Reviews of eHarmony

I personaly have found eHarmony to be a good thing, of the dating sites that exist on the internet.

The process as I feel is great and no harm in pursuing it; in fact I like the idea that they put more of a compatibility component into it, as this deters some of the serial unrealistic internet daters. What I have found similar to other sites is people are not truly honest or worse yet they are not honest about what they want and expect of a relationship and some are being totally dishonest with their intentions of the whole process. I think and believe it works if you know truly what you want and stick to and purse that as this would work in any situation if you truly know what you want and then go after that. I also believe that the dynamics are much harder in that face it each person who you meet this way can write great profiles but when you meet maybe you cannot talk to each other or the true chemistry is not there or their age and weight is different from what they lead you to believe. It is just another avenue to meet others and there is nothing wrong with pursuing other options of meeting as long as there is complete honesty within yourself first and hopefully from others and no site can guarantee that to anyone about its members as this is up to the individuals themselves. Today it is hard for people to meet socially as work and other commitments take up so much of our time and given we seem to work less with other commitments that trying others options is a good thing. I tried other sites and they were a joke and I paid and did not stay at all I have a problem with just being judged on the outside when that is important as that is part of the chemistry but there is much more to a person and to relationships than that especially if they are to go the long haul looks fade on all our immortal frames so how can that be the only criteria, but here again if looks are important to you or weight then this is what you truthfully have to pursue, the problem I find is people seem to have unreasonable expectations and believe that at a touch of a button they can find their dream person or date and I think it takes much more than that and you may get a lot on the outside and nothing on the inside. As well I have found that there are some that have far greater expectations from you and do not look in the mirror at their own age, weight, upkeep or looks. The premise and concept is great the process can work, but it again relies on complete honesty which sadly seem to be the one thing that does not work.

I am off of the site, tried it and found too many dishonest people along with some other factors not to say I will not try for again sometime as like I stated earlier it is another avenue as long as you stick with what you truly want and be realistic.

okay - man people can be really harsh. From a female point of view, at least mine - eharmony is good. Men cannot just select you based on your picture. We get selected this way at bars, at school, in general. On the internet, the thought of men scrolling and finding my picture then contacting me - is - frightning.

So let me make this point. I have 4 pictures posted on eharmony - to be fair. You can see them right away. Before, I only allowed them to be seen after the first questions were exchanged (because I would prefer that) but I got tired of people closing me because they could not see a picture.

What I really want to say, men, is that just because I am not flaunting my body all over the itnernet does not mean I am fat, or insecure. Quite the opposite. Its because I want to know we have something in common before you select me simply because I am good looking.

Many men on here are complaining that the women are fat, or dont "fix" themselves before trying online dating. Let me say - I could not agree more, but from the opposite perspective. How many fat, older, emotionally stunted men, who care about nothing except sports and sex have tried to talk to me? A lot.

But, I have been happy to find, too, that I have had the chance to talk to a lot of cute and smart men too, that I very much seriously consider. My biggest complaint would be that, when I do find someone interesting, he takes too long to respond sometimes or dissapears (and they always initate the communication, as a rule I never do). Men, dont treat me like a low priority if your serious! Just because its the internet does not mean I should be less priority than women you meet on the street. There is no shame in interent dating anymore! And if I respond quickly its not cause I am desperate! Its cause I work on computers and like to have fun by getting to know people I have been matched with! (I actually read that your supposed to wait four days to repond to people, and never respond on weekends - snore)

fyi - my search includes the whole world, a wide age range, but strict in other areas that are important to me (religion, race) be honest with yourself about who you are and what you want. People complaining about the ages and races of people your matched with - you have control over this!! and, yes it takes long to find matches - even though my search is worldwide! I also notice suspicoius activity in that I get a lot of matches at once and then nothing. I wonder if this corresponds to advertising and specials? like a lot of people join at once?

