Life on MATCH.COM: Is your on-line dating experience like this?


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billgates is offline billgates Post #1  February 17,2008, 10:06am
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A friend sent me his account of using MATCH.COM. I don't think the e-Harmony folks will mind this description of a rival services. I would be curious to know if this matches your experiences. (It does mine.)

This is an account of my recent experience using the MATCH.COM on-line dating service. Hopefully, I can give you some insight into what to expect when using MATCH.COM. About me, I am a 43-year-old, never married, professional male with a graduate degree I am of average height (5' 9") and I classified myself as “average” – in other words I am not “athletic and tone” but on the other hand, I go to the gym and my gut does not extend past my belt – something that puts me well “above-average” compared to my peers – but average is the closest thing that fits. Prior to paying for a subscription, I created a list of “favorites” (as MATCH calls them) using a search of my own, MATCH.COM’s MUTUAL MATCH search and their REVERSE MATCH search. I sorted the results by activity date so that I could avoid the profiles that are just sitting around. I had last used MATCH about three years ago and it was interesting to see many of the same women were still there and had not found their mate yet (something that came as no surprise as you will see). Previously I subscribed for six months. I was not able to take advantage of the MATCH “find someone in six months or we’ll give you six months” guarantee because I did not contact the required number of women each month. The reason for the limited number of contacts was that I was contacting one woman at a time. I would wait a couple of weeks for a response then move on to the next women. During the entire six months, only one woman responded. This time around, I decided to take a more organized approach in that I would contact as many women as I could write a personal note to within one month. Features of MATCH.COM =================== MATCH.COM has the best searching capabilities I have seen among similar sites. There are a few more things that would be desirable (such as being able to include the woman’s criteria in your search so a 5' 9" man can exclude women looking for 6' tall men) but the capabilities are pretty good. In addition to creating your own searches, MATCH.COM has “mutual match” and “reverse match” searches. So you can do the mutual match first to get your best matches then run your own search and “reverse match” search to pick up the women who may be close matches that might slip through the mutual match search. Like similar sites, MATCH.COM allows the user to maintain a “Favorites” list. When you read a profile you can add a person to your favorites by clicking on a link. This allows you to defer e-mailing until after you have finished your search and gives you a place to maintain your search status. MATCH.COM allows you to sort the favorites list in several ways. I used sorting by activity date and sorting by whether it was “My Turn” or “Their Turn”. The latter sort was rather bug ridden and would often list people I had e-mailed already under “My Turn” so I would always have to recheck the list of e-mail. Whenever you e-mail or add someone to your favorites MATCH.COM gives you a list of similar profiles. I found this extremely useful and found a number of interesting profiles that managed to slip through the searches using this mechanism. As with similar sites, MATCH.COM has a “Who’s viewed me” page that lists the people who have viewed your profile. Since few women read profiles, for men, this feature is not very useful. Another common feature is that MATCH.COM allows a user, even a non-paying one, a “Wink” or a short predefined message. It appears that only scammers use this feature. On MATCH.COM the Winks end up getting deleted when the scammer’s profile gets deleted. I ignore them and state in my profile that I will do so. MATCH.COM has an internal e-mail system that allows paying subscribers to communicate. The e-mail has rudimentary features and only keeps 30 days worth. Whenever someone receives an e-mail, MATCH.COM has convenient buttons above and below the message that says “No thanks” so that the recipient can extend the courtesy of a reply to those people she is not interested in without expending any effort. One word about activity date: MATCH.COM’s last activity date only goes up to “Over three weeks ago”. A user that has not been logged on in five years shows up this way. Therefore, you have to interpret “Over Three Weeks” as being “Inactive”. My Profile ======== I created a profile with various pictures. Some showed activities. Others showed the full body. When I was finished I had female friends review it. My Search ======= I set down these qualifications for my own searches - In my geographic area (NYC) - College educated - Has no children - Wants to have children Then I read profiles. Lots of profiles. By that I mean that I read thousands of profiles. To those, I applied the other side’s objective