I am sincere, honest, loyal, intelligent, and a fun guy to be with (aren't those the traits women are really looking for in a mate?). Because I am shy, and I am not in a work or social situation where I meet many eligible women, online dating seemed to make sense. Besides, I have two friends who met their spouses online. I was a paying subscriber at eharmony for two and a half years. During that time, I received 996 matches. That averages to just over a match a day. I ended meeting face to face with three of them and dated one for about a year. I do not think those are great numbers.

Well over a half of the matches I was sent did not bother to take the time to answer more than one or two of the questions asked in their "introductory profile". I ended up automatically closing them out. By their lack of effort, they indicated to me that they were not as serious about meeting someone worthwhile as I was. My logic was: If a match was not willing to make the effort to fill in a few blanks, how could I be sure that they would be able to follow through with what was necessary to make a successful relationship work?

Then, eharmony would feel free to change the parameters of my preferences in order to connect me with more matches. I did not wish to date anyone located more than an hours drive away, as I have a handicap and traveling can be difficult. But they thought it was OK to connect me with matches that were living over 200 miles away! Sometimes I was sent matches outside of my desired age range. I had to constantly check my settings to make sure they weren't diddled with. I shan't get into the topic of non responses after I made the initial contact, as enough words about that have already been written in these pages.

I realize that they could only send me matches with women who had signed up for their service, but after the time and money I spent there, I was not satisfied. It got to the point where I couldn't wait for my subscription to end. When I canceled, they started to send me promotional email in order to lure me and my $$$ back. I will give them credit that when I did make the call to customer service asking them to cease their solicitations, they were polite about it.

The thing that bothered me most about eharmony is this: When I first signed up, they seemed to be satisfied with just offering their customers their service. After they started accepting advertising, they plastered it all over their website and their newsletters started "suggesting" things to do on a date, like going to particular movies, or visiting specific coffee chains, etc., I found that to be annoying. I came to the conclusion that eharmony had sold out big time, and I was just another cog in their ever growing corporate machine. That, more than anything else, is why I canceled my subscription.