Step Two - Moving Forward

The past few days have been dedicated to organizing my eHarmony page. As mentioned in first post, I removed older photos and decided to look at what I had written in my profile. I made a few edits, added a little more information and rearranged which photo would best fit as the cover page. I have been more active in reviewing potential matches sent to me and even reached out to a couple of "what if" selections.  This area of the site shows possible matches that are outside the scope of established settings.  I can see that they are a little further away, a different age range and/or education level than what I have set up as my preference. Exploring outside of my comfort zone is what this experiment is all about, so I decided to use this section.

I also received an instant email response from eHarmony's customer service line. It's a survey about the "issue" to see if it has been resolved. As of this moment, I haven't yet ventured to fill out the online form. I am concerned that a multiple choice questionnaire will not reflect the actual issues I have had with the site or my experience with the customer service representative. Generally, I find these type of email surveys are skewed to whatever direction supports the website business model.  It's a basic marketing tool to control the outcome of the response in order to utilize the data to the maximum benefit of the business.

This brings me to another question: if everything is based on this type of algorithm do they work outside of statistic building? Anyone?

 

First Step - Join the Biggest Dating Website

We've all seen them: advertisements proclaiming that love can be found via the Internet.  Who doesn't want love? This July 4, 2013, I decided to give it a try and joined the most expensive site out there - eHarmony. I decided to make it a real commitment and joined for a year.

I moved from Los Angeles, California where I was extremely social and dated frequently to Providence, Rhode Island.  I am social here in Rhode Island, but the atmosphere isn't the same as California.  Not to say that it's bad, it's just different.

Dating as an adult can be a difficult and daunting task. When I was younger, I met men my age or close to it all the time. Flirting was easy, fun and dating was a breeze. Now, I go out with friends and enjoy meeting new people as often as I can. However, the majority of people I have met in my age category (late 40s) are already married. I only chose to jump on board the Internet dating game after being inundated with ads on television and giving in to the option. What the Hell, nothing else seemed to be working. 

I joined eHarmony expecting to go on several first dates. I didn't join expecting true love or having ridiculous expectations. I thought it may be a great way to meet men that otherwise may not cross my path. Eventually, one may wind up turning into something more. That's as far as my optimism went.

So far, I'm unimpressed with eHarmony.  I have a tendency to get matches from several states over, much older and many without photos. I found this to be the norm after 6 weeks on the site. After much exploration, I found an email contact to send a note stating that I was unhappy with the results.  It took a few days to get a response. They provided a basic "sorry" note along with a phone number for customer service.  

I called today and spoke with "Jennifer".  She had a young voice and was clearly following a script.  She looked at my profile, made a few adjustments to see if things could be changed to help the algorithm work.  eHarmony won't let you search their database for matches.  All matches are sent to you based on what the system spits out as a potential match. I listened to Jennifer explain the process, discussing the issues I had with the current matches sent me. Then it happened: she completely insulted me.  She pointed to photos of me that were "older" and really jumped all over them. She was down right rude. Yes, one of the photos I used was 8 years old. I placed it on the front page because of its size. It fit properly while others weren't lining up right. Wow, was she nasty about that. 

Now, I'm insulted. It becomes more of an argument than a discussion on the phone and I'm fuming inside. I point out some of the matches I've been sent have photos that are much older, including one man who used his high school photo from 1980. Her rebuff was that he probably wasn't having any luck on the site either. Ouch. I also pointed out what she said insulted me. Her response was clearly scripted and had no real emotion behind it. 

I asked if I could cancel my membership and get a refund. No can do. My agreement binds me to pay them the $180 (just about) if the account is active or not. It's paid in 3 segments with an automatic yearly renewal. I ask if the renewal can be canceled and she states, yes after the last payment is made. So I'm trapped. I'm stuck in the contract so I may as well use the site. I removed the older photos and will consider adding new ones taken within the next several days. 

I am now aware that eHarmony doesn't provide their customer service representatives with sensitivity training.  If you call, expect a bitch-slap. If I'm lucky someone will see this in eHarmony's Human Resources department and make training adjustments to their customer service staff.  

Meanwhile, I'll justify this expense by blogging about it. I committed for a year, so I'll write about this entire experience. Good, bad or indifferent. I will note if eHarmony works for me.