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We have a fair number of user submitted reviews on our site and I've notice lately, there are a greater percentage of negative reviews of dating services than positive.

Why are the user ratings of the majority of dating sites so low? There are several reasons, the main one being is, more singles tend to search out dating service reviews when they have had a bad experience. They want to meet other people that have had similar dating problems and share their story. These people tend to take the time to write out a review to warn other singles.

Singles who have had good experiences with a dating service usually spend their time at the dating site, not looking for dating reviews. They usually don't see the need to find review sites to post their experiences. What they tend to do is either notify the dating site itself and comment on their positive experience (hence the "Success Stories" dating services post on their sites) or they mention it directly to friends and family.

The other thing I found is a fair number of negative reviews tend to be written by younger men. Younger men have greater competition when dating online since older men's dating range tends to be from their age too sometimes as much as 15 years younger. This obviously conflicts with younger men. Older men are usually more successful (been working longer) which also adds to the problem. These facts can cause younger men greater frustration when dealing with online dating.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't complain, there is a lot of things dating sites could do better. It just so happens that some of our reviewers find our site because they have had bad experiences. We have started an Ad campaign to hopefully lure in more people to post positive experiences of dating services to balance things out.

There are several advantages of creating a user account here at Dating Sites Reviews. The first one is the ability to create a unique user name. This will allow you to post reviews & ratings, comments and forum posts as that user. Where as if you post as an anonymous user (with a nickname) other users could potentially post as you using the same nickname (it does happen sometimes). When logged in as a user you also do not have to worry about our SPAM prevention CAPTCHA system (where you have to enter the correct sequence of number and letters that are represented in a graphic before you can post any info). This is automatically disabled for logged in users.

The second main advantage is email notifications. If you post on the forum you can setup the ability to have our forum email you as soon as someone replies. This is a great feature and saves you time from coming back here to check your post to see if you have any replies. You can turn this feature off anytime and we do not give email addresses out to anyone.

Creating a user account also allows you to edit your own forum posts. This enables you to update or change any info you need to later on.

The last main advantage of registering a user account is the ability of other users to email you privately. This is done through are web site and are own email system so your email account you used when you registered is never given out.

You are now able to add your own reviews and ratings to the sites we have reviewed on Dating Sites Reviews. We decided to add this feature to allow singles to voice their own opinions on a particular dating service since everyone has had their own experiences.

When you visit our review page for a dating service you will notice an average rating (displayed as stars and out of 5) located under the title of the review at the top of the page. This average is based on just user submitted rating and reviews for the particular dating site you are viewing. You will have two options presented to you by the average rating. You can either view each user submitted rating and review for the particular dating service or you can add your own.

A dating site rating and review is made up of:

• Title - The title of your review. It is best to make this as descriptive as possible.
• Author Name - If you have a user account setup that will be used, else you can enter a nickname for yourself
• Location - Specify where you live. Don't put your exact location but your city, state/province and country will be fine. If you are uncomfortable listing your city please at least put the country you live in.
• The Rating - This is out of 5 with 5 being the best possible rating.
• Positive Points - List the top positive points of the dating service in your opinion.
• Negative Points - List the top negative points of the dating service if there are any.
• Bottom Line - List either the major point you are trying to make in your review (if you would recommend joining or not).
• Review - Where you can write your experiences about the dating service.

When submitted all reviews are reviewed by us to ensure that the rating and review is informative and that no SPAM or profanity got through our automated filters. The rating and reviews are the property of the person who submitted them. Dating Sites Reviews is not responsible for what is said in them. It may take up to 7 business days for us to go over a submitted review (usually less). You can only submit one review for a particular dating service. If your review is rejected right away when you submitted it because of the SPAM filter please Contact Us and send us your review and information and we will manually add it to our site. Sometimes our SPAM filter is a little to aggressive but unfortunately it is needed in today's internet world.

When viewing the reviews you have the option of viewing them by date created. You can also specify if a particular review was helpful or not. If you would like to view the top rated sites based on users rating and reviews please check out our Top 10 Dating Services.