Anyway, I have met some jerks, freaks, people who probably thought the same of me, annoying very cute guys that disappeared after open communication, and very annoying guys that were pushy about wanting to rush talking on the phone or meeting. Overall, I'm excited about the new source of meeting people I would never cross paths with. Generally the men are smart, and relationship minded. Ladies -- wait for the men to request communication - this will save your self-esteem, at least a little. good luck

I have more than a few friends who have used eharmony and happily married to matchs they connected with on this site. In fact, one of my friends is on one of the the advertisements. I was worried about the kinds of men my friend had been getting mixed up with, so I went on to eharmony to see if it might be a good thing for her. It looked really good to me, the profiling seemed great, etc. So I talked her into joining and she started with around 25 matches. Two of them went past phase three, the rest are still at one a month later. Of the two that corresponded, one is all upset because he thinks he should be hearing from her a lot more, never mind that he doesn't always respond, or that she commutes out of state to her job-hello. And he seems to be a chronically depressed shut-in. The other, who was really somebody she thought she might like, suddenly said he was going to leave the country indefinitely and when she sent her phone number asking to meet him before he left, he closed her with no explanation. I'm becoming really sorry to have gotten her into this. In addition, she talked me into joining. I am not really wanting to date but thought maybe...so I ended up with one match, who closed me for putting him on hold. Then I got five more, three did not respond, one closed me and one started a lot of communication, asked really personal questions and then without any explanation he closed me because of "distance is to great". Puleeze! He lives and hour from me, and about five minutes from my mother's house. Did he ask to meet me somewhere? No. What a jerk. So I dropped my membership and got my money back. Which meant sitting on the phone and being offered a longer membership five different ways. And for what? To email guys who think an hour drive is scary. No thanks. I am quite capable of anywhere by myself, thank you. I think I have a lot of questions about the validity of eharmony and maybe putting too much faith into pop psychology profiling. I hope my friend meets somebody who is out and about living life to the fullest. Not sitting in front of a computer hiding from life.

I found this review site by accident.

I started to read what people wrote, the link to the following guy is brilliant to be able to put this down in words to be understood.

http://www.edatereview.com/0003505permalink.aspx

This guy is brilliant too, about A Grain of SALT > http://www.edatereview.com/0003509permalink.aspx

This guy http://www.edatereview.com/0003473permalink.aspx is talking about a woman who left a bitter not that eHarmony is a scam, no it is not. Look at her post http://www.edatereview.com/0003472permalink.aspx

As I read more and more, I see what kind of people are using eHarmony.

For the best possible experience using this service:

It ALL comes down a few things: 1. you either are ready for a relationship and give it an effort(your cat is not #1, you have to let go). 2. You are truthful on who you are otherwise why bother? 3. You are realistic on who you are looking for, Brad Pitt is not sitting on a computer looking for you ladies! He already has his Angelina Jolie.

Well that is all I have to say, I have a life and can't spend more time reading about all the sad stories, and the positive stories that prove my point.

Good Luck in your Search, all of you fellow Souls looking for the love of your life.

MTL, near Seattle.

They make canceling is a hassle. Once you cancel online, the insist that you call them, of course to hear several minutes of advertising (punctuated by claims that your call will be answered in five minutes, every five minutes) & the required sales pitch to keep it. Very annoying.

