Reviews of Lavalife

Is there a no star rating?

So, I choose the nickname "J8675309", and I write in my headline "if you can figure out my nick, you're from my generation". "J" was for Jenny, and "8675309" was the song (an 80's tune by Tommy Tutone); thinking it would attract people from my generation.

Anyways, I gets this NASTY Email from someone at Lava saying that I am trying to give someone my ICQ number. What dorks. Like, don't give anyone the benefit of the doubt AND ASK if in doubt.

These greedy pricks from Lava are so worried about the possibility of losing a buck, that good old fashioned customer service/care has gone to the wayside.

I hope they go bankrupt.

-S

Lavalife seems to have a lot of control over individuals and they interpret it differently depending on who you are I guess. They allow people to submit "backstage" photos that may be more risque that those normally shown on the profiles. However I have been restricted in publishing some because they indicate it is too "sexually explicit" (this is in their Manline section), however they advertise for their new video service he's hot, he's HARD, he's waiting which to me would seem to indicate they are advocating sexually explicit material. As well, they seem to make unilateral decisions on blocking individuals and if you have purchased credits, any credits remaining are lost and non-refundable. Granted this is in their agreement but again they seem to interpret the agreement as they see fit.

I've used both Lava and the Springstreets network (found on nerve, salon & onion). What I found was that because of the targeted demographic of Springstreet's host sites, it was much much easier to find people who share common interests. On lava, one has to wade through hundreds of profiles (many of which do seem to be fake) to find people with similar interests. Not sure there's a way around that. Maybe they could have designed their profile questionaire to be less generic?

One problem I've found on Lava is that there is no reverse match for age. That is, I can say I'm looking for somone between 30 and 40 years old, but I can't say I'm looking for people who are themselves looking for people between 30 & 40. Problematic because some peolple are looking within a very narrow age range.

Well, after my wrangle with Newmarketgirl, aka, lavalife rep, it seems a torrent of similar-minded men has made itself known here. I think it is almost unanimous, lavalife is rife with fake profiles - most of them created by the service, and all benefitting lavalife in the form of credits spent. I rest my case.

That doesn't mean there aren't real women on the site. I have meet 16 real, attractive women, and talked to at least another 16 on msn messenger. But they were older women, around 40+ most of them, and I'm not bad looking, which explains the limited success I've had. But I never spend a dime on any profile that looks too good to be true. And we all should know by now what kind of ad looks too good to be true. If she is young, beautiful, with a professional photo, forget it. It is bait. Either Lava is baiting you, a porno company is baiting you, or she is baiting you, herself.

I agree with Eric. These paysites are a big scam.

I have been a free member of Singlescrowd. I wrote a profile of myself. Since then, gorgeous ladies all over the world have eagerly sent me messages that I can not read unless I pay for full membership.

I can only see the "profiles" of the girls and their message subject line. They are all beautiful girls, with professional photos of them.

These girls are not real. Not one single one. Their profiles have been planted by the site moderators, and their messages are automatic. How do I know?

Because I put it in my profile that anyone who writes to me should put the specific smilie ;-) in the subject line. I have received more than a hundred messages since then, and not a single one has that smilie in the subject. That means that none of the "girls" have ever read my profile... What are the odds of that happening...?

And sometimes they accidentally put the wrong profile on a girl. A Turkish girl (Turkish name, lived in Ankara) liked watching a certain American TV channel and liked to go to Broncos games... Long way from Turkey to Denver...

What a scam, they make me laugh...

Few people are actually active, especially women. They just put up a profile to do some some browsing and see who writes to them. Most of the time they don't buy any credits. This is probably the most expensive website out there in dating fantasyland. The most attractive women will get the credits used on them the vast majority of the time. Men should consider that women are not very likely to spend much money on credits, just like in real life.

Lavalife is a scam!

I was on their system for a year and NEVER met one of the "single" women on the site.

I actually never even chatted with any of them more than twice and then they "suddenly" stop responding or block me.

Come on! NO dates in a year-I ain't an ugly toad!

AND a lot of the women on there don't buy credits AND a lot of them don't even respond when you send them an email

What a waste of hard earned money.

WHAT A TOTAL WASTE of bothering to post a profile. When I did a search of women 46-50 in a 100 mile radius in the Dallas area that had a photo and were slim to average build and had been online in the past 30 days, I only got 4 FREAKING PROFILES!!!!

