Reviews of Yahoo! Personals

Part of this post is directed at Jamie in VA. Thanks for taking the time to coherently list (and spellcheck - THANK YOU!) the tips you posted. I personally am guilty of only 1 sin: I have 5-6 pics and one is of my motorcycle (with a full-length of me and the dog). The intent is to show I'm in good shape and have (and can afford) an active lifestyle - not some fat slob with a beer gut.

Now this is a guy talking, but I can't quite square with you about the biker chick thing. Also, I suspect that some of your comments (all good, by the way) may be more applicable to one age grouping v. another.

If you've read my earlier post, I'm in my 50's, probably average looking, and financially secure. Divorced 5 yrs, but just now getting back into it. I'm impressed with the efficiency of internet dating - and, I don't have to go bar slumming (we can't stay up late, ya know!).

Even tho I am a rookie getting back into dating, I really do feel comfortable and at ease meeting these women on-line and later on dates. I like that I can pick & choose, I have some control over the process, the quality has been excellent, and it is not a blind date. The nasty ones (women, in my case) seem to weed themselves out even before the first phone contact.

As far as the lack of response goes, I think you have to keep in mind that some people are shy, some have not paid, some are holding out for the perfect specimen....who knows & who cares. For some (both sexes), it's just plain entertainment to window shop thru the profiles. Considering what's on TV, can you blame them for being online constantly?

OK, Jamie - back to you. Provide an age range so I can put your comments in perspective. Perhaps older people are more polite and considerate than 20-30 group. Maybe one of the (few) advantages of getting older is that both sexes have played all the games in their youth and are now accepting of "good enough" instead of absolute perfection.

I receive about 6-12 wink/emails per week, only 1 would remotely consider. But, it is nothing to write back a short note saying "Thanks for the interest, but I may have met someone that caught my attention. luck with your searches".

Jamie-this is not at you, but everybody that is so self important to think they are allowed to blow off compliments because they get more than 1/week and the sender is "not up to their standards". It takes me 20 seconds to pound out one of these thank you notes - What is the big deal? It probably does more for me to send it than the person who complimented me in the first place?

Is there any substantiated information that attractive women gets 100 emails/week? I find that ludicrous, even for the horny 20-something group.

If a person doesn't respond to a flirt from me, it's OK. Either they have their own issues, which automatically screens them and saves me the hassle later on a wasted date, or they haven't joined. More of the population needs sales training, so they realize that a 10% response rate is terrific.

In closing, it does a body good to engage in a little (positive?) ranting now and then! I'm looking forward to being enlightened by your perspective.

I'm in my 50's and have been on Match for about 2-3 weeks. I am happy with the experience so far, and find a lot of the criticism on these forums either worthwhile or sour-grapes. I've had 3 face2face dates with really nice women; one was clearly out of my league. Remember, it takes a week or so to get up and running.

But my question is with Yahoo. Do they have the same system as Match wherein some (or most?) of the profiles are not paying customers, and thus cannot be contacted?

Also, to refute some of the flaming that Match (and probably Yahoo is getting), I did a search; say age 45-55 males with slender build in a certain zip, did the same search for females in the same zip. I believe the search hit it's max limit (in racing, we say the needle was pegged). I continually refined the search for both sexes till the "needle" came alive. The number of males was approximately 230-250; the females were within 5%. OK, it's not scientific, but it certainly reflects my gut and refutes a lot of the BS that's flying around.

Anyway, that's my take. For the $50 bucks I spent, it's a deal, and been kinda fun. Now, if somebody has some objective comments to make about the Match v. Yahoo methods of operation, I would love to read the post.

Well I've finally decided I'm done with on-line personals FOREVER!!!! I found women who I meet on-line are either extremely dishonest or don't show up at all on a first date. I'm a very eligible and attractive guy. I have a graduate degree, spent three years overseas, love the outdoors, and am a great cook and all I attract are women who are LOSERS!! I guess from now on I'm only dating women who are in the real world and not cyberspace. I guess guys like me finish last with on-line dating. Thanks for nothing and now it's time to move on with my life.

While I liked being able to browse through the pictures and profiles, I concluded the Yahoo! Personals was not for me. The men write dozens of e-mails with no responses. Attractive women who post their picture have to sort through hundreds of e-mails.

I ended up signing up with eHarmony and it worked well for me. I like the fact the eHarmony matched me with women that I had a few things in common with and I could decide if I thought there was potential. If I liked the picture and profile, I simply selected 5 multiple choice questions for her to answer. If she responded great, if not, I saved a lot of time. I appreciated that there was a minimal time investment until we both had decided to investigate the possibilities further.