The only reason I am giving eHarmony one star is because there was no option to give them any less. I would honestly have to say that this was the biggest waste of money I can remember in a long time. that is a pretty big statement since I have recently visited Vegas. Knowing what I know now, I would gladly take the money I spent on eHarmony for the month and take it to the blackjack table. Even if I lost it all, I could have a couple beers, and maybe some conversation, even if it with another guy, for my time and money. I didn't get any matches sent to me until after 2 days. Then, I got 2. I then got six more a couple days later. I got a total of 8 matches the entire time I was there! I even went through the desperate act of asking it to find me more matches. You know that wont work even before you try, but ya gotta try something. After about 5 minutes it tells you there are no matches. During the last weekend, I saw multiple advertisments on TV stating that anyone could communicate with their members for free for a full 3 days (the weekend). I thought that I would get some sort of communication from that! I got nothing. Nothing at all. Of the eight matches I got, I was comletely not interested in 2 of them, right from the start. 1 of them said she was not interested from the start. 3 of them, I closed after waiting almost 2 weeks after sending them the first round of questions, and getting no response (1 of them even contacted me first, then never answered my first communication). 1 Match got to the third stage of communication and then, all of a sudden she just disappeared too. There were never any "Closed" or "On Hold" messages, they just disappeared. They probably just gave up and don't even get on the site anymore. I reached open communication with one of them, and we exchanged phone numbers. I still talk to her occasionally, but she is far from me, and it is obvious that we are never going to have that spark and we will always just be friends. So, there really is no point in going out of the way to meet. The reason I even had a match so far is because I chaged my requirements to cover pretty much the whole state, since I travel a lot. This still hasn't helped. I also travel to Miami a great deal, so my match area includes that as well. It is impossible for me to believe that eight matches are all thay can find in all the big cities included in this area (including Miami, Naples, Ft. Myers, Orlando, Gainesville, Jacksonville and Tampa, and everywhere in between). I met someone on MySpace that is also on eHarmony, we changed a few of our settings and even tried to rig it up so that eHarmony would match us. Still nothing. I truly believe that they are just not doing anything after they take your money! I bet that in a couple days when it is about to expire, they will finally contact me, to ask me to re-new. I would have better luck emailing them back and trying to find a single female customer service agent to chat with, than waiting for them to give me matches. I really don't know what is going on with eHarmony. Perhaps free sites and cheaper sites are just taking over. I can understand why someone wouldn't want to pay so much for this service. It is significantly more than other sites. All this and you have no control. You just sit there waiting for the matches to come. When they don't, you have nothing you can do about it. I even clicked on the button that says, "How are we doing", and I told them how unhappy I was. There was no response. It is this simple, I gave them my money and now they are doing nothing, absoutely nothing. I am having better luck with other dating sites. I always thought something like MySpace would just have a bunch of immature idiots on it and was not worth while. There is some truth to that. However, I would rather root them out and find a few good ones then have nobody to contact at all. I am a pretty good looking guy and have a lot of great qualities. I can see that from my results on other sites. eHarmony is just a worthless waste of money. I could go out of my house without showering for 3 days, in my boxers, and stand on the side of a street asking for money and meet more interesting people than you can on e Harmony. Sad, but true. If you haven't waisted your money on it yet...dont do it. Jst get on any other site and send random emails out. You will have better luck! What a waste of money!!!

Yikes!

I always take reviews of dating sites with a huge grain of salt because many who go to these sites are lonely and desperate for companionship, and when the site "doesn't deliver", they're incredibly bitter over it.

Jared (previous reviewer) said it all, basically. Hit the treadmill, eat sensibly and be open to new experiences and people. If you have very specific requirements, are overweight, bitter, etc. expect that finding a match will take a very long time.

LADIES,

First of all, for those that are complaining about guys like me that close you after being matched, let me tell you my top 5 reasons for closing you out, and I am sure that I speak for nearly every guy here, so read carefully.

1. Overweight - If you appear overweight, you can count that 6 out of 10 guys will close you out. Why? Because most guys are not attracted to women that have allowed their weight to become an issue. It is like the 800 lb gorilla in the room, it shows guys that if you aren't willing to get yourself into the YMCA each day and run 1.5 miles each day on the treadmill, and stop eating McDonalds, (in fact, stop eating all fast food) to most guy, this shows that the rest of yourself is most likely going to be unkempt as well. The screaming message is you are not interested in yourself enough to begin dealing with your weight, especially if you are 100 lbs over your ideal body mass index score. Before you throw your money at eHarmony, throw your money at the YMCA in your town and get in there every day, and start looking for a guy one year from now, because you won't get anywhere until you start taking care of #1, yourself.

2. Negativity. If you join, and then begin a rant on eHarmony, focusing on what you don't like, don't be surprised if you get closed again and again. Guys don't want to hang out with someone that is so hurt that she clearly isn't emotionally healthy and continues to spread the word that she is so mad about the last guy she dated, so she writes in her "Things I'd like you to know about me" area something like this "If you think that country music is bad, don't bother responding because guys like you are white trash..." or "I'm a heavy woman, so if you're not into that, the close me out now" again going back to my first point, but now blending it in to the second... go check yourself out first, make sure you are actually ready to be optimistic about life because if you think you can be Miss angry around the guys you are matched with, Honey, no one will stick around.

3. Priorities...

If you put your career in front of a potential guy, if you put your damn cat or dog, or many cats or dogs in front of your potential guy, if you think that you are the best thing since sliced bread and do nothing to put your potential mate in top priority, expect to be closed out. I met a woman that made it clear, that her literal indoor zoo of animals was more important to her than anything else, including any man she would ever meet. Frankly, that made me want to take a gun to each of her furry little nothings and end the needless suffering right there. All joking aside, this reflects someone that is not at all ready for a relationship. If you think that your dog is first before a man, you need not join eHarmony, because no man in the world will agree to that priority list. Why? Because, men are MEN! We are proud to be the leader, not subserviant to dogs just because you are not smart enough to see that your dog isn't that smart in the first place. If you want to fill the lonely hole in your heart, and the dog hasn't done that yet, then its time to fire the dog and start prioritizing your life.

