Reviews of Yahoo! Personals

I’m not sure why any online dating sites are still allowed to operate, and why anyone, especially men, continue to subscribe to them. First, you must get past the obvious scam, that being…there are *few* paying female members, when you are led to believe the site is buzzing with activity. Beyond that, you then have to weed through ads from other zip codes, ads for the morbidly obese, not to mention hundreds fake ads that clutter these sites. The writing in the profiles is often so incoherent, it’s like reading Xmas wish lists written by people with marginal literacy. Negativity, whining and complaining are the norm and some have such little written info you’re at a loss how to respond. If you do happen find an interesting profile, it’s obvious she’s only posted it there in hopes of dating someone in a higher income bracket. That slot for ‘desired salary’ is just so romantic.

The biggest joke about online dating is the pretense that it allows you to ‘connect’ with someone based on intangible qualities, like personality, mutual interests or goals…when in reality all it does is enable someone to efficiently evaluate you based on shallow, pre-determined criteria. Once you read about a hundred profiles you will realize anything that makes you remotely individual or interesting basically works against you and to get any sort of response you have to ‘pad your resume.’ It doesn’t matter if you speak Latin, love photography or compete in bodybuilding, writing an honest profile gets you nowhere. In the online dating world, apparently all women(regardless of their imperfections) want the trifecta…a 6ft. tall, 6 figure income trophy with a square jawline (who“doesn’t mind dressing in nice clothing for a night out on the town”).

Most people post the ‘free trial’ ads during cubicle screw-off time at work and have no intention of ever joining, let alone respond to every schmuck who sends a wink or icebreaker. Determining who the paying members are is difficult, and the amount of time you will waste sending out emails is directly proportional to how far you deviate from the prototype mentioned above. If you are ‘fortunate’ enough to meet a few of these women in real life, you will see they used their most flattering photo(s) in their profile. And of course, since many of them bring nothing to the table themselves, other than a nasty smoking habit and a warped sense of entitlement, you will wonder why you had to exchange three emails and misrepresent yourself just for a coffee date.

Granted, online dating is relatively inexpensive. But it’s essentially the exact opposite of speed dating--once you factor in your time, it quickly becomes a losing proposition since you will have to invest a lot of it to meet few women in return. It’s inefficient at best, and at worst, an outright fraud.

This service has one purpose - take your money and give you just enough but not too much so that you walk away ... Just as my subscription is about to end, I end up getting an email from this supposedly "part time model" - the problem is that I recognized the photo since I'd seen her on the cover of one of these fashion magazine. She happens to live in France! All of sudden she is in nerd city looking for middle aged men - right!

All I have to say is that the Yahoo personals (YP's) and match.com (MC) is losing customers right and left - thanks to myspace.com. The YP's and MC used desperate people like most of us, while emotionally scarring us (not to mention ripping us off), to make money off of our search for online 'love'. Myspace is the perfect place for meeting people near your city and with common interest - and it's FREE!!!!!!! It allows you to be creative and view a person's personality with more than just a bunch of vague questions. You can post blogs, write your favorite stuff, give real background of yourself with more detail, and contact someone with usually quick responses (not wait 30 days for a pity letdown reply) of course, again - it's for FREE!!!!!!!!!! Take that YP's and MC, no more money wasted on your shitty service. People are starting to meet people on there and stray away from those 'other' dating services. Before you know it, YP's and MC will be no more....who's with me on this????

My impression with online service is that they tightly regulate the passage of information. Even if there are real people on the other end, the likely chance your message reach the destination is minimal, until your bank account is broken, and your chance is still minimal!

If you do want to get Yahoo's attention, do what I did. In your introduction area, tell the person who is reviewing your profile come over to edatereview.com and have a look. Next thing I know it there there are two ladies sending me e-mails. Now that's a very quick response!! Of course it is a no brainer that the e-mails are originated from yahoo employees.

I read a news article a few weeks back that a person was suing yahoo personal for encouraging their employees to date their clients in order to keep the membership rolling. Don't know how true this is, but obviously people are not doing this for no reason. I think two sites were being sued by two different people.

Hi, I'm 27 and reasonably good looking (and successful too), and I'd just like to say that Yahoo Personals is the worst. Seriously, they'll scam you out of your money with a lot of false promises, and then the only replies you get are from weirdos in west africa scamming you for your money. "oh help! I'm stuck out here in my modelling job, and I need your help to get back to the states!". Seriously, I got 5 emails like that. I got 7 with "hey, good to hear from you [generic crap], here are my pics, sign up on my adult service". THAT'S IT!. There is NO ONE REAL on the site!. ok, so my rant may seem off the deep end and not believable, but it is the unfortunate truth. Their 7 day "money back" you have to send a postcard via snail mail with all of your account information on it for everyone to see before they return your money.

I sent of 70 well thought out personal emails, no response to a single one. Not even a "we're not a good match" one liner. Yahoo was|is a waste of my time and money.

All I have to say is AMEN to bonobo in LA. He hit it on the head perfectly. I have done my own tests and came up with the same results. Online dating is a complete joke. My advice is to sign up with a speed dating company or one that puts on events for singles. They make it a point to stack the deck evenly. That way there are actual women to see and talk to. Your odds improve greatly. I have decided to use OD to simply screw with as many women as possible. My Match.com picture is of Tom Cruise, but it looks just enough not like him to may be someone else. I will leave the ugly women alone, since I think they are legit and would respond to me if I sent them something legit.

