Reviews of eHarmony

I am left wondering why some of these people who write reviews on here are using an online dating site in the first place. It always seemed to me like online dating sites are for people who for whatever reason don't meet a lot of people face to face. If you don't have issues or are not isolated from meeting people face to face why would you use online dating? In my experience most people who meet someone for romantic relationships are introduced through mutual friends or acquaintances and that is probably how it always has been. So that being the case leaves me wondering what the expectations are of people who decide to try online dating.

I have never read so much shallowness and superficiality before as I have from some of the complainers on here.

I will grant that eHarmony seems to be less than forthcoming and rather restrictive when it comes to ease of use of customer service but this is not new. They have always been so and one would think that after all of these years in business that most people would learn of this before they sign up. It really is not hard to find this out. It has also always been a policy of eHarmony that matches that you are sent are not necessarily paying subscribers and are not identified as such. This is frustrating and is a legitimate problem with eHarmony which it seems continues to go on regardless of complaints or requests for change.

Their system is far from perfect but some find it an improvement from services like match.com which is just basically the online equivalent of a giant meat market.

The other thing I find baffling is that people somehow expect that people they try to meet online are somehow going to behave differently than people they might meet in person. People are people regardless and are just as humanly flawed when you meet them online as they are if you were to meet them in person. I could be wrong but from some people's reactions on here it seems like they had different expectations.

Warning: if you have ANY self-esteem issues whatsoever, please steer clear of this site. It will leave you scrutinizing yourself in front of the mirror looking for flaws and maybe finding ones that aren't there.

Here are just some of the myriad problems with eHARMony:

1) I have very liberal matching preferences so I tend to get about 10 matches per day. Of those 10, 6 or 7 are NON-MEMBERS who are not able to communicate. Before I figured this out, I had been developing a complex as most of the women I reached out to simply ignored me. (I am above average and muscular in appearance, my profile is literate and funny, I have a good job...) But this is why. Of the remaining 3 or 4 matches I get in a particular day, maybe 2 or 3 are Amazonian in stature. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'm 5'6" and I do not date women over 5'5" or so. Yet I regularly receive matches towering in at 5'10", 6', etc. This is a complete waste of time as I will never date anyone that tall and I'm sure that these women feel exactly the same way about dating someone of my height. That leaves maybe one match per day. And this surviving match usually bites the dust due to a lack of chemistry, attraction, etc. You get the feeling that many of these matches are eHarmony "plants" because they barely fill out any of the Introductory Information. I feel it's eHarmony's way of making you think that you are getting lots of viable matches.

2) For whatever reason, I've been subject to the following scenario: A match that I am interested in makes initial contact and sends me a communication. We go back and forth and get to the e-mail stage. They want to get to know me better and give me their home e-mail. I e-mail them at home and that's when the rug comes out from under you. Never hear from them again. I'm at the point where I would just appreciate one of these matches at least having the courtesy to let me know why they did a complete 180 on wanting to get to know me better within a matter of hours. I almost feel like the victim of some hyper-feminist, man-hating, Hillary inspired plot to teach me some sort of lesson.

3) I went through a phase in receiving new matches where almost all of them were fundamentalist Christians, or something like that. Almost every answer to their profile questions went something like this: Who was the most influential person in your life? Answer: Jesus; What are you most thankful for? Answer: Jesus. What are the 5 things you can't live without? Answer: God, my faith, church on Sunday, prayer, and, last but not least, JESUS. OK, I GET IT. I'm a Christian myself. But these women were one cool aid away from Jonestown.

4) I also went through another eHarmony-pad-the-number-of-matches phase when 70 - 80% of my matches were from OTHER STATES. And not states that abutted NY, where I live. But from South Carolina, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusettes, Toronto! Again, like dating a woman who is 5'11", dating a woman who lives 500 miles away or more is just not practical for me. Moreover, I still received these matches when I CLEARLY SPECIFIED in my account settings that I only wanted matches that lived within 50 miles or less from me.