criteria. I eliminated the women where I was not within their requested age. The big one, I eliminated the women where I was not within their requested height. A quick look at the height requirements shows why there are so many single women on MATCH: the majority of women there are looking for men who are taller than average. (I never felt short in my life until I tried MATCH.COM.) Appling the height requirement specified by the women brought the number of profiles down to a manageable number. The only objective criteria I applied at this point were that I eliminated women with tattoos and body piercings. Call me narrow minded but these freak me out. Fortunately, there were not too many of these among the college-educated women. For my subjective evaluation, I eliminated those that expressed hostility to religion. I am looking for a partner to raise a family after all. There appear to be many angry Catholics out there. I also eliminated the profiles that were looking for Mr. Olympia. There were a number of 40-something women who were looking for tall, dark, rugged athletic men in great shape. That’s not me and (sorry ladies) those men are looking for 20-something-year-olds. Also, in a number of profiles, the women described their ideal man in terms that only a homosexual would fit (“I’m looking for a liberal, non-judgmental, open-minded…&rdquo. I skipped over those as well. I eliminated profiles that I found sounded weird (e.g. Describing one’s personality in terms of zodiac mumbo-jumbo.) Finally, I eliminated a number of profiles that simply did not say anything. “Your picture looks nice but I can buy a men’s magazine if I just want to look at pictures.” I tried to avoid using the pictures at all for selection. However, if I looked at the pictures and my first reaction was “that ain’t real” or it was obvious the pictures had been selected to appeal to men with breast fetishes, I ditched them. I found few women who had profiles stocked with pictures of themselves from 15 years ago with one current photo thrown in to the mix for “honesty”. In most cases, the current photo wasn’t a bad one but I passed by such profiles as being deceptive. At the end of this stage I had added about 80 profiles to my “favorites” list. As I scanned through them, there women were of all types of appearance. Age-wise they were concentrated around 38-42. As I look though this list of women, it was quite an eclectic mix. Over time the contents of this list changed. Some women made their profiles unavailable before I had a chance to e-mail them. Sometimes, when I was about to write a particular woman, I would notice something in the profile that had either slipped by me before or had been changed that would cause me to delete it from the Favorites. During the subscription I regularly searched for new profiles and the most recently active profiles for favorites candidates. I would also check out the profile suggestions MATCH.COM made when I wrote someone. At the end of the process, the number of favorites had a not growth to 94. Then I signed up for a one-month subscription to MATCH and I also paid additional for the e-mail notification that told me when my message had been read. I highly recommend this add-on to anyone using MATCH.COM. My Search Log =========== DAY 1: To start off, I picked the one profile that I had found to be the most interesting. To start off, I though I would give one try of my previous method to see if things had changed. I sent that woman a message and waited on her. DAY 3: The message to the first woman was read. She did not respond nor did she even check out my profile. If it were not for the e-mail notification, I might have waited a week or two before moving on. I sent custom messages using different styles to the 3 most recently active women in my favorites. I used the activity date to order the women for contact. Since I was writing personal notes based upon the woman’s profile, albeit short ones, the process was extremely time consuming. I could write only a few per day. To writing people who were no longer active, I always wrote the ones who were most recently active. DAY 4 None of DAY 3’s messages had been read. Received “wink” from a MAN, lovely. Sent just one message to the most recently active women. DAY 5 One of my e-mails has been read. None of the women has either viewed the profile or responded. Received an unsolicited contact from a woman that was obviously a 419 scam. Sent messages to the 8 most recently active women on my list. DAY 6. At this point, have sent messages to 13 women. All but two now have been read. Only one of these women viewed my profile. None has responded. Wrote the 7 most recently active women on my list. DAY 7 At this point, I have sent messages to 20 women. Five are unread. Two women I have written have now visited my profile. Received another unsolicited contact that was obviously a 419 scam. Wrote the next 12 most recently active women in the Favorites list. Day 8 Have now sent messages to 32 women. 9 messages are unread. No one has responded. Wrote the next 5 most recently active women in the Favorites list. Day 9 Have now written 37 women. 