I’ve been neglecting the blog a bit due to other responsibilities, but let me just write a rant now on how terrible eHarmony is. I know some people have had luck finding spouses there, but first of all, the men on the site in this area are generally too religious for me, to the point of talking about the Grace of God in their profile. That is a bit much for me (and I doubt they could tolerate an unenlightened “spiritual but not religious” person such as me). But even worse is the fact that after viewing the matches they’re sending me I’m 99% sure that their touted compatibilty/matching algorithm is bogus. Why? Because I was “matched” with a completely fake profile that someone obviously created as a joke. The picture was of Will Farrell and every profile answer lauded the glory of Bud Light. I searched for the “report/flag photo/profile” button that I’ve seen on other sites, but it doesn’t exist on eHarmony. Instead I had to waste my time going through the motions of closing this match as if it were a real match. My time is precious and I don’t appreciate having to spend it on fake matches. Another profile I was matched with supposedly came from a male, but the only accompanying photo was of a Pakistani or Indian woman in traditional garb, and the text was clearly not written by a native English speaker. I think the person filling it out was a bit confused…

I’m almost positive that eHarmony is just sending me completely random profiles as matches, and now they’re consistently sending me completely random people from Iowa, Kentucky, and Indiana, despite me setting a preference of 60 miles max. distance for my match. I really doubt there is any sophisticated matching going on behind the scenes here. The ability of the user to control who they’re matched with is low. I feel that I waste a lot of time  looking at and closing matches who are clearly not a good fit for me.

Another issue I have with them is that during the sign-up process and in a subsequent e-mail they mention a “auto-renew” button in the user’s account settings. I wanted to turn this button off so that I didn’t get charged for renewal, but guess what? The button does not exist. Your only option is auto-renew!

I made the mistake of falling for one of their deep discounted subscription offers about a month ago, but I’m going to cancel soon. I’ve read online about some users having problems at the cancellation stage – I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I will be able to cancel without incident.