General News

Oops, eHarmony.co.uk got into a little trouble with the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for a TV campaign which aired in 2008. The TV commercial in question shows 8 couples who me on eHarmony. A voice over states during the commercial:

It’s no surprise that over 4 million Americans get married each year. But what might surprise you is that 2% of those newlyweds said they met on eHarmony. And now we’re in the UK.

A total of 5 viewers challenged the 2% of marriages eHarmony claimed to be responsible for, and a further 3 complained about the "significant conditions" needed to receive free matches.

The ASA ruled that the eHarmony ad was misleading because it had made an absolute claim on the statistics in the ad and the dating site also failed to make it clear that 20% of all visitors who attempt to sign up to the service are disqualified. To fix this problem eHarmony plans to indicate that the statistics mentioned in the advertisement are the results of a study done by Harris Interactive in 2007. eHarmony will also further explain that to receive free matches new members must fill out a in-depth questionnaire and fall within the required age range and marital status.

For more on the story, read Marketing Week. To find out more about eHarmony, you can read our review.

With so few dating sites offering full, NO OBLIGATION free trials anymore, I thought you may be interested in one offered by Yahoo! Personals. You can use the full dating site with this 7-Day Pass which allows you to search, flirt, send emails and instant message, everything a subscriber can do.

This Free Pass is for new members only and a Credit Card is required. If this dating service does not meet your needs then you must cancel within 7 days. To cancel a membership click the “Billing info” link on your Yahoo! Personals home page, click the “Yahoo! Personals Subscription” link, then click “Cancel Service”.

For more information on this dating site, read our review of Yahoo! Personals.

Update: This offer expired April 29, 2010.

I have been poking around the FriendFinder Network of dating sites lately and have notice that they have modernized the user interface a bit. The improved site design doesn't look as busy now, which should attract more daters. FriendFinder has always been in the forefront of keeping their sites fresh and up to date with new features. They were one of the first dating sites to offer built in members blogs and interest groups. The one problem with a feature rich site is they tend to have complex user interfaces which can turn less tech savvy members off (just take a look at Facebook now).

I also notice that they have removed the advertising again from their dating sites home page and from the members pages as well. This improves the looks of the sites 10 fold and I applaud FriendFinder for doing this. A site without ads looks so much more professional.

While not directly related to dating, I notice this in my searches: "FriendFinder.com Games". It's a flash games site that has over 8000 free games to play. It looks like the FriendFinder Network plan to make money from the Google Ads on the site.

If you want to find out some more about a FriendFinder Network dating site, you can check out our review of FriendFinder.

Related Story: What is With Advertising on FriendFinder?

Tom Shone decided to give internet dating a try after breaking up with his girlfriend a month before. Guess who was the first person to contact him on a dating site? If you said his ex-girlfriend, you would be right.

Loved your profile on Nerve. Glad to hear you’re feeling so “chipper” these days – Natalie.

Tom hadn't meant for anyone who really knew him to read his profile, especially his ex. You always put your best foot forward when writing a dating profile, which made it look like to his ex-girlfriend, that he had forgotten all about the heartbreak and tears from the month before. She did later apologize that day for the email, and said it was just a shock to see the profile. Tom told her that he wasn't using the dating site to go on dates, he was just window shopping.

There is not much to this Economist article but it does offer a few interesting statistics on the UK online dating scene.

Did you know 5 million singles visited British dating sites in September, 2009? On average about 4 percent of people have used a dating site in Europe. In Britain, online dating is twice as popular with 8 percent of the population having visited a dating service.

This is probably one of the main reasons why eHarmony now operates a dating service in the UK. Since it opened in June of 2008 eHarmony.co.uk now has more than 500,000 singles registered with them. To find out what makes eHarmony a popular choice among singles, read our eHarmony Review.

The Senate is cracking down on those Member Rewards Programs and Money Back Offers you see on hundreds of popular websites after you have purchased a product or service. Three Internet companies, Webloyalty, Vertrue and Affinion Group are currently under investigation for

exploiting consumers’ expectations about online shopping to trick them into joining their membership clubs.

Chairman Rockefeller states that the ads are purposely designed to mislead web shoppers since most do not realize they are being charged for the service. Information about any charges are buried in the fine print and these Membership Reward Programs don't ask for a credit card because they receive the information from the company in which you just purchased a product or service from.

This is a $1.4 billion industry and Webloyalty, Vertrue and Affinion Group have partnered with many well know websites. There was 19 partners who earned over $10 from sales of these membership programs. Some of the companies are 1-800-Flowers, Buy.com, Classmates.com, Columbia House, Fandango and Shutterfly. There are almost 75 partners who have earned between $1 million and 10 million. Some of these companies include 1-800-PetMeds, Avon, Barnes & Noble, Cheap Tickets, eHarmony, Tiger Direct, True.com, and Victoria's Secret.

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.

According to Webloyalty less than 1 percent of consumers have complained about the reward programs, but they have stated that they do plan to make it more clear that the service they offer is an additional charge. In the mean time watch out for those $10, $15, or $20 cash back advertisements or the coupons that can look like this:

For more on this story (including some senate documents), read TechCrunch and the U.S. Senate Committee press release.