12 messages are unread. No responses. Wrote 2 more women from the favorites list. Day 10 Have now written 39 women. One more visited the profile (total 3). No responses Wrote 3 more women Day 11 At this point I have written to 42 women. Only 5 messages are still unread. Today one woman responded with by clicking the “No Thanks” button. This was the first time in my MATCH.COM usage anyone had done this. It shows up as a profile in the favorites with “She’s not interested” on it. They also send an e-mail to your listed e-mail address but not to your MATCH.COM mailbox. This message has a note that says were are not a good match. I wish I could thank this woman for being the only one so far to demonstrate a modicum of common courtesy. This woman was a test case for me. She was obviously not a good match (looked like a model) but hers was one of two profiles I picked out to push the bounds. Her profile was one suggested by MATCH.COM when I e-mailed someone else. It contained essentially no information (other than some really good photographs) but had an invitation to write for more information. So I did. It was a brief but serious message that asked for more information. I am pleasantly surprised that she is the only one to reply so far. Now, I’m almost disappointed that we’re not going to meet. I say “almost” because she did not read my profile. She’s a probably picture browser, not a personality browser. However, with looks like hers, she probably can get away with being a picture browser. I took a day off from writing women today. Day 12 Still, 42 Women written. 1 Not interested. 5 unread. Only 3 of the written have viewed the profile. I wrote 5 more women. Day 13 Score: 47 Women written. 1 Not interested. 8 Not read. Wrote 6 more women. Day 14 Score: 53 Women written. 1 Not interested. 9 Not read. Wrote 2 more woman Day 15 Score: 55 Women written. 1 Not Interested. 8 Not Read. Wrote 7 more women in order of recent activity. Day 16 Score 62 Women written. 1 Not Interested. 9 Not read. Wrote 4 more women. Day 17 66 Women contacted. 1 Not Interested. 9 Not read. Wrote 2 more women Day 18 68 Women contacted. 1 Not Interested. 10 Not Read. Wrote one woman. At this point I had written everyone remaining in my Favorites list. My deletions plus those that had dropped out was greater than the number of new additions over the past three weeks. I stayed up to 4 AM reading 300 profiles and added 18 more profiles for the list. I used the same criteria as before. Nearly all of the profiles were eliminated by my not fitting the criteria specified by the woman. (e.g. “if you are not over 5'10" please don't bother. And if you are older then my age requirement (sic) please do not write me” Profile says she is 5' 6", age 38 and her age limit is 39.) This time I was a much more generous my screening by including women with few details in their profile. Day 19 69 Women contacted. 1 Not Interested. 9 Messages not read. Only 5 women written so far have viewed the profile. Wrote 3 more women. Day 20 72 Women contacted. 1 Not Interested. 9 Not read. Wrote 6 more women Day 21 One more woman responded with a click of the “No thanks” button. The attached note says she found someone. I consider “No Thanks”/”Not Interested” to be a perfectly valid response in this type of environment. From reading this, you can see there are a lot of scammers (and probably a lot of freaks as well). This gives a clear statement of intent: not maybe but rather no. Score 78 Women contacted. 2 Not interested. 11 Not read. Took a break from writing today. Day 22 Score: 78 Women contacted. 2 Not interested. 10 Not read. Wrote 7 women. Day 23 Score: 85 Women contacted. 2 Not interested. 11 Not Read. 5 Have viewed my profile. Wrote 6 Women With the end of my one-month subscription approaching, I wrote everyone remaining on the Favorites list. To ensure that everyone has a chance to respond, I am going to stop writing anyone else. Ten of my messages sent over a week ago have not read. To get an idea of what is going on, I check when the recipients had last logged in. They were evenly divided (5/5) between those that had not logged in since my message and those that had Day 24 Two of the women I wrote yesterday viewed the profile. The other I had written four days ago. Score: 91 Women contacted. 2 Not interested. 12 Not Read. 8 Have viewed my profile. 78 women have then read my profile but have not had the courtesy to either respond or click “No Thanks”. When listing your favorites, MATCH often lists women you have written with those you have not written. I found one profile that I thought I had responded to but had not. So I wrote to that one. Day 25 Score: 92 Women contacted. 2 Not Interested. 13 Not read. Day 26 I actually received a response! Wow. Unfortunately, the woman said that she was dating someone and was not available. The text of the message was really classy. I also received another “Wink”. As with the others, it was obviously a 419 scam. Score: 92 Women contacted. 3 Not Interested. 