Just a quick note based on some emails I have gotten from our users lately.

At the bottom of our dating site reviews is a date of the last time the page was updated. This date doesn't mean that all the information was reviewed about the dating site and confirmed. The update could have been a simple html fix.

We try and review all of our dating site reviews every 3 to 6 months in detail and fix any discrepancies that may arise through the online dating service updating their site. Small updates do happen all the time to the reviews. These are based on user input, emails from the dating sites regarding new features and, from my own visiting of the dating services.

I have started to include dates of important updates in brackets beside such things as, when the last current promotions for the dating site was checked and, as well as any price information on the online dating sites. This is to ensure that singles realize when visiting our site and the actual dating site that prices do change and we are not always notified about this. Dating on the internet is very competitive now days and the dating sites are always evolving to stay competitive and to meet the needs of their members.

This article contains information regarding our reviewed dating services minimum criteria. This means we won't consider reviewing the site and/or app unless it meets most of the objectives of the points below. Once an online dating service evolves enough to pass the criteria, we will commence a review. Of course, this may mean the dating site or app still does not necessarily get added to our review site. If our detailed review process reveals a dating service is below are standards, we will not include it. The points below list the major criteria our experts consider before we review an online dating service:

1. Our first major criteria is the number of members the service has. This number of course is not set in stone and depends on the dating niche the service is a part of. We would expect a dating site/app that caters to seniors to have fewer members than a more general oriented mainstream dating site/app for singles. A number of new dating sites have complained about this criterion but, we cannot recommend a dating service in good conscience to our readers that can't offer actual matches to their members.
2. The next criteria we look at is the business practices of the dating service. Some of the "lower class" dating sites can make it extremely difficult to cancel a membership. You can find some of them renewing subscriptions without the expressed permission of the person. These fraudulent sites also will not offer refunds for any reason or within a certain time period.
3. This criterion is similar to the last one and deals with the number of member complaints found. These complaints are usually regarding; the site not working properly, membership problems, or poor customer service. If you search online, you can find numerous complaints about almost any company or product. We take a look at the scope of the complaints found when compared to other popular dating services. If there are too many and they all revolve around one issue, we then take notice.
4. Customer Support is especially important. You cannot leave members to flounder about the dating site themselves if they are having problems. Detailed FAQ or Help Center, Email, Online Support Chat and Toll-Free Phone Service are important tools to help members navigate online dating. A dating service needs at least 2 of these tools to even be considered. Hours of service are taken into consideration along with the response time to email and phone inquiries.
5. Handling of Abuse is another important criterion. Members need to feel safe online and if another member cannot seem to take no for an answer there needs to be ways of dealing with this. From notifying the dating service of this members inappropriate behavior, to ways of blocking members from contacting (email, IM and chatting), or even seeing your profile online. These safety features must be easy to find and use. There must also be a tool to report inappropriate and fake profiles.

This set of criteria will evolve as we re-evaluate our position, and as dating services add in new features in which we will need to consider.

If you do not see a review for a dating service on our site, in most cases it may not be worth joining.

Every year or so we revaluate the services and products we have reviewed. This is done to update the review with any new changes that might have happened including new features, price changes, etc. Over the years some services and products get better, and some unfortunately get worse. Instead of removing the services and products that have declined in quality to below our minimum standards we decided to move them to our Not Recommended category. This can happen in two ways. The dating site or app quality of service could have declined and because of this, stopped meeting one of our criteria above. The second way is we added a new criterion in which the service or product did not meet, and we deemed important enough to move the product or service to the Not Recommended category.

Having a list of minimum dating service review criterion helps solve a couple of problems. Most people when visiting DatingSitesReviews are only interested in reviews of dating services that work and can offer them a good chance of meeting their match. If we included sites we did not like, there would be hundreds of sites on our list and the good ones would be lost in the shuffle. Plus, why waste people's time in reading reviews of services and products that hardly have any redeeming qualities? People rather be reading about online dating services and products that actually work. The only decisions they then need to make is about what type of dating service they wish to join, and what features are most important to them.