“Well, eHarmony did something hard … they told the customer ‘no’.”

Ragoczy writes about IT consulting situations where, it’s better to tell the customer you can’t give them what they want.

… It was a nice message. Politely, even cautiously, worded – with the sort of tone people use with mad dogs or, possibly, wild-eyed men running through the streets with firearms. I don’t have the exact words, but essentially it said:

We’re sorry. Very, very sorry, actually, but there’s nothing we can do for you. We have no one in our entire database who we’d even remotely consider subjecting to a date with you. In fact, we won’t even try to look anymore.

Keep your money. Put your credit card away. We don’t want it. Even if you insist, we still won’t take your money — there’s simply nothing we can do for you. Please consider applying the $49.95 per month to a good therapist.

Okay, so I made that last bit about the therapist up, but the rest is the gist of what they said.

That’s right … an online dating service refused to take my money. …Read the rest of his post, dated 7 July 2008