Is this person a non-payer?

2) If your match is a non-paying member they cannot communicate in any way, but they will still get your request to jump to e-mail. If they click "accept" they will then be told that they have to pay money in order to read your message or communicate with you. The odds that they are going to pay $60 just to read your message are pretty slim.
3) Many people do not know that when they click "accept" in the e-mail notification that you want to jump to e-mail that you have already sent them a message. So they never go and read your message and keep wondering why you would have requested jumping to e-mail but never sent anything. Pretty soon you have gone to the very top of the "jerk" list.

2) If your match is a non-paying member they cannot communicate in any way, but they will still get your request to jump to e-mail. If they click "accept" they will then be told that they have to pay money in order to read your message or communicate with you. The odds that they are going to pay $60 just to read your message are pretty slim.

Once upon a time eHarmony displayed the communication preference on your profile. Very rarely did I ever encounter a match that preferred skipping GC and jumping directly to OC (e-mail). And only one match out of 3,500 has ever been adamant about skipping GC, actually she wanted to skip eHarmony all together and just go right to a phone call.

There are a number of "bad" things that can happen when you request to skip GC and jump right into e-mail.
1) Unless your match is like minded and wants to jump to e-mail you are likely to make them mad and / or lose interest.
2) If your match is a non-paying member they cannot communicate in any way, but they will still get your request to jump to e-mail. If they click "accept" they will then be told that they have to pay money in order to read your message or communicate with you. The odds that they are going to pay $60 just to read your message are pretty slim.
3) Many people do not know that when they click "accept" in the e-mail notification that you want to jump to e-mail that you have already sent them a message. So they never go and read your message and keep wondering why you would have requested jumping to e-mail but never sent anything. Pretty soon you have gone to the very top of the "jerk" list.
4) If they are a non-paying member but do participate in FCW, if they have clicked the "accept" whenever the next FCW happens they still won't be able to communicate with you because NPMs have to go through GC before being able to use e-mail.

This is a short list of reasons why skipping GC is shooting yourself in the foot but I am getting tired of typing. If using GC is too much of a chore for you then I would recommend that you give Match a try.

If you are too impatient to spend at most 3 days going through the stages of GC then you are too impatient for me and probably most of your matches. If you and your match cannot get through one stage a day or can't / won't respond to a communication within a day that says a lot about level of interest being low.

Lastly, determining to contact a match because of a book they read is, to me, the weakest reason to believe there would be any sort of compatibility.

2. Isn't this a business model issue? Shouldn't eHarmony marketing team make it sound more enticing for free members to upgrade to premium?

3. Isn't this a site design/process flow discrepancy? Logically, once the user accepts the OC, then it should automatically open the message.


No this is a business model....you want to meet her then both of you pay...unless we offer a free communication weekend..

Ideally, I'd like an official eHarmony representative to chime in on this, but I'm relatively new here and I don't know if they ever read this stuff.

this site is run by eharmony staff....some of the moderators such as Lori and Gabriel are official employees. members on the advice site and members on the dating site do not mix. Many members on this board have used eharmony at some time--even if it was a free weekend.....but arent current paying members. If they havent invested in eharmony, they have used online dating before.

If you have problems you can email Lori or others and then they can pass on your complaint to the other side.


I do wonder... What do non-paying members see when I send them a GC? Do they get an email notification or some kind of other message besides the indication on the matches page? Also what does it show or say? I've never gotten a request since I'm always the initiator lol.