Reviews of Match.com

I broke up with my fiancee in December of '03. I was a high school teacher in my late 30's with a busy schedule and a limited pool of dating partners, so I joined E Harmony and was in it for about a year. I had several dates from E and two long term relationships. I gave it a try again in the Spring of '06, but found that I was getting very few matches and most didn't fit me. Finally in December of '06 I decided to give Match a try.

Match. has been an absolute failure, a total waste of my time and money. From December to June I must have sent out over 100 combined emails and winks and the final score card reads like this:

* I received responses from only SEVEN women.

* I made it to speaking on the phone with exactly THREE women (and two of those were at the end of June when my time was about up).

* The first one I spoke with, we had several conversations and then she got cold feet before meeting, saying "we needed to talk on the phone more."

* I never met face to face with anyone until June (phone call #2). We both had talked and joked at length about our bad expereinces with people on Match and met for lunch. We appeared to have a nice time at lunch and agreed to meet again. Then she did the thing I hate the most. She stopped answering her phone and just ignored me. God, I hate that. If you don't want to see me, fine we're both adults, please tell me. Don't ignore someone's phone call.

* Phone call #3 was a standard "few pounds overweight" on her profile, and she is close to 300 in real life. (BTW I realize at my age I am not looking for, nor am I going to find a rail-thin supermodel type on a dating site. I don't mind a few extra pounds, but obesity turns me off.

So there you have it, close to 100 dollars and three phone conversations and over 95% of the women I contacted did not even have the common decency to respond. This is probably my biggest complaint. You find someone whom you match with in about 20 of 25 categories, including some of the big ones like religion or politics, and drop them friendly note. They don't even give you the courtesy of saying "no thanks" in a polite manner.

I begin to wonder what the women on this site are looking for. I have found a few that I feel have "unrealistic expectations," for instance a legal secretary, 42 with two kids, who was only looking for men making 100K or more. Yeah, that's gonna happen Hon, let me know how that works out for you.

At least with E Harmony, I had more contact with prospective matches and had more dates (the first go round anyway). Match is an unmitigated disaste. I wonder what the women out there are looking for.

Having subscribed to Match in the past (7yrs ago?), and just out of a long-distance relationship, I'm again considering options. Those years ago, I did have several face-face dates, nothing led to serious though.

From recent opinions of Match, and the revamped site, it still appears to be more Males seeking, and tons of Female profiles. But, it is true that Females are not as likely to respond, and I sometimes wonder why they post profiles if they don't respond or initiate chat.

EVERY date I've gotten online was from ME sending a contact. Sure, I've had plenty of winks, but come to think of it, can't remember ever getting a written email from a woman. And maybe ever a 1 in 20 written response to my emails. Are they just shy, or not serious?

It would make sense to only show pictures to paying subscribers, since you can only fully communicate when paying. But now restricting pictures would deter marketing efforts, huh? And what about the profiles that are over 3 weeks not online? Why post them; we should only see members that are active within 1-2 weeks at most, AND see exactly how many days since they logged in.

Bottom line - you need a kiddie site where anyone can post fee profiles - OR you need to setup a serious site where EVERYONE is a paying customer, and keep it reasonably priced. Match (or any site) doesn't work having FREE and PAY together. It makes me feel like a guy paying to use a pool, and the females get in free with access to only sun themselves around the pool. And most of them don't want bothered.

Match.com is horrible at protecting their clients from spamming/fraud. Nearly 100% of the letters I receive are from alleged "women", who in the first communication, insist on only communicating through yahoo chat. Every now and then one will be bold enough to send her spam directly. It is absolutely ridiculous. I have notified "member services" but they do nothing. I even contacted them about different so-called female clients who obviously have the same photo, and who contacted me. When I notified member services to complain, all they did was remove the photos, but not the profiles. These "women" still wrote to me! I would give them a lower rating if I could.

Jak has it right. You will get MUCH better response in the real world if you are male. The REAL world is where a male has some kind of a chance. Females can have a much better response on the internet, if they are not some kind of sasquatch or psycho, because they overall are outnumbered by men several to one. The real world is not like that.

I tried Match in the past, and it was a total dud. Most women have emotional issues and are cherry picking, etc. If she meets a male that rates way above her level ,then she will show some interest. Otherwise, they can meet guys at their level in the real world. A male actually has a better chance of meeting a woman on lesbianpersonals.com than he does on match.com, and the physical quality on average is better on that site as well. Most of the gals there are bisexual, not lesbian. More are married than single. Very few women are actually lesbian, but most are bisexual if they are honest enough to admit it. Some of them can't admit it, so they end up on sites like Match.com and pretend to be heterosexual. Any woman who would refuse sex with the right female when she comes along will also usually have trouble in relationships with men since she has hangups regarding sex. Any honest and open minded woman will put you straight on this one. The happiest women you are likely to meet are practicing bisexuals, and they usually prefer straight acting males. Kinda makes sense, as everybody in the relationship gets what they want. Super hetero women are usually the ones that have tried to get me involved in a relationship with their bi male lovers. Why would a very horny super hetero female want a super hetero male? Well, they don't, unless he is a swinger willing to share her with other men. Most women are bisexual, but living in a relationship that appears heterosexual to the outside world. Match.com and most dating websites aim at a hetero male and hetero woman relationship scenario, and among the most sexually active couples, that just isn't the way things work out.