5) I consistently found that the women I were interested in were not interested in me and vice versa. It is very difficult to find that happy medium.

I can go on but you get the idea.

Of course, there are some people who have met their spouses on this site. But what percentage are they of the total number of members - .01 perhaps? .001 maybe? Given the multitude of people who are or were members, statistically, a few people would have to hook up. But in general, you truly will need the luck of a lotto winner and a proper alignment of the stars to meet "the love of your life" on this duplicitous site. I would avoid it. But if you do join, prepare to be disappointed and to have your self-esteem checked at eHARMony's door.

First I would like to say that out of the 8 or 10 match sent to me every day I would receive maybe one communication back to me every tree days and the rest of them no communication at all. I am no ugly duckling I assure you, so it makes me wonder on how many of these matches sent to me are actual customers at Eharmony!
So I decided to cancel my renewal on a weekend day but I was 12 Hrs into the first day of my automatic renewal month and EHarmony refuse to refund my $49.95 for that month that I do not want, I think that this company is a little to cocky for it's own good, a word of advice to EHarmony times are hard so I would treat my customers better, in my case I might have or not joined EHarmony again but now I will never join this company again.

If you think about it - all dating sites are annoying in some fashion. But really, isn't face to face dating just as annoying? Guys - how many times have you spent money taking a woman out to dinner only to discover that she is about as deep as a kiddie pool? Or ladies, how many times have you gone to the movies with someone that a friend or family member thought was "perfect for you" but you found them as appealing as fungus? Come on people the process of meeting someone is a trainwreck no matter how you go about it.

Does e-harmony cost a lot? Sure does. Does it send you some really wacky matches? You bet. Can all of those short answer questions give you a headache similar to a junior high algebra quiz? That would be a big fat yes. But as you read all the horrible reviews that are on here keep this story in the back of your mind. This is my experience with e-harmony....

I joined e-harmony as a type of science experiment because my last few relationships had my friends yelling "oh the humanity!" I decided, what the hell, and joined for six months. After several matches and emails that were laughable I decided to respond to this one particular man. Long story short despite living quite a ways away we managed to set up a date after a few weeks of banter. I went to meet him for a late lunch expecting to leave with little more than a full stomach and a great albeit probably embarrassing story for my girlfriends later that evening. Well a "quick meal" turned into a four hour event and the long and the short of it is that thanks to e-harmony I have met the man that I will be spending the rest of my life with. We're talking, he moved to my state, yes those are wedding bells you hear kinda chemistry here. So though for some I am sure it was a total waste of time, for me it was one of the best choices I ever made.

Meg - Congratulations. What a great story.

I am new to eHarmony and very impressed. I've lived in LA for a year now. I wasn't having trouble meeting men that were fun and nice, but not seeing a long-term potential. I joined eH because of a couple of friends that met their wives on the site. I don't know if this is a regional reaction or what, but if you are looking for quality men in the LA area there are many on eH and they are serious about finding good relationships. In my first week, I met 3 who are remarkable. I had better conversations in that first week than I had had in the previous year - deep, thought-provoking, interesting. I have met all 3 since and continue to be impressed.

Maybe it's just a question of persistence. I was receiving 10 profiles a day. Some were not matches, but many were possibilities. I tried to make the most of all contacts. For example, I rarely chose one of the given multiple choice answers, opting instead to write my own answer. I wanted to make it personal. I was very honest about my must haves and can't stands. I also wrote my own questions after reviewing their profiles and all answers I had received. I was as thorough as I could be in answering questions. I really think it paid off, and I enjoyed the experience.

Eharmony is pretty bad, but I think the members in general are a large part of the problem. I signed up making the (obvious) assumption that those who join are looking to meet people with the hope of finding a great relationship. I am a nice-looking, successful, honest, normal guy with many qualities that are supposedly attractive to women looking for a mate. However, very few of the many matches I have tried to communicate with even respond at all or even view my profile. The few that have responded mysteriously fall off the planet at some point during the communication process. It just doesn't seem to add up or make much sense. Take from my experience what you want, but something just doesn't jive at EH!

