I'm just curious ... is eharmony worth it?

[sonicfan287]

This is just a question for anyone who's used eharmony.

 

I won't go on at length about any "hard feelings" towards past online dating sites, but let's just say I've found them pretty ineffective. That said, maybe it's because they weren't paid sites and the people on them weren't always serious about dating or finding a relationship. EHarmony is always being paraded about (sometimes I think they're the only fans of themselves though) as being this great place to meet people based on compatibility etc.

 

While I am a member for free on there, it gives me little to no criteria to gauge how effective their methods are. For those who don't know, being a free member on eharmony only lets you design a profile for yourself, complete with pictures (that people can't see unless they also pay for a subscription) career, age and basic information. You can still communicate with matches but only in the form of basic "personality ice breaker" questions like "Are you a romantic person?" or "What's your idea of the perfect date?"

 

I tend to be skeptical about these things, but eharmony does have a lot of "matches" for me and they occur fairly regularly but I can't help but feel that it's a gimmick to try to get me to buy a subscription. The "matches" (since I'm a free member) only show up as "Heather Age 25 from wherever, USA", so again, I don't know if me paying for a subscription is going to be worthwhile or just unlock a similar feature set as an OKCupid where you read their bio and send a message.

 

I'm just curious if anyone's paid for the "total connect" or even "basic" subscription and seen results. It's not THAT expensive (around 9.95 or so a month depending on the package) for a subscription where I wouldn't be willing to take the risk. I'd just hate to see I'm being played again and find that 80% or more of my matches aren't even active on the site or able to view my profile and essentially just be sending messages to users in a way that's similar to every other dating site on the market. Even if I were to subscribe, it's not something I've placed high on my priority list, so I'm not in a rush to make this decision. I was just hoping to get some input.

[annie24]

I did it and other sites. IMHO, you'll get fewer matches with eharmony, but more high quality matches with people more serious about finding love. I've had a few relationships come out of it, though i'm single right now.

[shellyf62]

I joined e-harmony & I wasn't impressed with the matches they sent me.

The first guy was 5ft 5in and I am 5ft 7in. It is my preference to date men taller than me, but there was no where for me to state that.

I didn't stay on there for long.

[annie24]

I'm not sure how the Australian site is set up, but i know in the american site you can specify how important something is to you. As in "must have," "flexible" or "unimportant."

[shellyf62]

Maybe I missed that part lol......This guy actually sent me an email to tell me the more he looked at my picture the more in love he fell. I got freaked out after that, so I probably didn't check the site out properly.

[savignon]

I haven't liked it. It's super expensive and all the matches I got were states (States!!) away. There's also no way to try it for 3 months with the minimum subscription being 6 months.

Match is a good alternative.

[annie24]

i think it's good to find out what the most popular sites are in your city and then use that service.

[Kendahke]

I didn't care for either Match or eHarmony. I've liked OK Cupid much better. POF sucked, IMO.

[ChasingHope]

I've used Match, e-harmony, and Tinder. If you are going to pay, I would suggest Match. However, I have met MANY more guys on Tinder. Unfortunately, those didn't pan out, but I guess you have to look at as a numbers game.

 

POF does suck.

[Johnny Utah]

I've been on for almost a year. Nothing. It's different in that you get matches and so you can't just mass send out (as a guy, most sites require this).

 

But I have sent tens and have only had single digits send stuff to me. I get no responses and those that message me I am not attracted to. It doesn't really know how to gauge who I like, but I don't really blame their algorithm because can an algorithm really know you?

 

I am going to give up on this for a bit. I don't think I'll use it again.

[annie24]

People who are using the site for free can't write back. So if you send a response, and don't hear anything, I'd say that 50% of them don't have a subscription.

[IAmFCA]

I dropped it. They sent me no matches and I live in a big metropolitan area. Oh, well they did send me the occasional fellow several states away. Huh??? Maybe I requested too many details, I don't know. I just gave up.

[John John]

I didn't like eHarmony. I felt like it ignored all of my parameters. I found myself swiftly deleting all of my daily matches before I even got the daily email with them. Not a fan, but perhaps in the future I'll try again.

[mfan]

I've been a member of eH for 2 years and gotten very few matches. Probably mostly because I will only date a woman who doesn't want children and this is rather rare. I'm thinking of retaking the personality test (I've heard they allow this if you call them). If I retake it, I'm going to answer it as flexibly as possible so that I receive the maximum number of matches. E.g. on a scale of 1 to 5 I will put very few 1's and 5's, since those may cause me to inadvertently eliminate people without meaning to. I'll be happy to do the work reading the people's profiles myself.

[jennylove]

I always liked pof.

[sonicfan287]

Thank you for your varied input, everybody. I really appreciated and enjoyed reading these responses, although I'm sorry to hear that most people were left without a match from eharmony or even match.

 

I certainly wouldn't mind the prospect of less matches, but higher quality. As it is, I'm bombarded with 8-10 matches a day, who are literally just names to me because the site tells me very little about them other than "26 year old teacher" and their favorite color. What am I going to do with that information? Virtually nothing. The reason I brought this question up is because eharmony keeps asking me to join and tempts me with some "3 month specials" but I don't like how you have to pay up front. In other words, they'll say 9.95 a month but you have to pay over 36.00 at once (because of taxes or fees or some crap). I mean, I'd stick with the 3 months even if it turned out to be a bust at one month into it, but for some reason, it doesn't seem as palatable to me at a 36.00 investment, compared to 3 installments. I guess that's because I like to see results before I pay up. If I pay them $36 for 3 months or $100 for a year all at once before even getting a single match, I just feel kind of nervous about that.