13 Not read (Unchanged.) I checked on the unread messages and found that 5 of the 13 recipients have been on since I sent the message. Last night I read through profiles again to 4 A.M. I started adding profiles to inspect with more detail later to my favorites. Then I hit MATCH.COM’s limit of 100 in the favorites list. The problem I have is that match only keeps mail for 30 days. So if I start deleting people from the Favorites I will have no way within the MATCH.COM system to track who I have sent e-mail to already. In rereading the ones I added to the favorites, it was clear that I was selecting profiles where I could not find a reason to exclude them. As reread them the selected profiles this morning, most did not generate any enthusiasm. One was local but had not been on in more than three weeks (Matchspeak for “She doesn’t log on any more). A couple of profiles stood out from the rest so I wrote them and included when my MATCH.COM subscription was ending. Both were logged on when I sent the message. Day 27 One of the women from yesterday clicked the “No Thanks” button. The attached message says we are not a good match. I must be pushing the boundaries of my search too far. There were not a lot of common interests in the profile. At least she read my profile. The profile from yesterday’s wink has been deleted. MATCH.COM caught up with the scammer. Score: 94 Women contacted. 4 Not Interested. 13 Not read 9 Women have viewed the profile. Day 28 No changes from yesterday. I searched for new “matches”. There are not many of them – at least not many new ones with pictures. When I started this process I considered all the profiles, even those without pictures. Now I have come to rely on the pictures to confirm scammers. A significant proportion of new profiles turn out to be scams. I am now convinced that the pictures have some value. Day 29 Received another “Wink” from an obvious scammer. MATCH.COM deleted the profile by the end of the day. No other changes from yesterday. Day 30 No changes from yesterday. Final Score ======== Final Score on MATCH.COM 94 Women contacted. 81 Of those women read the e-mail (86%) 9 Of those reading the mail viewed the profile to see who was writing them (89%) 4 Of those reading the mail responded “No thanks” (5%) 95% Percent of the MATCH.COM participants did not respond at all to attempts to contact them. Profile Advice ========== When you do a profile, you should not publish it until it is completely finished. Every block should be filled in and the pictures should be up when you publish it. It appears your profile is most likely to be viewed when it is new. You want everything to be there. If you leave blanks you profile, it is going to appear empty compared to others. For the Catholic girls, I suggest leaving out your version of why you feel oppressed by the church. Take it from a non-Catholic, only Catholics do this and it makes you appear very unappealing for family oriented guys. Maybe it’s just me, but I also find the “spiritual but not religious” classification a cop out. My Selection ========== Before I finish, I should mention my other test case. This was a very pretty woman with an extremely bad conversion from brunette to blonde who was wearing a tight sweater. She did not respond at all or view the profile. Girl, BRUNETTE is your color! Fortunately, I ignored the self-descriptions in making my selection. I went back and found that about half of the women classified themselves as “Athletic and Toned” (yeh, right). I felt tempted to write several of the women who classified themselves as “average” to tell them to bump up a notch or two (Hell, I should have bumped up myself.) All in all, the self-classifications of body type were pretty bogus. One thing I found interesting considering the photo-browsing nature of the women as that several did not have their best photo as their primary photo. Unless someone actually viewed the profile, they would not see the best pictures. Yes, a few women had professional headshots for their primary photo that (how shall we say?) accentuated the positive. However, one woman in particular had a particularly bland primary photograph that just blended with the rest of those in my Favorites gallery. Yet, she had three stunning shots embedded in her profile that a picture browser would never see. Several women had no decent photos of themselves at all. This did not bother me as a profile reader but, since these women are apparently hunting by looks, one would think they would do better for themselves in that area. Why Not Keep Going? ================= Reason 1: No one is responding. A 94-4-0 response rate does not suggest more time will improve things. Plus, this is pretty much the same as my last MATCH.COM experience – except now I have more information. Reason 2: Few people are even reading the profile. Reason 3: MATCH.COM only keeps e-mails for one month. I have spent much time on this effort and managing the volume is difficult. Once MATCH.COM starts deleting the e-mails I have sent it will become even more difficult to identify which people I have e-mailed and what I said to them. Reason 4: New matching profiles arrive at a slow pace. If I did MATCH.COM another month, I might find a handful of profiles to contact. Combined with the close to zero response rate, it’s not worth the trouble. (Not to mention a large percentage