Reviews of eHarmony

This site is a COMPLETE WASTE OF MY MONEY (which they wouldn't refund after complaint) and I would NOT advise anyone to join it, no matter how much it is being pushed in the press!!!!

I have cancelled my automatic subscription renewal and hopefully that will work and they will not take any more of my hard earned money.

I DONT ADVISE ANYONE TO USE THIS SITE!!!!

I hardly get any matches. When I (rarely) do, there are no pictures, and I have no idea on what basis we were matched to begin with - certainly not based on my criteria. I think those matches are made up.
Technically, site is a complete disaster. You can change criteria all you want, and do the search, you will not get anything. Is it possible that there are no matches in the world? Maybe people realized what a rip-off they are, and there is no data in their database. I hope so. I wonder how did they get any reputation at all.

my problem with e-harmony is that i never signed up and they keep bugging me! i was curious one day a couple years or so back and filled out the questionere but did not sign up for a trial or anything and i still get emails "notice about your membership" "final notice" "membeship will expire" if only it would! i don't know how to stop these. I'm happily married now

LOL... I find it so funny that so many people are unhappy with eHarmony. I mean after all, their marketing is excellent! Unfortunately that's all it is... Marketing. I ended up signing up for a free weekend but couldn't see any pictures of my matches. Probably because they were all ugly as sin. In my opinion of course. Anyway, having all these matches I stupidly paid for membership. Now I realize that people who sign up to eHarmony listen to the ads saying that they're matched on compatibility... you know the old saying "She's not much of a looker but she's got a great personality".

I probably sound like a real nasty person right now so feel free to stop reading my rant.

As for the website, I've worked in technology for years and this is possibly the worst designed site I've ever seen! You cannot see thumbnails of any of your matches so you have to click into each persons profile... Only to be dissapointed as previously mentioned. You click the back button and get a 'Page cannot be displayed' message. Every time you log into the site you have to type your username. This is simply crazy as cookies should be set to remember this (too techy?) although I'm sure they'd say it's a security caution. Oh and did I mention that the site is so slow that it's simply frustrating to use.

Now I've signed up to match.com which wasn't my first choice as I bought into the matched on compatibility with eHarmony. After all you want to be best friends with someone as well as being attracted to them right? I like match.com so far although the really attractive girls don't respond to you very much but I guess that's life. Perhaps I'm not the best looking guy in the world lol! I can't help wonder why if they are sooo attractive that they'd need to be on a dating site though... right?

Anyway, rant over and I hope my candid comments help somewhat.

My main gripe with EHarmony is their clients. I joined in late July 2008 and received over 300 matches during that time. Out of all of those matches, probably about a dozen went through the guided communication to a certain point. Two of them reached open communication. One backed out, and the other was put on hold. I finally did get to go out on a date with one woman. I am sorry, but for the price I have paid, I find it ridiculous that I only got one date out of 300 matches. Most the women, probably 90 per cent of them are downright rude. Many will either refuse any communication, or close it for no real reason. I have had about half a dozen women close the match because they felt the age difference was too great - and we were only three to five years apart.
I admit I have my own shortcomings, but I take care of myself financially, physically, and intellectually. In any case, either the women have impossibly high standards, or they have no interest in the first place.

Just to add one more extremely negative review of eharmony.... First and foremost they do not care what you want or what you ask for, they have their little black art of match making and thats that! Unfortunately we humans have very illogical approaches to dating and mating that they seem to minimize to the point of ignoring. While I would agree that personality compatibility is a very big issue, it is not the only issue. Distance is important, I tend to want to date within a reasonable driving distance - foolish me. Appearace is a huge issue, and weight is a big part of that - yet they offer no way to state a weight preference. The overwhelming number of matches they sent were for women significantly older than my stated age range even though I marked that as a high priority. The biggest issue is that my profile is being used by them to sell their services to women that are not members yet. I paid the outragous price for a membership only to be matched with women that cannot communicate with me because they are apparently smarter than me - they did not pay the outragous fees! Making matters worse is that I am not told which matches are members and which are simply experimenters.

I have had far greater results simply going to the clubs or using other less restrictive dating sites - and a lot more fun as I can check out a bunch of women and select based on my instincts - however wrong they may be at times.

