Reviews of eHarmony

I'm an attractive, fit women in my mid-30's who just moved to a new city. I thought I'd give eHarmony a try after a friend found a great guy through the service. I'm about 3 weeks in and I hate it! First, the format of the profile section doesn't allow for a user's personality to come through, in my opinion. Everyone answers these overly-earnest questions, such as "name 3 things you are thankful for" pretty much the same way....health, friends, family, etc. The profiles all look alike to me, which forces me to weed through my matches based on photos, which brings me to my second gripe. I indicated that I'm happy with my looks and that my match's appearance is important to me, but eHarm matches me up with some pretty unattractive fellas. Not sure if they are exaggerating when answering the attractiveness question or if eHarm disregards this criterion. Last, I find the "guided communication" tool to be very corny. Is this a dating site for seriously shy people? If I seem interesting and you think I'm cute, just send me a note! When I first joined, I answered one guy's list of 5 questions, in the spirit of being open to the site's format. The guy responded by sending me another list of 57 questions! ugh....I closed the match.

Eharmony is a fraud and a total waste of money. I had dozens of matches until I joined. Then, matches turned out to be inactive members. I requested matches within 30 miles (of Chicago) and was getting matched with guys from Texas to Canada. The age specification was to 48, several matches were in their 60s. Nice guys, I'm sure. Just not what I had in mind at 43. It's not clear what the "dimensions of compatiblity" are but I'm pretty sure I got matched with Charles Manson. There's no customer service if you have a problem. I'd never, ever recommend this service to anyone. If you're looking to part with $100 for no good reason, donate to a worthwhile charity. You won't be disappointed and it's tax deductible.

I can see how eHarmony can work for some people. However, it did not work for me in the three months I was on there for probably the following reasons.

1) A lot of matches (over 90%) were from New York City. If you lived in the city, I don't know why you would want to commute to NJ because I can imagine your pool in the city is good enough to begin with. 2) Most people are just on there and not paying. Even if you initiate communication with them, there is no guarantee they will respond. 3) The one person I met on a date lived close to me... but there was just no chemistry. 4) I joined during the summer months. People are always more social in summer. Heck, if I had a choice, I would meet someone in the real world rather than the internet.

All in all, I joined eHarmony because I had to move to New Jersey after finishing graduate school. Since I hardly knew anyone, I figured it was worth a shot to see if something would work out.

Oh, and another thing. This is something that I learned during my brief stint at eHarmony. It feel that it is quite difficult to project your true personality over the internet without the body language.

The bottom line is that I am ready to meet someone while pursuing an activity I love.

Keep the faith my friends. Just because you were not matched on eharmony does not mean that there is something wrong with you. If that were the case, I should be wallowing in self-pity.

There is someone for everyone. It's just plain statistics. Happy Hunting :)

- S (30 year old from NJ)

I have to chime in and agree that eharmony is a rip off. I didn't ever recieve any matches who valued those same things I put into the qualifying process. I am a huge reader, and I put that this was important to me, yet over half the matches I was sent had answered "I don't like to read", "nothing lately", or "The DaVinci Code" to the last book they had read--not that there's anything wrong with the last, but it came out 6 years ago ... they probably have some catching up to do. I also put political accord as one of my top priorities and this was entirely disregarded as I was sent many matches that made thier opposite political persuasions clear merely in the profile reading stage. When I kept getting people who listed "My kids" on thier "Can't live without" list (2/3 of the matches I was sent) I was frustrated because I thought I had chosen that I did not want a match with children, but I went back to the profile establishment area of the site and checked; it seems the question was actually a dodge on eharm's part: "Would you want children under 18 living in your house?" Very tricky, and it really angered me. FYI eharmony, the kids alone may not be a problem for some of us, it's the entanglement with thier other parent, or "baby mama drama" that we're seeking to avoid. I haven't had a kid with the wrong person, so why on earth would I want to put up with someone else's wrong person for 18 years? I am also not at all religious--no qualifiers, I'm not spiritual either--but I was sent tons and tons of devout Christians whose "Can't live without" lists included "God" or "My Savior" etc. When I complained about the various failures to match what was important to me (and not what eharmony thought should be important to me) I was told that I should expand my search area. Since I live in one of the largest cities in the USA, I didn't think my search area--50 miles, or the greater metro area--was the problem, but I did expand to 100 and that made things even worse. Another glut of religious Republican non-readers with kids. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with any of these type of folks, they need love too, and good luck to them in thier search, but they were the exact people that I specified I am not compatible with! I got plenty of requests to communicate and icebreakers and all of that as I am moderatley attractive and trim figured, but the pool I was given to choose from never actually met up with what I asked for, and in a city of 4,000,000 ppl the odds are that it's not just me being too picky. I even communicated with a dozen of these guys despite our differences. Mostly they were nice enough, and we had some pleasant conversation and laughs, but even a few of them were bemused as to why I had been put into thier match pool. I think overall that eharmony is just geared towards religious conservative types and doesn't much care about anyone else.