I think that I was a bit of a challenge for eHarmony. I live out in the middle of nowhere. I don’t think there are 1000 people within 10 miles of me. Still, I found a wonderful woman that loves me for who I am. What more can a guy ask for?

I know when I first started my eHarmony experience, I wish I had the benefit of some thoughtful advice. I have spent a lot of time considering our eHarmony experiences and I came up with a number of eHarmony tips and suggestions. If you are curious, they are posted at: www.RomanceForEveryone.com

eHarmony certainly isn’t for everyone. If you are serious about finding someone to share your life with and you are willing to invest the time, I think eHarmony is a good option to consider.

Yahoo personals has a new quirk that I strongly dislike.

If, for example you a paying member and send some actual mail (not an icebreaker)..if they are not a paying member it will not allow you to give them your e-mail address..it deletes it, or gives some "unable to display e-mail" blurb.

And it has an option of an icebreaker that says "How do you like to be contacted?" but if you arent a paying member I cant respond with my e-mail anyway. (there are of course creative ways around this..but still what the hell?)

Ok now for my personal experience, and a few tips. A womans point of view. Some of us receive about 10 responses a week. And it CAN be quite overwhelming.

So I'm sorry, sometimes I dont answer. The generic icebreaker is not going to catch my interest, and more often than not will not get a response.

I know there are a lot of negative reviews here about Yahoo here. But if you want to succeed here are some tips.

1. READ her profile, and assume she was sober when she wrote it. If you are older, significantly shorter, or do not meet her match requests, do not be suprised if you do not receive a response. Especially if you just send an icebreaker.

2. Have a recent picture posted, and if you do not/can not. Pay for the subscription so you can correspond and send her one via e-mail.

3. Be realistic in your expectations. All of you who are pissed off that you dont hear back from these gorgeous model's or find out they're a scam? Take a good hard look in the mirror..What would a model want with you? I am a good looking woman, and I have met and gone out with some attractive men. But not one has been take your breath away gorgeous, of the weekly 10 I receive at least 7 are significantly outside of my match request on some level. I have several friends who are wonderful women and actually quite pretty, but ya'll are ALL after the super young gorgeous ones.

4. Yes there are women who are only in it for the money. But there are plenty that are not. Talking about your cars and your boat is just lame. Having a picture of it in your profile is reason for mocking.

5. If you are over 40 get rid of the picture of you on your motorcycle, and if you have one, don't mention it in your ad unless you want a biker chic. It doesnt make you cool, it makes you an old guy on a bike.

6. Do not talk about sex, sexuality, sensuality, backrubs or footrubs or any other such crap in your profile or first e-mail. Assume we are not frigid, and will allow you to touch us if we become involved. That just skeeves us out. UNLESS you are looking for a booty call. And dont call us sweetie, honey, princess, or goddess in the first e-mail, we may very well be, but thats just weird.

7. Get a divorce, or be in the actual process of it..Separated but living in the same house? You deserve to be smacked. The answer of "I'll tell you later under marital status" is unacceptable...and makes us angry. IF you are married and just looking for "fun" unless she very clearly states she is looking for a married man to meet on the sly, assume she isn't, we find your e-mails very depressing and you ruin it for the decent guys.

8. If you are above 35 there is a good chance that alot of the women will have been married and or have children...if this is a deal breaker for you, that's stupid. But it's your life. However, if your profile requests that your match be single-never married and/or NOT have children and you contact those of us who have and/or do? We will assume you did not read our profile and delete you.

9. Do not tell her about your previous relationship until she either asks, or you meet in person. Telling us that you "still have love for your ex" does not tell us you're sensitive, it tells us you're carrying a torch..buh bye.

10. Be patient, realize that she may have dozens of responses, or send her another short e-mail. If your first one didnt catch my eye, your second might. And dont expect her to meet you immediately.

11. When she does respond and tells you she isn't interested, dont be a jerk. This is why some women have stopped responding, because some guys have gotten mad at them for not being interested. Even if she sends a canned response, even if it is lame, keep it to yourself. Sending a nasty message is not going to change her mind it is just ugly.

12. If you get an e-mail from us. Respond. I dont care if "they" didnt respond to you. Its karma, dont expect the great scales to balance if you don't do your part.

13. Of all of my friends who are on Yahoo. NOT one guy who wasn't interested responded to tell us so. NOT ONE. So quit your complaining you all do it just as much as we do.

14. Be willing to just be friends. A dated someone for almost a year (until I had to relocate for my job) who I started out just being friends with. Sometimes just hanging out together opens up both parties eyes. And sometimes you just get a great friend out of it. Seriously.