of the new profiles each day appear to be scams.) Reason 5: The limit on the number of favorites and the difficulty in tracking additional activity. Reason 6: I did six months before and the response was the same. In short, if you can find someone in one month on MATCH.COM, you are not going to find anyone in 6 months. From the Other Side ============== So far I have only described my search activities and results. Let me take a moment to tell about what happened outside that. The most striking thing I noticed is the lack of profile views. In the two months prior to subscribing that I built up my profile list and during the subscription, I read about 2,000 profiles. I did a search. Clicked on the first result, then go profile to profile using by clicking on “Next” or “Previous”. This means I would have showed up in a lot of women’s “Who’s Viewed Me Lists”. In contrast, only 15 women viewed my profile. Nine of them were women I contacted and two were from obvious scams (and MATCH soon deleted their profiles). That means just four people read my profile from searching. One of the women who viewed my profile did contact me. I read her profile and saw there was an obvious educational gap. Keeping an open mind, I responded and we subsequently exchanged a few e-mails that revealed there was no match there. The handful of other incoming contacts were scams: Girls with usernames along lines of “KittyLovesYou”, age 28, looking for men age 35-70, and the last book read was “A Novel”. When I would do my daily “Reverse Match” search, most of the new profiles each day were like these. All of the “Winks” I received were scams. Some Observations ============== o Assume that people who have not read the message but have been active since it was sent have not done so because they are unable to (something I believe is a valid assumption). This group then represents the “browsers” or those people who regularly view profiles on Match but are not paid up. This suggests that the percentage of recently active women who are actual subscribers is extremely high. o In my previous experience with MATCH.COM, I had not paid for the additional mail delivery notification service. I had assumed that the lack of responses was due to a large segment of the profiles being from non-subscribers who could not receive e-mail. Now, I know this is not the case. o Very few women receiving an e-mail even bother to check the profile of the person sending it. Even the two women who actually responded with “Not Interested” had not viewed the profile. This suggests that MATCH.COM is primarily a picture-browsing site. I suspect that the recipients simply look at the picture with the incoming message and, if it does not look like Mr. Olympia, they ignore the message. o I have to question the quality of breeding among the women on MATCH.COM. Basic common decency dictates that in an environment like on-line dating that one gives a response to all serious inquires. MATCH has convenience of a “No Thanks” button right beside the message for the recipients to use. Yet, the overwhelming majority of the women who actually read the mail do not exhibit the courtesy of giving any response. Men, do you really want a woman who is not going to thank you when you give help? Is going to be rude to your family? That’s is the kind of women you are likely to find on MATCH.COM. To be quite honest, I think I have dodged a bullet by not having these women respond to me. Conclusion ======== From the data presented here, I conclude that women use MATCH.COM nearly exclusively as a picture-browsing site. Facts supporting this conclusion include: - Few women on MATCH.COM have any interest in communicating - Few women on MATCH.COM are reading profiles through searches. - Few women on MATCH.COM view the profile of a person who sends them e-mail. - Few women on MATCH.COM view the profile of a person who views their own profile. Ironically, most of the active women appear to be paying for this service when they could browse the pictures for free. MATCH.COM may have the important therapeutic purpose of reassuring its female subscribers that they are single because there are no decent men out there. MATCH.COM is nothing more than a picture gallery. MATCH.COM could easily address the problem of no response by including a “response percentage” with each profile next to where they list when the person was most recently active. This would allow users to determine what profiles belong to people who are actually communicating. However, it is obvious why MATCH.COM does not have such a feature: people who are actually looking for their special someone would immediately see that relatively few people are interested in communication. I am sure MATCH.COM would respond to all this by claiming hundreds of people are getting hooked up through their service. However, this is probably a small percentage. I suspect that if MATCH.COM would never publish figures about the actual response rate from people contacted through actual e-mail because I fully expect the figures to be fully similar to mine. There have to be some NICE women out there. The question is where to find them. MATCH.COM is not it.
 