New to Australia?? and obviously carrying on the practices from USA. Dont waste your time - it was a total waste of my time and matches where not relevant. Waste of time and space. Extremely disappointing.

Just an addition to my review below - I just read several reviews on this site (wish I'd done it before joining ehell) and I guess I have to add my qualifications: I am a very attractive, educated 5'10" woman, physically fit - I base this off the fact I never have trouble attracting the opposite sex before, and the fact I have had to listen to my friends saying "you're so hot, meet someone online!". I was just looking for some one with substance and thought online dating would provide me more options ( I live in a very small town). But, alas, I take crap pictures. Remember Friends? Where Chandler couldn't help but look weird every time a camera came out? That's me.

I wasn't looking for a pretty boy, either. Nice looking is a plus, but it don't pay the bills, as they say. I gave all kinds of guys a chance on ehell. Read their profiles, and made compromises in my own judgement of compatibility perhaps. But to no response. Ehell just wasn't for me.

I'd like to start by warning anyone who does join eharmony, to make sure to remove the feature Auto Renewal right away - I can't remember clearly, but I think you get a discount if you check that box when signing up. Or perhaps it's automatic. Either way, I never freely choose to have an auto-renew on anything. I was done with eharmony early on, but it was useless to get a refund - their policies are really strict. Not a problem, I'll just let me 6 month subscription run out. Occasionally I would respond to an infrequent match request, but I was done with this "match system" they say is so excellent. More on that below.

I thought I would get an email saying my subscription was about to end - nope. I get an email the day the charge is going through for $140 bucks. No warning, which I should have realized is a great way to make money, because the lazy folks may just let it slide by. I immediately cancelled my account online. And continued to get emails from them - in fact, suddenly TONS of matches were coming into my inbox. Clever, huh? I waited a day, went through their cancellation process AGAIN, and still received emails, enticing my with potentially bunches of men looking just for me (ya, right). And, as many of us know, it's virtually impossible to find a phone number on eharmony's website. Then the charge went through on my card. The good part about this is the credit card company has their number. I am now waiting for the credit.

Their scientific matching process is crap - they pegged my personality as an extrovert. I'm not. I'm introverted, but can be outgoing sometimes. Their scientific process should filter this out. They would match me with guys who were so off my radar.

Eharmony is great for the photogenic. In fact, all online dating is great for people who take great pictures. I don't. Many of us don't. And most men look at your profile photo - and then move on. Just a reality, and I don't hold this against them. My guys friends are the first to admit it.

As a recap - any one I reached out to never responded to me. I replied to a few guys who requested contact. Then it just fizzled out during the emails. I would answer their questions, then nothing from them. I had my setting on Worldwide - but that's completely unrealistic. If I'd had my setting at a 200 mile radius, I might have had 12 matches in 6 months. I ended up talking to one really nice guy on the phone (only one in 6 months) but, bless him, he was looking for someone to listen to him. And listen. So, in the end, even though our emailing had a connection, on the phone - nope.

The only good aspect of eharmony is the privacy of your profile. I've tried online dating, and I am done with it. I just doesn't work for me, and eharmony has a lot of flaws. Good luck to the rest of you!

Location, location, location. When I lived in Wisconsin and tried e-harm I got one match every few weeks. Know I live in So-Cal and usually get 6-10 matches a day. It is a big time commitment and you have to be willing to work hard at it and spend lots of time writing. So far I have dated 3 women that I met on e-harm. Nope haven’t found the one yet but its and exciting process. You just need to stay positive. Also being 26 most of my matches are in there late 20’s. These women know what they are looking for and are very aggressive which I like.

After being divorced for 11 years and growing tired of picking so many mr. wrongs, I thought I'd give eharmony a try. The commercials make it sound so easy to find the "love of your life". I got 1 lousy match. It was with a cattle farmer, 10 years older than me, who wants children. I am not able to have children, what what does a man in his 50s want to start a family for anyway. I cannot belive my one and only match was with a cattle farmer. Nothing against cattle farmers, I'm sure they're great, but I am sooooo not a gal that likes country life. Eharmony was a major disappointment.

This website is such a major rip-off. It seems that they can't send you enough emails before getting your money and then after they get the money, the well of available matches seems to dry up??? I have not had a match in over a week...For what this website charges, I should have matches EVERYDAY, if this so called "Doctor of Love" and so called staff are doing what they promise on TV, etc..My advice, STAY AWAY from this site, it is and has been useless and a very expensive mistake with absolutely NO rewarding results!!!