Confessions of a Former eHarmony Worker

An ex eHarmony.com customer service rep and atheist wrote in. She reveals more about the matchmaking site’s inner workings, including the old guy who sat behind her with a bible on her desk.

We would also like to take this opportunity to remind you that it’s not just customer service complaints you can send in, we’d love for you to fink on the inner workings of your company (especially as it relates to consumers and customer service), whether past or present. All the anonymity or prominence you desire is yours for the asking.

But let’s hear about them lovelorn atheists, after the jump…

UPDATE: Alan writes that he just went ahead and created a user profile on eHarmony for an atheist who “drinks regularly, willing to date anyone, and answered “no” to every religious question.” He says he found plenty of matches in his area. So it would seem that eHarmony is not denying people based on religion but on other factors. The criteria are described by Dr. Warren, the founder of eHarmony.com, in this Salon article pointed to us by Jon.

    “Back several years ago, I lived in Los Angeles. I had a couple of friends that worked for eHarmony. This was before the site went “live” and was still in the development stage. I was new to LA and these friends set me up for a job interview- and I was hired to be customer service. Since the site wasn’t online yet, part of my job was to help test the site.

    When I was interviewed and hired, at no point was it mentioned to me that it was a Christian dating service. I began to get a little suspicious when the only other customer service person they had hired was an old friend of Dr. Warren’s. He sat behind me with a Bible on his desk.

    Hmm…

    As I went through the testing, repeatedly taking the personality profile test, no matter how I filled it out, I got rejected. The reason? I always checked the Atheist box. Granted, there were no members yet for them to “match” me with but I was still rejected. It didn’t give a reason- such as “You’re a big heathen and we don’t like your kind.”

    But it was a paycheck. However, about two weeks into the job, when discussing my role in “customer service”, I was informed that I’d more than likely be expected to pray with people over the phone when they called in, distraught over not having found a mate.

    That’s when I quit.

    I have absolutely no problem with Christian dating services- to each his own and all that. My problem was that it felt to me that they were trying to hide what they were, instead of being up front about it. I honestly don’t know if their model has changed since then… several times since then I’ve gone in and taken the test to see what would happen. Mostly I got rejected again, although most recently, I did get matches because I said I’d be willing to date Christians.

    -B.”

Maybe we should start the Consumerist.com dating service.

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