Do not join eHarmony!
I was a member of eHarmony for one year, and I am extremely disappointed. The personality matching algorithms they use are horrible; I would say that only 2-5% of the matches were even close to compatible with me. Furthermore, they match you with people who have not subscribed. So, you get matches that interest you and you can't communicate with because they are not members. Sure, it makes sense to show new people their potential matches, but I don't understand why they bother to show you matches that you can't communicate with. Also, they hide an auto-renewal feature in the fine print! So when your subscription is finished they auto-renew your account without your consent and steal another $19.95. I called the support and they said "we informed you of the auto-renewal when you singed up." I am sure that I never saw anything regarding auto-renewal. They said the $19.95 was non-refundable; however, they offered a 50% refund and said I would receive it in 2-3 billing cycles, but I doubt that will ever come. Another note, I could not find the customer support phone number on the eHarmony website, but I found it on the by searching on Google (1-800-951-2023). Any business that actively hides it's customer support number or doesn't make it easy to find should be avoided. EHarmony is a poor quality on-line dating site and they are thieves that steal money form you with the non-consented auto-renewal.

I went on e-H last New Year's weekend during one of their free communication weekends. My intention was to see what it was all about and then sign up if I liked it. As it turned out, I never signed up because I met my match for free. During the 4-day free weekend, I received 40 matches. I actually got to the open communication phase with 5 of them, during which we exchanged e-mail addresses. #1 was very nice but we didn't have chemistry. #2 lived in Dallas. I think we were both interested, but the distance was an issue. #3 was a lot of fun but just seemed too young. #4 was great. We went out a couple of times, but he was pretty casual about the whole thing. We still text on occasion now to say hi. #5 was amazing. During the e-H communications I was only partially interested - much more into #4 at the time. When I got to g-chat with #5, the dynamics were so great. At the time he was back east for work, and he didn't get back to LA for 2 weeks. We chatted often and talked on the phone every day, and by the end of 2 weeks I was very excited to meet in person. It was even better than I expected, and now 6 months later we are still seeing each other. We both think this is heading towards marriage, but if I ever find myself single again I'd definitely go back to e-H.

I have been on eharmony on a trial basis for about a month now. While I receive more and more matches, the responses I send to people who communicate with me does not seem to reach them. So, I don't understand the point of being able to view all these matches and short questionnaires from ppl if they cant view the responses I send them (or if they think I am being unresponsive to their communication)....

Additionally, there is not even a note on the site that states I cant communicate with others until I pay.

In short, I dont think I am going to sign up with them after reviewing all these ratings.

I have experienced many of the frustrations mentioned by reviewers. I am in the over 50 age group and have wondered if the approach Eharmony takes works better in some age groups than others. I also think that, at least in my age group, folks are not as open to stretching beyond their immediate geographic location very often and therefore it is more difficult if you are not within range of a populous area. I have been on this site for awhile and the only improvement I noted was a somewhat better array of possible matches after rating many matches they sent along. I do believe one of the most frustrating aspects is the 'non-members' sent along. You can't distinguish them but lack of any response, no views or never closing you out makes it apparent that many of the 'matches' are really not active.

In comparing this to other sites I have not found it any more successful for me. They seem to place a great deal of emphasis on the personality matching but many matches I receive seem to have little in common with me. I also have found many guys who barely say anything in response to the questions, making it almost impossible to tell much about them at all.

I do not like the close out process where you are forced to select a reason. These seem very shallow and pretty meaningless.

Well, I am not a fan and have found I prefer a bit more control over communication and selection. Again, maybe it works better for younger age groups where there may be more potential matches and you don't have as many experiences guiding, or maybe misguiding, you.

In the end any of these services can only be an introduction. You have to talk to people and meet them regardless of how many
'e-messages' you have exchanged.