 
trailviews is offline trailviews Post #2  March 24,2008, 5:22am
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This is a great study/review. I am surprised that 84% of the women actually read the messages since match.com requires you to pay to read messages you receive. That's actually a positive, though you did go out of your way to contact people who were active in their accounts.



What you didn't include was the type of message/messages being sent to these women? If you just sent a very generic message, I'm not surprised if you didn't get any responses.
 
 
NancyG is offline NancyG Post #3  March 24,2008, 8:32am
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Eliminating women who were looking for "liberal, non-judgemental, open-minded" ??



Does that mean he's conservative, judgemental, and close-minded? No wonder he didn't have much luck!
 
 
BuzWeaver is offline BuzWeaver Post #4  March 24,2008, 5:08pm
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To each their own. I don't think there is an ideal matching site as they all seem to work differently for each person. I'm sure Match.com has a lot of success stories.

 
 
BuzWeaver is offline BuzWeaver Post #5  March 24,2008, 5:18pm
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NancyG,73642 wrote :

Eliminating women who were looking for "liberal, non-judgemental, open-minded" ??



Does that mean he's conservative, judgemental, and close-minded? No wonder he didn't have much luck!
Yes, but it would eliminate 'most' liberals so the strategy works.
 
 
Meatwad is offline Meatwad Post #6  March 27,2008, 5:41pm
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I would have to agree with the findings of the MATCH.COM experience listed above. I've been there and tried that, and my experience was about the same. Sent out 100s of e-mails (each carefully written after reading the profile), and got virtually no responses.

I know I'm not exactly James Bond, but I figured I might get a few more responses than I did...
 
 
OyeJohnero is offline OyeJohnero Post #7  March 27,2008, 7:06pm
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I like the experiment you had on MATCH.COM. I was on match.com and wasn't really happy with it. I mean don't get me wrong I ment a couple of interesting women but they all turned out pysco! But I agree with you on want you say.
 
 
ScrumptiouslyFun is offline ScrumptiouslyFun Post #8  March 30,2008, 2:48pm
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Woman's perspective - I'm on Match.com and I am looking forward to when it runs out at this point. Most men that hit on me are either too old, or young and looking for an older woman to fool around with. I did a test.... I created a profile with a picture of a beautiful girl who was a model on one site and let the profile run. I set up another profile, which was a normal picture of me taken with a normal camera, etc. ...no fluff, just real. I am attractive - I promise you. It was amazing how differently the men acted with model. I wrote to them from both sites. It was fun and an interesting experiment into the male mind and what motivates them. I had a couple signed onto Match, while chit chatting with me in IM as the other profile, acting as though I was the only one they wanted! I had men begin telling me that all women wanted was a man with a good job, all his teeth, and a big.....!!!! Well, I am a normal, intelligent, successful, optimistic and outgoing woman. Where are the sincere, good men who want a woman who will make them happy and still be a great friend always?
 
 
argytunes is offline argytunes Post #9  March 30,2008, 7:36pm
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I've tried them both, but have noticed that match.com won't permit me to access my messages...while eharmony.com does. This is the reason I asked match.com to drop my name from their list. If it's impossible to communicate with (or at least acknowledge) a potential match, what's the point of signing up and spending a lot of money on a dating service?[img]library/editor/plugins/emotions/images/smiley-surprised.gif[/img]

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atpeace is offline atpeace Post #10  April 6,2008, 12:23am
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It sounds like your friend may not be aware of or know how to use all the options available to resolve some of his issues. Here's one woman's point of view. Personally I have decided you use internet dating to increase my chances of finding the "right person”. Yes, I am going to be choosy and I am not willing to settle for just anyone simply because he contacts me. It has to be right for both of us.

