disharmonious

I seem to have successfully canceled eHarmony online via my account settings. I thought I would have to call customer service to do so – let’s hope I never have to.

The last straw with eHarmony came yesterday when the only match with whom I’ve ever reached the open communication stage “closed” our match, just hours after I requested to progress to a phone call or meeting. He selected the reason “I just don’t think the chemistry is there.” You never even met me, dumb ass! I had a feeling this guy might be trouble when he initially closed me on the same day our match was delivered. I was pretty surprised and disappointed that he closed me, as it was apparent from our profiles that we have a lot of common interests, including international travel, ethnic food, etc. Plus, he actually lives in St. Louis, he looked cute, and he answered “yes” to wanting to have kids. I decided to take a chance and ask him to “reopen” me. He did, and we were communicating every day for 5 days via the site. In one of his questions he asked me, out of “curiosity,” why I wanted to reopen him as a match and confessed that it was “his bad” for initially closing me. I got the feeling that he might be a bit full of himself as well as extremely picky, but I took the risk that I could perhaps pass his test. Alas, I was not even worthy of a meeting. Maybe he was annoyed that I stole his thunder and requested to meet in person before he did, or maybe he likes girls to be more flirty and fawning all over him before they’ve even met him (not my style). But probably he closed me because I don’t look like Natalie Portman. Sorry dude.

This type of experience isn’t unique to eHarmony of course, but due to the way eHarmony is structured I was perhaps coming across as more boring than I actually am. I also think eHarmony sends the message that unless you think your match is your absolute soulmate, don’t bother meeting them in person or – heaven forbid – considering a friendship with them. I don’t have time to waste on this anymore. I’m going to try Match.com again (it’s been over a year and a half since I subscribed there), and I’ll keep trying OkCupid, as well as more in-person social events. Sigh.

eHarmony sucks

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.