Save your money - particualarly if you are older. If you really need help finding a partner join a church or use a professional match making service.

STAY AWAY FROM EHARMONY!!!! I have been extremely dissatisfied with them. First I signed up on a “free weekend”. Free is a joke, you can start a profile and communicate with anyone on a free weekend but you can’t see their picture unless you pay. So…after filling out their hour long profile questionnaire, and then finding out I had matches but couldn’t see what they looked like, of course I paid. I joined for 3 months…now I’m kicking myself! I was rather specific about some of my choices but I figured with one of the nation’s largest internet dating sites, I could and still get a few quality matches. WRONG. I was only interested in men who were taller than me, men within a 50 mile radius of my town, and non smokers who where active in their Christian faith. I got matched with men 300 miles away, men my exact height and shorter, and men who were not very attractive. (I’m average to nice looking….no knockout….but these guys I wouldn’t set up with my worst enemy!) The only thing they got right was the religious aspect. I got about 25 matches the first few days…then it trickled to 3 or 4 a week and now, 2 months into it, I’m lucky if I get one match every 10 days. Only 2 have led to any communication….those results stink too. One just stopped communicating for no apparent reason and the other didn’t have a license for doing 53 in a 25 and refusing a breathalyzer. Wow…real winner!!! DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!

I joined eharmony 3 weeks ago and paid 1 month subscription as I realised within an hour of filling out the endless questions that I would not be able to communicate with anyone unless I paid up. I have been "matched" with many men all of whom are builders/workmen/ painters or the like. I have nothing against these very skillful men as I am hopeless with DIY myself. I'm lucky enough to be able to pay someone to do it for me though, and certainly don't want a partner who does that for a living. I have not been "matched" with 1 single professional.
I think my mistake was saying I smoked and all the "matches" smoke everyday.... I can well imagine!
I said height was important to me.... I'm 5'6 and like a man to be taller than me when I wear heels.... at least 5'10. Many of my matches are under 5'8. I have met one man who had many qualities similar to myself and he was shorter than me and I will not be seeing him again as he smoked constantly during our "date" and although a very nice man, I had no attraction to a man shorter than me.
I continually get sent matches with no photo and close them right away as if a man won't post a pic then in my opinion they have something to hide.
I get matches over 50 miles away when my search says 30 miles maximum and even that is quite a distance in London!
I don't like the fact that you can't browse the members yourself and decide if you like the look of someone and then start communicating yourself.
This site is a complete waste of my time and I would NOT advise anyone to join it, no matter how much it is being pushed in the press!!!!
Hopefully I have cancelled my automatic subscription and they will not take any more of my hard eared money.
I DONT ADVISE ANYONE TO USE THIS SITE

I recently joined Eharmony for a 3 month subscription. During that time I had 800 matches (about 4-7 matches were sent to me per day). Of those 800, only about 30 were involved in any kind of guided communication with me. Of those 30, only 8 progressed to open communication. I spoke with 5 of them on the phone and went on dates with a grand total of 2. So if my statistics hold true for others, you have only a .25% of actually going on a date with someone from Eharmony. In my opinion that is a really low return on the investment of $60 a month. I can make some other observations:

1. The majority of Eharmony users are non-paying and can’t respond to you: This is the key problem of Eharmony, Match.com and other paid services. Unless they pay, they can’t talk with you. Eharmony won’t even tell you who the non-paying members are or just match you with paying members. It becomes frustrating to know that someone who you think you might be compatible with is unable to respond to you. There are sometimes these free communication weekends, but they are few and far between.

2. Many women on Eharmony have unrealistic expectations: I think the Internet has the problem of commoditizing relationships like you are looking for a book or DVD on Amazon.com. All of us, men and women have strengths and flaws, but there are some individuals on Eharmony who want someone of outstanding physical attractiveness like a movie star or have a lot of money or some other aspect and don’t really give a chance to get to know someone on other than a superficial viewpoint.

3. Many women on Eharmony have busy lives and are not really serious about finding someone, even if they state the contrary: I have had a couple of guided communications fail because we would initially answer the first few steps and then she would not respond after a week, so I would assume she lost interest and close her out. There is no excuse for not being able to get to a computer for that long. If you were interested in the person you’d find a way. I have had some matches who I spoke with on the phone a lot for the first few days and then for whatever reason she never called back or cared about how I was doing. I felt like I was doing all the work in initiating phone calls and emails and she was not doing anything on her end. One girl left me a message saying that she would call me back later, but she never did. Unfortunately Eharmony does not have the ability to filter out people who do not want to take this seriously.