I've been on Match.com on and off for two years. I turn my profile off frequently. The shortest it has been on, three days, and the longest at one time, two months. I'll explain this later.

First, to address his issue that women were not reading his profile is probably inaccurate . . . Match.com has the option of hiding your profile whenever you feel like it. When it is hidden, it will not show that you’ve looked at someone's profile. There is a counter that shows how many times it has been viewed and it never matches the number of people listed in your "Who's Viewed You" list. This option is frequently used by most members to avoid being contacted until after you've read their profile and determined whether you have an interest or not. There are many who will take it as a sign that you definitely are if you have read it. I've had lots of men who have winked or emailed without their profile ever showing up in my viewed list.

I have been told, though I'm not sure how accurate this information is, that there is a higher ratio of men then women on Match. I have had other female friends agree that each time we turn on our profile we are immediately flooded with winks and emails usually by men who have not read our profiles and do not care what we are looking for or about our interests. Many contact you based on your photo only and as in my area, the lack of available choices.

I respond to all winks with a written email with a simple thank you or if I have no interest; Thank you and good luck with your search. Which to me is a clear indication that I acknowledged the compliment but am not interested. It has surprised me how many will send a follow-up email after receiving that message, which I respond to with a final email. I will not defend anyone who does not respond to a communication. It is rude and would indicate to me that I would not want to get to know that person better anyway.

It does get frustrating receiving all those messages from men you have nothing in common with. Many times repeatedly from the same ones you have said no too before. It’s not unusual for someone to see themselves in a way that others don’t. This is the reason I end up turning my profile off so often. It takes up a great deal of time for very few compatible matches. You do get a sense that many are sending out mass emails like your friend, to many different women at the same time. I have been told my profile is well written and clearly spells out about me and what I am looking for. If more took the time to read and analyze the profile, it would eliminate many unnecessary contacts.

His issue of Match saving email for only a month is easily solved by checking the box that sends a copy of both sent and received emails to your personal email address. Most people set up a separate address for this purpose.

I've been divorced for six years and have had time to clearly define what I want and what I am not willing to tolerate. When I read a profile my immediate red flags are smokers, men shorter or much younger/older than what I have listed as my preference, the ultra religious that mentions God, Jesus or such in every section. I respect someone’s right to worship the way they choose, but I expect the same in return. . . . ultra conservatives, though I question conservatives too, to a lesser degree. I do write that I am very involved in politics and feel very passionately about my views. . . . those that are separated but not divorced (have run across many married men who use that as an excuse) and the distance they are willing to travel to be with someone. I do not have an issue traveling but have had a few who saw that I am willing and wanted me to do all of it. Not a good way to start things off by saying their time is more valuable then mine. Remember these are my personal red flags and no need to berate any of them. They are what they are.

Quite frankly I've read many well-educated men whose profiles were short and poorly written, leaving you with the feeling that they couldn't be bothered and you should be impressed just because they hold a certain degree or profession.

I agree that there are a lot of serial daters on any dating site and plenty that get hooked on the process of it. Internet dating has a way of fostering what I call "The Kid in The Candy Store" syndrome . . . those that are never satisfied with their choice. They fear that they will miss someone better if they stop searching to concentrate on getting to know just one person. So they start seeing someone, even commit to dating exclusively but continue to look on-line just in case.

Bottom line is no dating site is perfect, but if you choose to be on one, you have to develop a thicker skin, not expect immediate results, update and re-evaluate your profile from time to time and don’t take everything so personally.
 
 
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