you are paying for? If they have technical problems that block ALL matches how good can their system be at finding me a soul mate?
Meanwhile, they are hitting me up for all kinds of premium services for an extra $5-$10. Hmmm … might this be all about how much money they can get from me?? Nahh … I’ve seen the commercials. This is all about smiles, laughter, love and walks on beaches, right??
After I complained, they fixed my account and then I was DELUGED with matches (6 per day for 2 months) but could not keep up with correspondence (as already noted … it takes forever) so plenty of my ‘potential soul mates’ closed me out when I didn’t respond after a couple of days.
After that first wave which had some decent prospects, I began getting matches from hundreds of miles away despite the fact that I had my matching set on ‘60 miles or less.’ Again with the lousy IT! If they can’t get something simple like the number of miles between cities correct, how can they be effectively matching me based on difficult-to-quantify personality traits? I felt that after my first wave, they matched me up with anyone with a pulse … provided she didn’t smoke. That was the one thing they seemed to get right. But that was the ONLY thing.
There seemed to be nothing consistent about my matches. They ranged from bookish accountants to party girls that just want to lie on the beach in the tropics to thinly disguised bar flies.
After 1 year of service, I went on ONE DATE because of eHarmony. Save your money and sanity by trying something else.
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:33 am
I agree and disagree that something wrong with eharmony site, there must be something about people who joined it, from bad things would be better to receive any real matches, not “died souls”, but must be something they were thinking about too, may be one day later this person will pay again and will appear as active match. I’ve met some men from that site, many were or liars or tried to “catch” as much women as possible in same time. Some said that they lied about age(were older), some said that really were living with girlfriends already(!), just were looking for someone better, some were afraid when I said I was serious, like they went just try things on that site for penpal, talks by phone, casual date. But after all I’m still sure that better to try again, you can get same “surprises” dating someone you met not through dating site, just filter better and hope for the best…as about money, all good things are not cheap, some risk, but you cann’t get something if you will not invest at all.
April 10th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Boy am I glad I found this site! Oh God how do I hate eHarmony? Let me count the ways! You lay out the big bucks and in return all you get is an outdated photo album. I can’t even get a refund because I am past the week long term required. Two words: Don’t bother! Join another site, go to singles’ events…which are WAY WAY cheaper by the way…ask your friends for fix ups …anything but give your money to that whacked out Dr Warren! Trust me on this one. I have spent nearly a year and a half on eHarmony and I don’t have one date to show for it. I could get at least one date on any other site in less time…I repeat DON’T JOIN EHARMONY!
June 29th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Eharmony is great. It is just a tool but it’s the best tool we have, but you must use your brains as well and learn about mate selection.
It only delivers broad based compatibility, not magic.
ie physical attraction + compatibility = happiness.
July 20th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
I also have been on eharmony for the past year and only met one guy that I had any chemistry. Then he was deported and I realized that he was probably just using me to get a green card. What are we paying for on eharmony when they do no background checks what so ever on our matches. Also, I’ve met up with 6 different guys from the site and did not feel any chemistry with any of them.
July 22nd, 2009 at 6:53 pm
I learned the hard way that some people reply to the eharmony questions with how they wish they wereandd some flat out lie. Dated one guy with great chemistry, but turned out he’d lied and was a high school drop out and in debt. Next guy, I married and am divorcing after 2 years. Turns out I’m wife number 3, he wasn’t even divorced when we met on eharmony, and the secrets and lies kept coming. Can’t go into it too much, but when I found out what he did, I had the locks changed on the house and filed for divorce the next day. He’s already back on eharmony.
July 29th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
It is comforting to know that I am not the only one that was duped by this website. I am a hopeless romantic, so maybe I set my own self up for disappointment thinking that I could find the kind of love that they show on the commercials. Yeah right. I have meet nothing but jerks! I have had chemistry with some of my matches, but I later found out that they were not really looking for anything serious. Although eH has worked for some, I just want to say that everyone should save their money. There are way too many *&^-holes on this website. Male whores only looking to hook up. I still can’t understand why they would pay so much for eH when they could be on a dating website that costs so much less or nothing. Just stay away from all men on eH!
August 30th, 2009 at 5:06 am
think your missing a couple of zeros there. .15?
September 21st, 2009 at 9:32 pm
I could not agree with you more on how awful e-Harmony is. Another poster mentioned this as well, but the system is flawed because it depends on one’s own level of self-awareness when answering the personality questions and who is to say that people are actually answering authentically and not in what they “hope” to be. Or someone could be seriously misguided and check off that he/she is really outgoing when in reality most people would find that person “cocky” or “obnoxious”. I found that for the majority of my matches I was thinking to myself “Are you kidding me, I’m matched up with him?” And, I also found that all those freaking steps they make you go through only encourages people to string you along. I know I did that once and when it happened to me in return I became more courteous and closed people off as soon as I knew I had no interest meeting up in person. Unfortunately, many guys are not so courteous and make you go through, sometimes weeks, of these guided communication steps only to drop off when it actually came time to potentially meet. The whole process is time-consuming, unnatural, and not fun because you don’t get to select your matches. My brother said it best when he said “If you can tell within minutes you are not into these guys why don’t you try speed dating instead. At least that way you don’t have to go through the whole b.s.communication process first. It will be over in 5 minutes.”
September 24th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
I HATE EHARMONY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALL THE MEN ON THERE ARE LIARS!!!!!!!!!! ALL OF THEM!!!!
October 10th, 2009 at 1:11 am
PlentyofFish.com is the biggest free dating site out there and I met my best friend AND my hubby through that site. Didn’t cost me a dime. Eharmony is nothing but a money making machine for the owners.
February 16th, 2010 at 5:10 pm
All u have to do when u want u’re money back is ask for a supervisor.they have to deny u’r initial refund but if u purse the issue they will refund u’re money -if u’re within 3 days of a new account or aytime for their infamous auto renewals
February 28th, 2010 at 10:50 pm
I wished I had been forewarned of this. My friend met her husband on this site. She got lucky. Every guy they’ve matched me with has turned out to be very nice but uncommitted. The last guy they matched me with was a total jerk, gave me bad directions and we didn’t even meet, after I drove eighty miles to meet him. He said, let’s just do it another day. I said to myself heck no! I closed him. It’s no wonder he can’t find someone if treats women that way.
March 9th, 2010 at 7:26 am
I have to admit, eHarmony is one big waste of time and money. The “matches” are ridiculously off mark. The process of questions are tedious and extremely impersonal. I Should have taken the $$$$ and asked someone out on a date that I saw at the supermarket. I probably would be in a relationship by now.