4. Poor grammeerr

If you can't spell worth poop on a stick, then do not be surprised to be closed out over and over again. To guys, this a clear sign of trouble ahead. If you aren't willing to work on spelling words right, it just shows that you won't be willing to be faithful in all the other little things that make up the forest in your life. It shows you don't really care, you aren't smrt, you wished you could just meat someone that would raaahter just runn off into the sunset and .... as you can see here, it's not attractive. Girls, if you want a match to cling on to you like white on rice, you have got to sell yourself which means be MORE ATTRACTIVE. The less attractive you present yourself with crappy pictures that are blurry like you are still taking photos with that Barbie 110 camera your mom gave your for your birthday in 1984, I mean, get real. No web cam photos, no scanned in TEENY TINY photos, nope, you gotta post some big fat high res full body shot photos to get results. And spell correctly below them.

5. NO PHOTOS, no man...

Finally, if this wasn't apparently obvious. If you DO NOT POST A PHOTO, I will immediately close you out. WHY? Because, If you understand basic psychology at all, you'll remember back to when the professor in college (considering you've made it that far) talked about how men think. Literally, men use the right side of their brain only. This side is dedicated to what they can see only. You can type your brains out on a page about yourself all day, but until you post a photo, you are not making that connection to the right side of his brain. In order to stimulate interest, a guy needs .... NEEDS to see a photo, because that's how we men operate. I don't use pornography or Playboy, but there is a REAL reason to why that magazine has worked so well over the years. If it was a magazine of words and no photos, that magazine would have been bust a long time ago. Guys want to see you, they want to examine your features, they want to simply get a better idea as to what you look like, because, ladies... what matters most to guys is when they can read your eyes in a photo. It matters. I personally close each match down that doesn't provide me with a photo. If I am not physically attracted, I can tell you with all certainity, I will have a very hard time pursuing you emotionally.

Out of nearly 1000 women I have been matched with, only seldom few, about 1%, I would say I would be smitten by and wanted to know more.

Thanks and Good night,

Jarred

...the "matches" are few, and the compatibility is debatable. I met a few nice people, but I'd be curious to know what their "system" is, because there are a number of important issues that never get discussed, never mind the fact that I only recieve a new "match" to even consider once every 2 weeks.

I have been on this site since Sept 1. Unfortunately, bought a long term membership, hoping for the best, but so far, receiving the worst. I have received about 70 matches, which may seem like a lot, but not when they're broken down. About half of those do not have a picture (probably because they are "phantom matches"), so I immediately closed those. Of the remaining 35, I have begun communication with three. One match lives about two hours away from me (divorced, three kids), another about three hours away (divorced), and the third lives in the Midwest (divorced, three kids). I did not want to meet someone with so many kids, and I live in a major metropolitan area! You'd think they'd have a few active members with no kids or one kid within my driving distance. I have been getting about four to five matches a day, but several times I have received a match only to have them immediately close it out due to "I am pursuing another relationship." Then why in hell did I get this match in the first place? Shouldn't that person have put his account on hold? I thought we were supposed to be matched with available people. The vast majority of matches don't even seem to be paying members because they never respond, not even to close the match, leading me to believe that EHarmony is just stuffing their membership rolls with expired memberships or even non-existent people. Who's to say that there isn't some computer geek creating all of these profiles. Of the three that I am currently corresponding with, it's taken about two looong weeks just to get to answering canned questions. I feel like I have pen pal relationships. I am fearful if or when the time comes to decide whether to meet. What if all of the questions and answers and emailing is for nothing. What if you meet and immediately decide that there is no chemistry. Then all of that time you spent divulging personal details and information was for nothing. I say save your money and do some activities that you enjoy. That way if you happen to meet someone, you'll know immediately whether they are interested in getting to know you better, and it's more of a natural and normal process. This email stuff is so antiseptic as to be impersonal and clinical. I don't know what I was expecting, just got suckered in by the commercials like everyone else, which I now believe are made with paid actors. I'll check back in a few months to let you know if I ever made it to a face-to-face meeting. Good luck to all.