Gosh, I wish I could sue all the women that ignore me. Especially when life tells me they're online (ie. they're right in front of me).

I'd use the winnings and go on a hooker spree for sure.

@Applekid: lol.
But I think the guy is raving about those teaser previews of hot people the sites keep on sending desperate single guys, constantly implying that theres hope that some hot person near where you live who will reply to you, even though you live in a place whose singles scene sucks and all the halfway decent girls are taken, and that theres no chance in hell that a girl like that would look for someone online.

... not that i know it from experience or anything.

All humor aside, this is a serious problem with Match (and they're not the only ones). There's really no way of knowing how many people are inactive, but I know that my old profile still shows up on their site and is searchable, so people searching have no way of knowing that its essentially a waste of their time contacting certain profiles. It also hides the fact that their male/female ratio is fairly skewed.

Oof. I used match.com for about a year and met some of the weirdest crazies I've ever met in my life (the crazies on OKCupid were a lot more tolerable.) Never ran into a problem of non-active profiles, though I usually assumed anyone who didn't write back was simply disinterested. Can you even tell if the account you're writing to is canceled, and not just someone who decided not to write back?

@MostlyHarmless: Yeah, I have the opposite problem... I live in NYC where the ratio of single women to available men is INSANE. You expect me to believe there is some hot, lonely, modelesque stud out there who isn't neck deep in desperate Manhattanite vajayjay? Suuuure.

I don't know much about how Match.com works, so it would help shed some light on the situation if someone explained some things. Is Match.com like other sites where you can join for free, set up a profile and search and all that, but you have to pay to actually communicate with people? So is it possible that this person who the guy was trying to contact had been a paying member, but then reverted back to a "free" membership? How would the plaintiff come to know that she was unable to receive his messages? Could she retrieve the messages if she started paying again? Is the issue here really that Match.com doesn't tell you if someone is a paying member or not, and/or doesn't tell you how recently a person logged in?

I used the site for like 3 months or something like that. If I remember correctly, after my subscription ran out, I would still get notifications that I had messages, but could only read them if I signed up again.

I can't complain because I did actually get a real life date out of the $60 or whatever I paid, it just turns out that I can't stand to be with someone 24/7 without me wanting to throw myself off a tall building.

In the end, I just removed my account completely just so I didn't get the random message from time to time which would tempt me to waste more money especially during those dry spells and there were ALOT considering I just graduated from Georgia Tech and I was one of the 70% who wasn't female.

I had a similar problem with chemistry.com You can create your profile for free and they give you a couple matches. If you want more you pay. So I did. I was not interested in most matches, but I was in others. I would click that I was interested and the other person NEVER EVER clicked "interested" or "not interested"

This is because they were presenting me with profiles that people had written a while back but had not paid or had canceled and thus were no longer active people.

Their terms stated that they offered no refunds, but I called them up, explained my suspicion and they immediately refunded my money.

You know ... right now is a good to turn gay. ;)

All humor aside, this is a serious problem with Match (and they're not the only ones). There's really no way of knowing how many people are inactive, but I know that my old profile still shows up on their site and is searchable, so people searching have no way of knowing that its essentially a waste of their time contacting certain profiles. It also hides the fact that their male/female ratio is fairly skewed.

Interesting, because I know that a friend of mine (*cough*) was talking to a girl from Match, went on a couple dates, and then she wound up seriously seeing another guy... couple days later, her whole profile was gone from the site. I seems like less a policy problem with Match.com than it is of people not bothering to deal with their profile when they don't need it anymore.

@Kelly Lum: When I dropped a site (Match.com), I went into my profile and posted something like "If you are reading this past [date of cancellation] then you now know that [this site] makes available inactive profiles. Make of that what you will." just prior to turning off my access.

Hah! I just checked as a lark--Match.com still has it posted and searchable, even though it was cancelled in July of 2005. Even the disclaimer above was still there!

