Dating Services

I just noticed on the Indian dating service, Shaadi.com Matrimonial, that they now offer a 100% money back guarantee. They are confident to offer this guarantee because of their successful track record of matching singles. Shaadi calls the guarantee an Unconditional Guarantee - 100% money back, but there is a few conditions.

The first condition is, If you do not have at least 1 accepted member in the first month, Shaadi.com will refund your entire Premium Membership fee, with no questions asked. A accepted member is considered to be either a member who expressed interest in you and you responded positively OR a member who responded positively to your interest expressed.

You are also expected to fill in all details of your profile, create a partner profile, upload your photo and actively communicate with members.

For more information on this online dating site, read our Shaadi.com review.

Australia's largest online dating site, RSVP, reported strong growth in membership over their last quarter. They saw a 31 percent increase in members in the first quarter of 2009 when compared to the last quarter of 2008. Men memberships increased by 30 percent while woman jumped even higher at 36 percent. The month of March even had higher numbers than January, which is usually one of the best months of the year.

Apparently even in Australia, online dating sites like RSVP.com.au are experiencing growth while the global economy suffers a recession.

For more on the Australian dating site, you will find our RSVP review here.

Last Friday on PlentyOfFish.com the Instant Messenger was disabled. Since then POF claims a 10% increase in traffic from the UK and over 15% from Australia. There is no mention on if the visitor traffic increased for the US or Canada. With the traffic increase Markus (CEO of POF) has decided to completely remove the feature. He also mentions that he should of realized there was a reason why a number of the other major dating sites don't use Instant Messengers on their websites.

I'm not sure why Markus attributes POF having more visitors to him removing IM from POF. There was no news story surrounding this (until now) so why would this increase visitors to his site (since no one knew about it)? It probably increased page views of visitors since members now have to use the mail center more instead of the instant messenger. I think it might be a mistake on his part since he freely admits that hundreds of thousands of users used it every day. While Plenty Of Fish's instant messenger may not have been as smooth experience as Microsoft's, it was still definitely useable. Maybe he should of disable IM on a user's account by default and require an action by them to enable it? This way users who don't use IM would never be bothered by it.

POF logo also has been updated. It has a cleaner look and the tag line of the site has changed. It use to say 100% Free Online Dating. Now it says Free Online Dating. Which is true, since POF just recently started to offer a paid membership that has a few additional perks (see Story).

Read our PlentyOfFish.com review for more information on this popular dating site.

We just got a coupon code for PerfectMatch.com which is good until April 30, 2009. It is a little hard to remember, but if you type in

Coupon Code: 8G37A564

into the coupon code box when you upgrade your membership, you will receive the following special offer: 3 months on Perfectmatch for only $26.65 per month (Regular $36.95). This also includes a free book titled "Finding your Perfect Match".

This book is by relationship expert, Dr. Pepper Schwartz, and is valued at $14.95. Dr. Pepper Schwartz has written 15 other published books and many articles for such publications as the New York Times and Lifetime Magazine. She has appeared on such shows as Oprah, Good Morning America, Dr. Phil and CNN as a relationship specialist. For more details on what the book itself is about, visit Amazon.

For more information on this dating site, read our Perfectmatch.com review.

eHarmony has gotten into legal trouble again. Lynda Kelly and Miranda Soegi of California have initiated a federal class action lawsuit which claims that eHarmony does not have a scientifically proven system for matching members. Lynda and Miranda believe eHarmony have been misrepresenting the services they provide. They feel they did not receive the service they had paid for.

eHarmony have kept their matching algorithm a closely guarded secret while other sites like Chemistry (see Story) may slowly begin allowing us a peek inside. eHarmony has patents on their matching system so their multi-million dollar investment should be protected if they ever wanted to release more information about it ( U.S. Pat. No. 6,735,568 and 7,454,357). Check out the comments here for more of a discussion on eHarmony's matching system, including some comments from matching experts like Helen Fisher.

I don't think this lawsuit will get to far. eHarmony has been sued before so I am sure their Terms and Conditions have been made air tight by their legal experts. With dating sites that have a scientific matching system, I think what members get confused and angry about is, how loosely the matching algorithm gets applied. I have a feeling that the longer you are on the dating service, some of these sites (to enable to send you more matches) may lower the requirements for a match. Another thing members have to realize is the matches you do receive on these type of dating sites are from both free and paying members. Usually paying members can reply to you, free members cannot.

Misrepresentation is a problem on the internet in general. How many websites are you on in a day that claim to be the biggest or most popular? You will also find a lot of sites that claim to be free, while in fact they are not.

For more information on the story here is a copy of the legal complaint in pdf format.

An Associated Press article pointed me to a new eHarmony spoof ad done by the folks at FunnyOrDie (which was co-founded by the former SNL comedian, Will Ferrell). In this new video, Lindsay Lohan makes fun of herself and eHarmony by pretending to talk about her dating profile. She brings up everything from her late night partying to her DUI arrests.

This video is the latest in a series, which spoof the now famous eHarmony TV commercials which interviews couples who found love on the dating service. Saturday Night Live and MadTV even have done parodies.

Note: Unfortunately the source to the video and/or image which once was displayed here has since been removed by the authors for an unknown reason.

For a more serious look at this online dating service, read our eHarmony review.