I recently joined Eharmony for a 3 month subscription. During that time I had 800 matches (about 4-7 matches were sent to me per day). Of those 800, only about 30 were involved in any kind of guided communication with me. Of those 30, only 8 progressed to open communication. I spoke with 5 of them on the phone and went on dates with a grand total of 2. So if my statistics hold true for others, you have only a .25% of actually going on a date with someone from Eharmony. In my opinion that is a really low return on the investment of $60 a month. I can make some other observations:

1. The majority of Eharmony users are non-paying and can’t respond to you: This is the key problem of Eharmony, Match.com and other paid services. Unless they pay, they can’t talk with you. Eharmony won’t even tell you who the non-paying members are or just match you with paying members. It becomes frustrating to know that someone who you think you might be compatible with is unable to respond to you. There are sometimes these free communication weekends, but they are few and far between.

2. Many women on Eharmony have unrealistic expectations: I think the Internet has the problem of commoditizing relationships like you are looking for a book or DVD on Amazon.com. All of us, men and women have strengths and flaws, but there are some individuals on Eharmony who want someone of outstanding physical attractiveness like a movie star or have a lot of money or some other aspect and don’t really give a chance to get to know someone on other than a superficial viewpoint.

3. Many women on Eharmony have busy lives and are not really serious about finding someone, even if they state the contrary: I have had a couple of guided communications fail because we would initially answer the first few steps and then she would not respond after a week, so I would assume she lost interest and close her out. There is no excuse for not being able to get to a computer for that long. If you were interested in the person you’d find a way. I have had some matches who I spoke with on the phone a lot for the first few days and then for whatever reason she never called back or cared about how I was doing. I felt like I was doing all the work in initiating phone calls and emails and she was not doing anything on her end. One girl left me a message saying that she would call me back later, but she never did. Unfortunately Eharmony does not have the ability to filter out people who do not want to take this seriously.

4. Eharmony has no feature for body shape / members can put up misleading photos: Unlike Match.com, Eharmony does not have any selection process for body shape. You can see your match’s height, but that does not tell you if they are slender, average, athletic, overweight, etc.. This is an important feature to have. While I know that attraction is not just based on looks, it is also important. One of the two people whom I met from Eharmony turned out to be a lot more overweight than her photos suggested that she was. When we met at a coffeeplace I looked around and had no idea who she was until I saw an obese girl in the corner and realized it was her. I had a coffee date with her for an hour anyway, but realized that we had no chemistry. If she was not honest about her appearance, what else was she not telling me? It’s best to be honest with your appearance and not lie about it. It might be helpful to ask some subtle questions like “how often do you work out” or to ask her for some better photos. Either way, its Eharmony’s deficiency for overlooking this physical element in compatibility.

5. Don’t spend too long in email and phone communication: There are some girls whom I have spoken to who are content to just email back and forth. They sometimes need to be pushed to go to the next step. While I can understand that there can be nervousness and concern about safety, within 2 or 3 email exchanges you should get a phone number. You don't need to have a penpal. From your first phone conversation, plan to meet her within a week or so. I find that email and phone compatibility is different from compatibility in real life, since there’s no physical element and you can’t read the person’s non-verbal cues. If there is any kind of potential, you want to have that first date soon so you can see if she is the one and not waste a lot of time emailing and phone calling just to find that you don’t have chemistry when you meet. With the second girl I met from the site, we found that we did not have much in common when it came to outside interests. She liked the bar scene, while I did not. She was employed in a different field than I. Instead of online dating, it’s probably better to join a club or activity group to meet someone whom you can have common interests with. Eharmony’s system is not a great judge in this regard.

So as you can see, I can’t recommend that anyone use Eharmony as the chances of meeting the right person is very, very remote. You might get excited at the number of matches that they give you that you have some hope of meeting someone, only to find that most of them won’t work out or even respond to you in the first place. It will be a waste of your time and effort if you use the service and you will end up feeling emotionally devastated that you are un-dateable.