**DON'T PAY FOR ONLINE DATING**

After reading the scathing reviews at this site, I decided to conduct my own 'scientific' experiment to find out what's really going on in the world of Online Dating (OD). Here's my story:

Last year some friends suggested I look into OD since I wasn't having much luck in the real world. So I read an OD book and some websites and got excited - it all sounded so good! I was ready to jump in right away, but then I happened upon eDateReview - I was astounded at the number of battle- scarred casualties! Oh, oh, brake-time.

Now I was on guard and devised a new plan. Instead of recklessly joining these OD sites, I decided to play smart. First I reviewed dozens of OD sites and selected 3. Next I read a book on how to create a great OD profile (written by an OD insider), constructed a 'perfect' profile (complete with a clever headline and photo), and had it critiqued by a female OD veteran. I posted my profile for free at Yahoo. I waited a week and nobody responded. So I scanned Yahoo and found 16 female prospects. I prepared customized letters for each one, injected some light humor seasoned with hints of intelligence, signed up for Yahoo's free 7-day trial promotion, quickly sent out all of my prepared letters, then terminated my subscription just before my free trial expired. Wow, I was so proud of myself! :-O

Result: After 3 months, I received NO letters! Amazing. However, I did receive unsolicited junk-emails from Russians, foreigners, and spammers (none of whom had a Yahoo profile).

During this time, I did a similar process with 2 other OD sites during their free-trial period. I sent about 20 different letters and also received nothing in return.

I know what you're thinking: I must be too short, ugly, broke, old, etc. Ok, so let's test it out. I went to another major OD site and copied the photo of the hottest-looking Caucasoid male I could find and manufactured a profile that fits the classic salivary mold of most every OD female (ie: tall, slim, handsome, 20-something, sporty, beach-front residence, yada yada), then posted it at Yahoo. I then prepared myself for the expected deluge of letters that would confirm my inferiority simplex . . . .

Result: After 3 weeks, nothing. After 2 months, my 'dummy' guy didn't get 1 single letter (but did get 4 impersonal icebreakers). What's going on here?! This 'perfect' guy was not getting much more attention than I was!

So here's what I've learned:

1. I subsequently talked to 3 real OD girls and they confirmed to me personally that they were deluged with letters weekly, did little of their own searching, stopped responding to most emails, and then dropped entirely out of 'site'. :-P

2. I'm sure that some of the females are confederates or fakes due to their undistinctive profiles, but I know that at least some are real people because I actually recognized some of them from real life.

3. Admittedly there were lots of scrumptious girls that could easily entice a mere mortal male into giving up the Big Bucks, but these hollow girls with their hollow profiles may as well be 'hollowgrams' in a 'hollowsuite' for all practical purposes because your letters will disappear into webspace oblivion and the girls will never materialize in your real world.

4. In every letter I wrote, I asked for at least an acknowledgement from the girl that my letter reached her and was read by her. That seemed the least I could expect in deference to the obvious literary effort I put into each letter. That minor courtesy was never granted. So I confirmed the general lack of consideration of the USian female as reflected at this site (or did ALL 3 OD sites withold ALL my outgoing mail? - I don't think so).

5. The highly touted 'sense of humor' and 'intelligence' factor that girls ostensibly ask for is in reality meaningless to them.

6. The girls complain about receiving generic letters and icebreakers, but they don't recognize the dilemma that the boys face: These custom letters take a LOT OF TIME to create and write and to do so is like a full time job! It's demoralizing to do all that creative work just to get blank stares after 3 months. So should we boys spend a lot of time just to get nothing OR spend less time to get nothing? You do the math.

7. Most every complaint posted at eDateReview was confirmed by me personally. It appears that the high male/female ratio problem is valid and that females don't initiate letters and seldom respond to letters.

8. If I would have met just 1 real person from all the letters I wrote, I would have gladly paid for a subscription! That didn't happen.

Epilogue: So I took the advice of a previous post and merely left my profiles at the OD sites, but won't waste time initiating contact anymore. I'm just sitting back and monitoring my mailbox every 2 month or so (saves a lot of time). :-)

The Internet and computers are theoretically ideal tools to filter and conduct mate-selection. OD is a great concept, but just like the idea of emails, it fails miserably when the other side doesn't participate.

I want to thank the reviewers at eDateReview for saving me $ with your dire warnings. Sure I lost time, but I can chalk that up to learning experience. I agree that some ODers will find someone, but that's like saying you should invest in the lottery everyday because somebody wins. No thanks.

I started to look at profiles in different cities on yahoo personals after seeing something that caught my eye...pornstars. In my city, there were no less than three of these fake profiles which had a fuzzy picture of some gal with a typical profile. Not trying to toot my horn, but I know these pornstars (I'm in the business)...so I called them to ask and sure enough, they never signed up for yahoo personals. When I looked at the other cities, I was able to find about the same number. Seems to me this is a silly thing to do...using fake profiles that people could reconize. Theb again...why would yahoo want to have a real dating site? It wants to keep people suscribed for a year...not just one month.

the personals looks real sketchy alot of repeat profiles, and the fact that you have to be a subcribed member to email back and forth... im gonna start looking into other sites but there is a old friend in the personals that i would like to chat with but not willing to sign up just to send in email. if anyone on yahoo persons would like to help me get the email i would apreciate it(robertg1205@yahoo.com). gonna start exploring other dating site and see how it goes...

Okay I moved over to Yahoo cos Match got a little commie on my ass. I like the more-laid-back vibe of Yahoo and the less stringent approval needed for the writing in your profile. I was even glad to see that there weren't too many of the same folks I saw over on Match.

I met a few guys on Yahoo and even went out with them, having decent experiences. But for some reason folks on Yahoo in general don't seem as responsive, as sincere, as on Match.