Besides all that crap, it is obvious that the vast majority of profiles were no longer active. THIS IS A PROBLEM WITH ALL SITES I HAVE SAMPLED IN THE PAST SEVERAL MONTHS. THEY KEEP ABANDONED PROFILES ONLINE TO MAKE YOU THINK ACTIVE MEMBERS ARE MUCH HIGHER THAN ACTUALLY THE CASE. In reality, you should not expect more than 10% of all listed profiles are actually active and seriously looking, no matter what website you choose to join. Do NOT give any website your money until AT LEAST 30 DAYS has passed. Even attractive women experience a serious dropoff of letters after 30 days.

Even when including women with a backstage photo, there were still very few members in the Dallas area. The numbers pick up in the younger age groups. Match.com leads by a wide margin in the Dallas area for active profiles with photos. Even that rathole Matchmaker has many more women than Lavalife. Losealife would be a better name. Whenever a website goes back to the old Matchmaker way of giving away at least 30 free emails with a 30 day free trial period, that website will explode in popularity. Matchmaker would have kicked Match.com's butt back to at least 2nd place if Lycos hadn't screwed up the site with their chintzy ripoff Friend Finder way of doing things. Now even Lycos is a hasbeen outfit, and it deserves all failures in the marketplace it has received because of its ripoff corporate mentality way of doing things. Match.com could institute the same policy as Matchmaker once had due to its leadership in the marketplace, but it will NOT in order to rake in immediate profits. I hope somebody with the financial backing will build a website along the lines of the old Matchmaker and kick all the current FriendFinderesque websites into virtual oblivion. Match and eHarmony may be the biggies, maybe even Yahoo is in the running, but they all suck to the depths of hell as far as men are concerned due to the severely skewed male/female ratio. 30 free emails for 30 days would keep a steady flow of women posting trial profiles on any major website. Lavalife had the biggest ripoff pay policy of all. They had automatically signed me up to receive collect credit calls from anybody that contacted me, although I never chose that option. Friend Finder taught all these chintzy corporate ripoff personals/dating websites how to scam people instead of stating everything directly up front. Your "free" trial membership isn't worth spit on any of the websites unless you are a woman, because men almost NEVER get contacted first the way women do. A MAN SHOULD NEVER PAY THESE DATING WEBSITES A SINGLE PENNY OF HIS MONEY. Stay off of Lavalife at all costs if you are in the Dallas area, because their membership level is so low it might as well be nonexistent. I hope Lavalife goes down the tubes like Matchmaker did. The search feature on Lavalife also sucks. It only loads 10 profiles per page because you will never very many profiles anyway, and the pages load slow and the profiles are divided into Dating, Relationship, and Intimate categories and you are forced to put a profile on each one in order to even smile at a member there. The old Matchmaker site would allow you to browse any of their communities after you posted a trial membership on any community, and the free emails were good on all of them.

Don't forget that if you are male, THEY ALL SUCK. Every last website is overloaded with desperado males. These websites have survived off the pocketbooks of desperado men since the beginning. It's time to let the women support them just as much and equal out the membership levels before men show them any further serious attention.

I will emphasize what Don has said. American dating websites survive on loser males that blow money and waste time. The only area that men are likely to be successful is women over 50 that actually DO have a hard time meeting suitable men in this country. Until you are suitable for that age group of women, leave the online dating sites alone if you are a decent male. The good thing about the online dating scheme is that it keeps a lot of losers at home and off the treets so that decent guys can be more successful in better dating venues. The only people that consistently do well online are smart and tough women that figure the whole thing out and adamantly avoid the losers that actually form the major population of users. If you are one of those women, the larger and better websites should rate at least 3 stars for you. A male might get lucky and be spotted by one of these better females, but they are few and far between and you shouldn't count on it..

That poster Eric pretty well summed it up. But to put his arguments in a little more rational perspective, I'll tell you why those online dating services (and offline ones too) will never do what we think they're supposed to do. For one thing, most women just don't think that way. When they were little girls, their parents were teaching them "never pick the man, always let him pick you". This is why even a dating service which is on the up and up is always going to be mostly men. I doubt that letting the secret out is going to help many other men avoid wasting money on these outfits which are human pyramid schemes, but if I can help steer one guy away from them it's worth it. Maybe some day when enough guys wise up to this little game, the dating industry will either admit it's a fraud and go broke, or it will be forced to straighten up and fly right.

BTW don't feel bad for me. Being lonely isn't so bad after all when you compare it to being broke.