In spite of all the hoopla about internet dating, most people who actually get involved in relationships tend to have met in person at bars, work, or social activities. I have met more women lately by taking my dog for a walk in the park than I did in several months of internet browsing. Women like it when a man takes an acute interest in a pet, as it means he has a giving side. The same can be true of women. Women married to a career that don't have time for a pet, have no time for you as well. The most they would want is occasional sex, on their time schedule.

The best use of the internet is in searching out social organizations where you can actually meet other people, without sex and relationships being the primary reason for being there. If there is a compatibility and sexual interest, it will make itself known soon enough.

Am personally in the older 'geezer' demographic (62), and experiences have been a mixed bag with Match.com (several dates over 6 months, plus a tempestuous 5-month relationship), but as was previously mentioned, though anyone can post a profile, both parties have to actually be paying customers to correspond, so that does skew the response numbers. Although, I think paying does 'raise the bar" a bit, especially compared to the 'freebie' sites like CraigsList, or PlentyofFish, and I like that Match requires more info. in the profile than some of the other sites.

One thing not addressed, especially in the 'mature' segment, is that the older we get, we all usually have lots more complicated lives, accumulating grown kids, grandkids, various ex-es, etc., which makes incorporating a new intimate relationship a much more difficult task than it was in our younger years. Speaking from the male side, this seems especially true dealing with older women and their relationships with their grandkids.

I'm also surprised how many women in this age group prominently include pics of their dogs in their profiles, and how often they specifically say things like "my dog and I", "must love dogs", or "love me-love my dog", etc.

Match . com is full of ignorant females who dont email a reply to you. In my opinion save yourself a lot of cash and go out into the real world to meet people. Match.com sucks, a group of friends (7) and myself were on it for 1 month to try it out and not 1 of us recieved any mail or replys. Avoid it and spend your hard earned cash on something else.

If you are a male, it's not you, it's match.com that sucks.

My experience with match.com has not been good.

I'm not God's gift to women, but in real life I run into a lot of women who are interested in me (the problem is that it's at work & I'm not into socializing there). I'm a 41yo successful physician & trained astronauts prior to medicine. I have no children/baggage. I'm in as good of shape as any 41yo I've ever met, and easily look 35 or less. I run 40 miles a week, and lift weights. I have many different interests. Objectively, I'm a solid 8 out 10 on facial looks. My profile was well written, and not excessively long.

I was a member at match for two months.

I ultimately met 2 women. One was crazy. The other was beautiful, but she was in the acute stages of getting over a rotten marriage. She had no business dating anyone. She was primarily getting an ego boost from being wanted by all sorts of guys after she was rejected by her husband.

I did get to the point of talking on the phone with two other girls, but never heard from them again....no email, nothing.

I'm fairly personable.

I'm new to dating again after my first divorce. I was starting to think that dating is impossible these days. Prior to my match.com experience I was very confident with myself. My lack of success on match was starting to make me seriously doubt myself until I started reading several review sites like this one.

All of the reviews by men are right on the money. The odds are heavily slanted against men. Match.com will do nothing for a male ego.

I suggest getting off your(my) butt and socializing in person....volunteer groups, photography clubs, running clubs, night classes, etc.

Most reviews from men here are right on the money. The one good thing about match.com is that it provides an opportunity for men to learn how superficial women really are by simply reading their profiles.

Whatever happened to the days of AOL and A/S/L? Wow, these reviews are really discouraging. I have not tried any dating sites, but have been thinking about it. A friend of mine recently joined Match.com and he told me basically what everyone else is saying, its impossible to meet women. Though I have never tried a dating site, I must say I was at the forefront of meeting women online back in the mid-90s when chatting on AOL was all the rage. It was so easy to meet women. All you had to do was spend a short time chatting and next thing you know you were face to face. This was back when I had a crappy 486, a third-world modem connection and photos were basically impossible to send. I remember how you just had to trust that the person was telling the truth about how they looked. I met a few brutal pigs, but I also met some real attractive girls. I remember on several occasions sneaking out of the house in the middle of the night to go bang some girl I met an hour before on AOL. Its been over ten years since I met someone online and I can see that the online scence has drastically changed for the worse. Good Luck to everyone.

Why do most of the women on the site rate match much higher than men?

My guess is since there are ten times more men than women on ALL dating sites, women that are halfway decent looking get tons of attention, even the fat ugly ones get lots of email and winks since most men have 0 chance with anything pretty.

It's an ego KILLER for men and a huge ego BOOST for women. "Ooooh I am so pretty...all these men want me!" NEXT.... and so on. Because of this, women will always be looking for the next best thing and leave their profiles up even after they meet somebody.

This is not match.com fault, its the natural demographic of online dating. There are simply more males online than females. In the real world, there are still always more men "looking" and available but the numbers are less skewed.

I have done several seven day free trials over the years and everytime its pretty much the same story. Find decent girls in the area, send out emails, get zero or close to zero response. I don't think I ever met somebody face to face from match. Had better luck on CL and Plenty of Fish.

I won't pay, and I don't. Why bother?