General News

Élan Relationships has been around for 18 years now and claims to be Chicago's premiere personal introduction service. At least one woman disagrees. Sheena Finnegan signed up last May for $3,500 with the hopes of meeting her soul mate. Élan Relationships allegedly promised her:

... to find her “genuine, high caliber, professional” matches by setting her up with six “qualified introductions” in a six-month period ...

According to Finnegan all she got was heartache, frustration and disappointment.

By the end of June Sheena had only been on two dates with men she felt did not suit her. She also had been scheduled for 3 other dates which were all cancelled, and not by her. Since Sheena had a number of cancelled dates, she did get her membership extended by one month. After some more dates and two more cancellations Finnegan had had enough. She found that none of the men were what was promised to her. She contacted Élan Relationships and asked for a refund and was refused. According to Sheena Finnegan:

the company’s contract was “misleading…false…fraudulent” and did not make any favorable matches for her.

In her lawsuit Sheena is asking for an unspecified amount of money in damages and an injunction to prevent Élan from continuing to practice the alleged deceitful business techniques.

Élan Relationships is a member of the Better Business Bureau and they have been a BBB Accredited business since November 2006. They currently hold a BBB Rating of B. According to the BBB, the company Élan Relationships has had only a few complaints filed against them, with most of them either being Resolved or Administratively Closed due to a fair offer being made.

For a list of other personal matchmakers, try our Matchmaking Services category.

Here is a good video from Good Morning America and ABC News about how eHarmony works and what goes into figuring out how to best match singles together. There is even a first time peek ever of eHarmony Labs, where all the matchmaking magic happens.



Most of the information in the video we have reported about before, but the video does offer a good summary of the dating site. One new fact which I will need to add to our Dating Statistics page is, from the marriages in which eHarmony is responsible for, there have been over 100,000 babies born by these couples.

For a more in-depth information, read our eHarmony review.

We first learned about the study to find which gender is pickier when it comes to dating in July (see Story). In an article from Live Science we learned a few more details about this speed dating study by Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick of Northwestern University.

The studies participants were 350 college students who were divided into 15 speed dating events. Each student went on 4 minute speed dates with about 12 singles of the opposite sex. After each mini date, each student would rate:

• How much self confidence they felt.
• Romantic desire for the person on the date.
• The romantic chemistry that the participant felt existed between them.
• Would you like to see this person again?

After the data was compiled from the speed dating events, it was found that the daters who rotated around the room to each participant who was sitting, that they experienced greater romantic desire and chemistry. This means the people who went from person to person were less selective than the person sitting waiting for the next date in the rotation. The study further confirmed that this fact was true for both men and women. Finkel & Eastwick concluded that it was the act of approaching, or being approached by a person, which determined who was more likely to be more selective in determining a partner.

If speed dating is of interest to you, check out our Speed Dating Services category for all dating sites that offer online and off speed dating events near you.

eHarmony has extended the expiry dates of the coupon codes for two of their more popular promotions. Both of these coupon codes expire on December 31, 2009.

eHarmony Coupon #1

eHarmony Coupon #2

These coupon codes are valid only on the eHarmony Canada (eHarmony.ca) and eHarmony United States (eHarmony.com) dating sites. Read our review of eHarmony for more information about this online matchmaking service.

OkTrends recently took a look at how religion and race affects online matching. This is a summary of what they found based a random pool of 500,000 members:

• The Zodiac Sign - Statistically makes no difference. It doesn't matter if you are a Leo and female, the person you end up with has an equal chance of being any of the twelve Zodiac signs.
• Match By Religion - Agnostics and Jews get along better with most other religion groups while Muslims and Hindu men tend to be the most choosey.
• Match By Religious Attitude - It doesn't seem to matter how serious someone is about their religion. You have an almost equal chance of liking someone who doesn't take it too serious.
• Match By Race - Surprisingly there is nothing dramatic here. The overall compatibility of all races is pretty even.

For a more detailed explanation on how race and religion effect matching, read oktrends and to find out more information about this dating site read our review of OkCupid.

We just got word that eHarmony in Australia (eHarmony.com.au) is having a free communication weekend starting today, Friday October 2nd, and ending Monday October 5th, 2009.

Not only can all members (including free ones) review matches for free but you can communicate with them as well. Just remember if you are a new non paying member, don't use the guided communication FastTrack option. This option is not available for free during this promotion and you would lose the ability to communicate with this member. For those of you who have not used eHarmony before, the FastTrack option allows you to skip the 4 step guided communication process and permits you to go ahead and send a email message right away to your match.

The last eHarmony Australia Free Communication Weekend was held at the end of August (see Story).

Read our review of eHarmony and find out why Australian singles have made this a very popular matchmaking service.