You all know my stance when it comes to paying to find love, but after discussions with friends, most of them felt that I was being too narrow minded. In their opinions, paying for services would provide one with better quality services. If someone was going to invest money in finding their significant other, this would imply they were more serious and willing to put their best foot forward. At the end of the day who wants to throw money away stupidly? Their arguments made sense. Maybe I needed to rethink and give a paying site a shot. What did I have to lose? Money obviously, but I am worth it and who knows maybe things will be different.
The next question was, what site? Options are endless, but I decided to stay away from ones I had previously had paid memberships on. This time there would be no Match or eHarmony. After several google searches, Zoosk seemed to keep coming up as a highly rated site. In the past they didn't charge, but now there was a membership fee to fully use their services.
The ensuing barrage of emails was beyond overwhelming. There was no rhyme or reason to the emails. I couldn't figure out a schedule or system, there was no consistency. I couldn't find anywhere to change settings or limit emails. Zoosk sends an email every time someone views your profile, to advise you that a member wants to meet you, with lists of members they think you might be interested in, lists of smartpicks, dating tips, encouraging you to sign up, to advise you a member has sent you an email and the list goes on an on..... I find it way too much. My inbox fills constantly and most of it is junk. Managing your inbox becomes a full-time job!
On other sites they send you a weekly email with a list of matches. On Zoosk you could get one daily, every second day, every third, two the same day.....OMG no consistency. Do I care when someone views my profile? NO. I want them to contact me because they liked what they read and want to get to know me.
Anyways, I left the profile up for about a month and didn't subscribe. At the end of the month, I had a notification that there were 46 emails in my inbox an 16 greetings. This seemed impressive. Maybe this site was different and my profile was getting more attention due to a broader audience? Better quality candidates? One could only assume, so I finally broke down and decided to subscribe.
First off, when you complete the form a message pops up advising there's a one-time registration fee. Wait a second!!! Funny how this wasn't mentioned anywhere previously. This pissed me off so I deleted everything. Registration fee for what? It made no sense. $75.00 now became $100.00. It's not significant, but really? To a single mom it can make a huge difference.
Oh well, I told myself I deserved to find happiness and I was well worth $100.00. It was my turn to do something for myself. Off I went, signed up and paid. Immediately I noticed all the phone numbers and customer service contact info that was forever present, disappeared. Suddenly a message appeared stating that all fees were non-refundable. This didn't give me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
I immediately logged in to check my inbox. OMG I was so pissed off. There weren't 46 emails in my inbox. The ones that were there were system generated emails when members had liked my picture, very similar to the meet me feature on Plenty of Fish. There were about 20 of these. The so called greetings, are when members click on "meet you", so once again they are all system generated. What a huge let down. I immediately tried to contact customer service to cancel the membership. This was beyond dishonest and misleading. Talk about playing on people's emotions, lying and ultimately ripping them off.
Given my experience with online dating to date and all the stats on how 80% or more of members are dishonest, the last thing I need is for the site itself to further add insult and injury to it's unsuspecting members. They promise they have your best interests at heart, they are there to help you find your soul mate, a state of the art matching system and quality members. Yeah right, I should've stuck to my original stance. Low and behold I couldn't find anyway of contacting customer service. Eventually I found a link, but after completing the feedback form I got an error message stating the message could not be sent! I was so mad. So now here I am stuck with this membership.
To date, I have yet to receive an email from a member. As if I'm not already getting too many emails, now I further get system generated emails to advise me of mutual matches, only 2 to date!
To anyone out there contemplating paying for online dating services, I say don't do it. At the end of the day these companies don't care about helping you finding love, it's all about the bottom line. They play with your emotions and make empty promises to get your money. There are a lucky few that may find love, but I don't believe these sites deserve the credit. After paying for my subscription and doing user searches, many of these guys are on POF and other free sites. So much for the theory that paying makes you more serious....NOT!
Once again, I highly discourage anyone from paying for online dating services. Use the free sites because it's the same people using all the sites and I don't believe any of these companies have a magic formula to help you find love. No matter how much you pay, no site can control whether or not its members are being honest and this has the greatest impact on the success of a relationship. I don't care how pretty they make the site look or how many members they claim to have, we all just need that one special person not millions. Don't be discouraged, chances are you'll have to meet upwards of 100 people before you might find the one. Take it in stride and have fun. Worry about today, don't plan too far in advance or over think.
Good luck, we certainly need it with members and the companies that claim to be there to help us all being dishonest. Dating was so much easier 20 years ago!
Dateless in Ottawa
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