 

OkCupid I must say has given me at least a date or two but it took months. Plenty of fish is okay in terms of being able to talk to the most people but very few of those people (at least in my area) want to date or even hang out. I've gotten a couple numbers from there but I just end up feeling sketchy afterwards, even though they gave me the numbers. I guess I'm just dissapointed that online dating isn't the glorified romantic experience it's portrayed to be on television. Then again, what is?

[Leftright]

Online dating is...how do I put this? ...Synthetic.

...I used to use OKCupid and Pof, but that was a long time ago.

I think the game has changed and there are less and less quality people on dating sites these days.

You might find better quality matches on EH or Match because they are pay sites, but I've heard horror stories from them as well.

[John John]

Online dating is...how do I put this? ...Synthetic.

...I used to use OKCupid and Pof, but that was a long time ago.

I think the game has changed and there are less and less quality people on dating sites these days.

You might find better quality matches on EH or Match because they are pay sites, but I've heard horror stories from them as well.

 

I'm not sure if it's so much that there are less quality people using online dating, but that the sheer number of people in the pool has grown to the point where you have to sift through a lot more sh#t to find those diamonds. There are definitely quality people online...but with everyone and their mother online, and the number of sites, your chances of running into them (and also being a match with you) are akin to winning the lottery, basically.

[mfan]

I'm not sure if it's so much that there are less quality people using online dating, but that the sheer number of people in the pool has grown to the point where you have to sift through a lot more sh#t to find those diamonds. There are definitely quality people online...but with everyone and their mother online, and the number of sites, your chances of running into them (and also being a match with you) are akin to winning the lottery, basically.

 

Ah, yes. And now here's an idea that will be worth 1 million in whatever currency you use: A dating site filter based not on your personality but on which phrases you like to read in other people's profiles. They will show you 100 phrases, commonly found in many users' profiles, like "little black dress", "happy person", "long walks on the beach", "difference between 'you're' and 'your'", etc. For each one you answer "5" if the appearance of said phrase in a woman's profile is appealing to you, and "1" if it isn't. The dating site program then performs correlations between these phrases and other words that commonly occur in such profiles in order to determine whether any given profile is likely to be attractive to you. It then only shows you those profiles. I think this would be a lot better than any personality test.

 

As an example, suppose you say you like profiles that contain "tell the difference between you're and your". Such profiles might also, hypothetically, contain frequent reference to "books", "Scrabble", "wine", and "gym", and suppose they almost never contain the words "partner in crime", "basketball", "nurse", and "hiking". Just hypothetically. The site would then conclude that you like profiles that contain the words "books", "scrabble", "wine" and do not like profiles that contain the words "partner in crime", "basketball", etc. Each profile can then be scored and then presented to you in order of likely appeal to you.

[FlashEng1]

If I'm understanding your idea correctly, you're describing one of the root features of OKC. There was even a point where they emphasized this in your description (writing [[basketball]] to highlight basketball for your profile to match others), but it slowly made it's way into deprecation.

 

My opinion of the sites:

 

Match, expensive with less matches, but of more quality. Great connections and made great friendships.

 

eHarmony, always upsold something to me. I cancelled my subscription and moved on Same with many of these "niche" sites, they always have a 'sister' site that they have to sell, etc.

 

POF, the high school of online dating. Long first messages are what's highly regarded, but the quality of people and what they are wanting/looking for, didn't add up.. I'm sorry but I'm not writing any letter to a profile who talks about being "independent and not needing a man so back off." and.. worse.. misuses "your/you're" agh..

 

OKC, loved it and seemingly more mature. Became admin here and gladly upgraded my profile at one point.. now I lurk when bored and may message once or twice.. This has also been one of the few sites where a simple "Hi, I'm X" message was actually rewarded with replies

 

As a programmer, my opinion may be a bit skewed about websites, and online dating, and algorithms used and what not.. But honestly, I feel the best valued sites are those that offer a free service with the option to "upgrade" your account for smaller enhancements.. Things that would make the experience a little more bearable or refreshing or .. different even. But forcing you to pay ~$30 a month to message someone or for a mathematical system to spit out pictures for you to sift through... I'd rather take that $30 and meet someone at the mall or bar or downtown. Especially now-a-days where everyone is glued to their phones, and (no seriously, MCD you're right ha) everybody has a dating profile! IMHO that doesn't help your situation, that puts the odds back against you (Cash cow websites anyone!??).

[John John]

My opinion of the sites:

 

POF, the high school of online dating. Long first messages are what's highly regarded, but the quality of people and what they are wanting/looking for, didn't add up.. I'm sorry but I'm not writing any letter to a profile who talks about being "independent and not needing a man so back off." and.. worse.. misuses "your/you're" agh..

 

In my experience, POF is the bottom of the barrel. I get women in their 40's with 5 kids emailing me, thinking we actually have things in common. One woman emailed me this amazing opener last week..."high there!"

 

I know others who have met awesome people on POF, but my experience has been nowhere near that!

[annie24]

I think she was trying to say, "I'm high here, are you high there?"