eHarmony Blog.com

I have had a Match.com profile for a while, probably longer than I have had my eHarmony account.  As I have evolved my eHarmony profile, I have usually changed my Match.com profile to reflect the same approach as much as that is possible, since the questions/method on it are quite different.  Anyhow, the idea has been to reflect the same sort of personality/feel and try to come across similarly and cast a wide net by being on several services.

I think that over the life of my Match.com account, I have gotten 4-5 (definitely less than 10) women to show interest in me, either “winking” or sending a message.  Most of them were of no interest to me for one reason or another.

Anyhow, my point of interest is that I recently had someone send me a message and not a wink.

Here’s the rub:

Since they only sent me a message and not a wink in addition, Match.com only shows me that a message was sent and doesn’t reveal their identity.  I found this very surprising and hugely dissapointing.  On the plus side, a message implies paid subscriber and not a passer-by.  If they use the “wink” feature (unless this has changed recently) you at least know who has winked at you.  I don’t recall any of the other dating sites I’ve been on that have this issue.  I think it is a major flaw.  Their marketing department may think that the mystique of “you have a secret crush” will win over subscribers but I’m not so sure about that.  It seems like you would want to tell them that there is someone who IS a subscriber interested in them, since they are a higher priority than a non-subscriber “winker”.

Generally, the idea behind Match is that you do the “wink” thing as non-subscribers and ante-up for a month when you find someone you like.  I don’t buy that model works, since as a male, you really need to send a message to get someone’s attention, from what I’ve read, women get lots of winks and that usually won’t pique their interest enough to respond with a wink or message.

-1 for Match.com for not telling me who sent me a message and trying to bait me into a membership.  eHarmony is better for non-subscribers in this regard.

-1 for Match.com in that there is no user-support community like this blog or as best as I recall, a user community forum to get hints and tricks.  At least, nothing that comes up in the first few pages of Google results.

So, my current conundrum is do I want to pony up for a subscription to find out who was interested in me, given my past history.  If so, usually a longer period is more effective/cost-efficient than one month and do I really want to put the effort into having to do more weeding out on the head-end (more coffee dates) than with eH, where at least there is some theoretical personality matching.  Reflecting on my lackluster results on eH, I am wondering if my odds may be the same or better.

They do offer a guarantee that if you pay for six months of membership and don’t find a “special someone”, you get another six months, provided that you meet certain criteria (e-mail x number of people per month, as I recall 5 and you must keep your profile “live” and have a photo posted at all times).

Shall I take the plunge and conduct some recon for “our team” since my past attempts on Match.com were only half-hearted?  I’m debating it.  Has anyone on here come from Match.com who was not a casual user but really “worked their system” and been dissapointed with it compared to eHarmony?  That would convince me not to.

We shall see if there is a Part II to this anytime soon.