4. Eharmony has no feature for body shape / members can put up misleading photos: Unlike Match.com, Eharmony does not have any selection process for body shape. You can see your match’s height, but that does not tell you if they are slender, average, athletic, overweight, etc.. This is an important feature to have. While I know that attraction is not just based on looks, it is also important. One of the two people whom I met from Eharmony turned out to be a lot more overweight than her photos suggested that she was. When we met at a coffeeplace I looked around and had no idea who she was until I saw an obese girl in the corner and realized it was her. I had a coffee date with her for an hour anyway, but realized that we had no chemistry. If she was not honest about her appearance, what else was she not telling me? It’s best to be honest with your appearance and not lie about it. It might be helpful to ask some subtle questions like “how often do you work out” or to ask her for some better photos. Either way, its Eharmony’s deficiency for overlooking this physical element in compatibility.

5. Don’t spend too long in email and phone communication: There are some girls whom I have spoken to who are content to just email back and forth. They sometimes need to be pushed to go to the next step. While I can understand that there can be nervousness and concern about safety, within 2 or 3 email exchanges you should get a phone number. You don't need to have a penpal. From your first phone conversation, plan to meet her within a week or so. I find that email and phone compatibility is different from compatibility in real life, since there’s no physical element and you can’t read the person’s non-verbal cues. If there is any kind of potential, you want to have that first date soon so you can see if she is the one and not waste a lot of time emailing and phone calling just to find that you don’t have chemistry when you meet. With the second girl I met from the site, we found that we did not have much in common when it came to outside interests. She liked the bar scene, while I did not. She was employed in a different field than I. Instead of online dating, it’s probably better to join a club or activity group to meet someone whom you can have common interests with. Eharmony’s system is not a great judge in this regard.

So as you can see, I can’t recommend that anyone use Eharmony as the chances of meeting the right person is very, very remote. You might get excited at the number of matches that they give you that you have some hope of meeting someone, only to find that most of them won’t work out or even respond to you in the first place. It will be a waste of your time and effort if you use the service and you will end up feeling emotionally devastated that you are un-dateable.

Like one review earlier, I give this site negative points. This site is by far the worst. I specifically said that someone being attractive in my "must haves" is very important to me. I also said that height is important to me as well. I’m sorry, but I can’t help what I am biologically attracted to. It's where I find chemistry and sexual attraction initially and immediately after that I look at their personality and if they are a jerk I move on as if they were an ugly person (in which case they are..on the inside). eHarmony matched me up with the most unattractive looking men I have ever seen, overweight, and really messed up teeth, balding, major computer nerd looking men. Get the picture? I know that this sounds horrible and that I may seem shallow, but really these men just weren’t even close to what eHarmony says "attractive to today’s standards." eHarmony would be a much better site if they let you pick height and body build. That goes for both men and women being able to choose. I didn’t even finish my subscription. I was on the site for about 3 weeks! Every day was a disappointment. This site also freaks me out because it has people on here that are SUPER religious. I had one match that said what he was most thankful for was his virginity. I’m sorry, but I believe in God, but I’m also very liberal too. I can’t believe that it doesn’t match you up with people that are on the same page as you when it comes to religion. I mean, they do have to know that one of the reasons why people get married/divorced is over religion. It plays a major role in a lot of people’s lives and has so for CENTURIES.

I think I have came to the conclusion that maybe I am not meant to meet someone right now or that maybe I won’t meet my special someone online. I’m def on the level of attractiveness to today’s standards. I have a job and I’m in school for nursing. I take good care of myself and go to the gym often. I’m not crazy or CLINGY. Ugh! Why is it so hard to meet someone??????? If you want to know more or you want to email me out of curiosity to see what I look like man/woman then I'll be happy to show you what I look like.

aengel2@students.towson.edu

I joined eharmony at the beginning of October and received 4 matches in my general area. None of them communicated with me. Then they sent me some "flexible" matches who were immensely inappropriate matches who lived hours away. A waste of money for me but I signed up for 3 months so I'm stuck paying until December.