@Kelly Lum: See you have to lower your standards a bit? Why not settle for PhD's with 6 figure incomes and beefy retirements accounts planning to settle down? (That would describe me perfectly, and what Kelly is looking for would probably explain my lack of success).

This is the exact reason I canceled my account on eHarmony. I wrote dozens of emails, and got very few responses. And no, I have no reason to be so self-hating that I would expect such a low reply rate if the intended recipients were actually getting to read the mails I was sending. Needless to say, I cancelled after 3 months. Especially after they no longer had phone support.

@44 in a Row:
I met my husband through the site and we both canceled our profiles. I just checked but we are both still gone from the site. You have to cancel your profile though, not just your subscription.

@Cant_stop_the_rock: NO, its actually extremely expensive, and tries to get you to pay in month-blocks instead of normal monthly billing.

IE, someone signed on and created an account 2 years ago, and there picture and profile is there, but they stopped paying or closed there acct. Now, Jim Mchornypants tries to get ahold of them and gets nothing in return

It seems like a minor inconvenience, but i have friends (sorry, ladies, im engaged) who have said 95% of what they send out is to inactive accounts.

eHarmony is the one that's really bad about this. You get matched with paying subscribers, non-paying subscribers, people who have never bothered to check their accounts, etc...you get a nice feeling of rejection, but when you look at the "Who's Viewed Me" button...and only about 2 people in two weeks click your profile...it means you are being matched to a bunch of inactive members.

Once he gets that $5 million, he won't even need Match.com to get a date! At least until the money runs out.

@Kelly Lum: I met a crazy on OKCupid that turned me off to dating services for life. However, before that I came to realize that half the people on these sites are inactive, or are just using the free portion of the service to see if it's worthwhile. OkCupid was better because it was free, but it was essentially Myspace with a very specific purpose.

By th way, it occured to me why they allow folks to browse inactive profiles. It makes the prospect of paying for an account all the more attractive when it looks like there is a robust community of people from which to find your match. Downright devious, says I.

Doesn't Ticketmaster own Match.com? There's the answer, folks.

@davere: I am surprised that they didn't have a "last log on date" function or similar. Some of the ~free~ sites even have that though you cannot communicate directly unless you pay up.

That said some folks on free sites manage(d) to figure out how to let people know their email address via the user name and discreet hints. When profiles contain info such as "I love saying yaahou when I meet a new person." or "I always say "G!" when i get new mail from someone." or "You willA knowO howL to contact me." if the profiles are not read by actual humans but only by programs searching for obvious @gmail.com or @aol.com type phrases.

I do not have to worry about this issue now as I met my 2nd wife though an online group that shared our hobby. No more singles sites for me (I do occasionally troll local Craiglist singles and freaks to see if I know anyone. And darned if I didn't find a woman from my wife's extended social group of friends one time... The wife laughed as the woman was already known for the type of ~relationship~ for which she was advertising.)

This is the EXACT same thing they do to me! They have sent me notifications that "so n so" has written me, and when I pay to get back on I find that they are referring to an email so-n-so wrote me months before and that so-n-so hasnt been active for weeks. They pull the same stuff over and over, and (on a bad note) out of desperation I repeatedly fall for it. This last time I asked them never to contact me again, which I got an email claiming they will honor it.

I am surprised that they didn't have a "last log on date" function or similar. Some of the ~free~ sites even have that though you cannot communicate directly unless you pay up.

Every profile I've looked at has at least a rough estimate of when the last logon was. The weird thing from the article is that allegedly some of the profiles said "online now".

"it's that the profiles are of people who have canceled."

That should tell him something....

@Kelly Lum: i recently found out that one of the guys i met on okcupid last year was, as a matter of fact, an officially diagnosed crazy. [he also dated a friend of mine and told her about what his therapist said]
it doesn't matter what site you are on, people are still going to be people.
but at least okcupid shows you when a profile has been deactivated, and shows you how long it's been since someone logged in if they didn't deactivate it.
and it's free!

@The-Lone-Gunman: You might have cenceled, but arfe you sure switched your profile to "hidden" or "non-searchable"?