Sometimes a really great guy may not have the greatest profile, or express himself so great online, life isnt fair. But invest the time, be open minded and NICE and you may get lucky...ok?

The problem with Yahoo is that it doesnt allow foreigners to place profiles. The problem is that the foreigners still place the profile but it doesnt allow them to register under thier respective countries. So for example, a girl living in the Philippines will enter a USA zip code because it wont allow her to enter the Philippines as her home. The girls should state in thier bio that they are living overseas but they usually dont. So a guy is browsing the profiles in his area and see`s a particular girl he likes and pays for a subscrition only to find out the girl is living halfway around the world.

I actually paid for the service figuring, what the hell, there must be something good about it. Well I spent about a month on the site. I sent out at least 20 notes, emails, hellos, etc. Not ONE SINGLE response. Then I found a male friend of mine who has sold his picture to companies online that publish it as a real person with a profile and everything (he is a young man with a young man's physique). I have come to the conclusion that this is a scam. The only responses I ever recieved were spammers luring me to porn sites. I will be going back to the bars and dating the old fashioned way.

I haven't paid for any online service, thanks to the reviews posted here. I did have one tip that might help deal with the problem of automatic renewals of membership. That is, you'd like to sign up for a month or so, but don't want your credit card automatically charged for a renewal of service.

One of my cards allows me to generate temporary, single-use transaction numbers. You use this number instead of your real credit card number. I can specify the number have a specific dollar limit (say, the cost of an initial membership), or, I can specify a recurring amount (say, the monthly cost of membership, with an expiration in three months).

If you use a temporary number, and Yahoo tries to automatically renew beyond the limits you've set, it will simply be declined. If you like the service and want to continue, simply create a new temporary number and enter that into your account information before renewal time.

One tip, though. If you have a yahoo email address that you use for things other than online dating, then don't sign up with Yahoo Personals using this account. Create a whole new and separate account for signing up with Yahoo Personals. Why? When your renewal charge is declined, they may just cancel your entire account, including your email account, according to their TOS.

The good:

There is a lot to like about this service. Using some reasonable search criteria, I found over 1,000 potential matches within 50 miles. The site is quite easy to use. Their help desk cured a technical problem I had within several days of me reporting it, though I did have to fight their natural impuse to respond with form letters having nothing to do with my problem. I did get an actual date, with a reasonable woman from this site within the first couple of weeks. I didn't feel a spark, and didn't ask for a second date (don't think she wanted one either) - but she was a real person, and "as advertised."

The bad:

From a technical perspective, the site could use some improvements. Managing large numbers of profiles is difficult, because they apparently only allow a user to hide a maximum of 250 profiles. Since a guy like me needs to contact hundreds of people to hope to get even one date, it becomes difficult to remember to whom I have written, and to whom I have not. Even a checkmark or something in the search results would help me not re-contact people.

A feature that would allow a quick search based on the other people's criteria would be sooo helpful to both the men and the women. Having to wade through hundreds of women looking for men taller than me is tiresome. U-Date has a two-way match feature that meets such an obvious need - but few other sites have it.

As with others, I am having trouble getting my profile update accepted due to non-existant "contact information."

The Ugly:

As with most men who write reviews for these sites, I am finding that it is almost impossible to get a date. I am at a disadvantage because I am 5' 5" tall - but otherwise, good looking, six figure income, atheletic, Masters Degree, world traveler, and so on. I am not too far from having a million dollars in assets (though I don't tell anyone that to avoid gold-diggers). I have written to several hundred ladies (and these were screened to make sure I was at least close to their criteria), and only gotten a handful of any kind of response, and all but two of those were outright rejections. I am sure that if I were to accept heavier women, I could have more responses - but my brain is such that I just don't find excess weight attractive, just as most women don't find men of my height attractive.

I still believe on-line dating has great potential, but the services need to work a bit harder:

-- Include a two-way match function -- Recognize that men need to work with hundreds, maybe thousands of search results in order to find even one date, and structure the sites to help them manage that -- Advertise in women's magazines, women's shows and so on to get the gender ratio more balanced

First of all i just read what that guy just wrote about yahoo personal women! hahahha Im trying not to pee my pants right now, First of all i am pretty normal and hot! lets say model looking and i have a good head on my shoulders, and im not a golddigger, and i am pretty much the package deal, so any man that gets me will be lucky, i know plenty of women like me who are online and not fucked up, i just wanted to correct that idiot, perhaps he is fucking ugly and some women dissed him online.