@Benny Zhang:

Maybe it's just me, but this makes no sense.

@44 in a Row: If they were online is the case then they are just fake profiles. Could Match.com be putting out fake profiles to lure people into signing up for their service? And then those profiles don't have anyone on the other side?

If they were online is the case then they are just fake profiles. Could Match.com be putting out fake profiles to lure people into signing up for their service? And then those profiles don't have anyone on the other side?

It's possible... I don't know, though, I'm just kind of skeptical. It'd be one thing if the guy in question was from out in the boondocks, but there are a ton of people in New York on that site. My friend (*cough*) joined at the suggestion of several other friends, all of whom used and enjoyed it, and my friend has corresponded with several people and been on a few dates so far. It just seems unlikely to me the complete lack of response is due to shenanigans on Match.com's part.

I guess MdC was a lot more friendly 12 years ago when I was on it. I am actually shocked to read how much they are charging (it was free back then, and free for life to those early adopters).

Back in that day (free for life) one would NEVER delete their profile. I was seriously dating someone at the time and just left my MdC account alone. My now-wife had noted that I never contacted her despite us being a 'match' and she had stewed over this fact; so when my other relationship ended and I went back to MdC to see what's what, I noticed her as a match and contacted her. She was pre-intrigued at the guy who had blown her off for a year so we went out. Been married 9 years.

@catastrophegirl - house closing june 12th: Yep. I figured if I'm going to have to wade through a deluge of weirdos, I might as well do it for free. I did meet some pretty decent dudes on OKCupid, though. I can't say the same for match, though I know that could be as much luck as it could be their userbase.

@Cyberxion101: IIRC, some dating sites (not sure which) have gotten in trouble for putting up fake profiles to try to lure people into subscribing. Pretty shady.

Like others pointed it out, it's not enough to cancel am membership on these sites. You have to disable your profile from being searchable or delete the profile altogether. Otherwise, it goes into "free" mode.

awesome

@Benny Zhang:
Is this the matching site that got sued for discriminating against gay folks? What was the outcome of that anyway? As for the advice, it's too late for me already. Any gay guys here looking for a date?

EHarm does this same crap. Except I think their worse because they don't let you browse or search, you are dependent on their trickle of profiles they let you view.

@econobiker:
"I do occasionally troll local Craiglist singles and freaks to see if I know anyone. And darned if I didn't find a woman from my wife's extended social group of friends one time... The wife laughed as the woman was already known for the type of ~relationship~ for which she was advertising.)"

I've done that too. I once found one of my former foster kids selling himself as a prostitute. I responed to the ad & he called me, so very sad, he refused my help.

True.com is probably the worst site that does this. I tried it for a month. All the time I would get winks and emails from alot of women. When I would check the "Who's Viewed Me" none of them ever had. I tried EHarmony for free. I started noticing that all my matches had 5 rotating "about me"s that were the same. My favorite always began with "I find humor in everyday situations".

@thej27: Um, because those are eharmony questions that have a fixed set of answers (based on the questionnaire you fill out). It's not free-form text.

Uh, doesn't every pay dating site do this??? I always assumed this was how they competed against the much better free ones.

I started noticing that all my matches had 5 rotating "about me"s that were the same. My favorite always began with "I find humor in everyday situations".

In fairness, every woman on every online dating site in the world is sarcastic, enjoys going out on the town but doesn't mind spending a night in her PJs on the couch with a bottle of wine, and loves to travel.

This has been my experience with several dating web sites. You sign up for free, get a whole bunch of come-ons from people, get a paid account so you can contact them and suddenly all the come-ons stop. Classic bait and switch. I wouldn't trust any of these.

Good lord, Match and eHarmony are populated with lonely Consumerist posters. There should be a checkbox for that when you sign up.

@wvFrugan: It was eHarmony.com that got sued for violating California's anti-discrimination law. (Their owner is a fundie.) Because of the lawsuit they set up a separate site for "other lifestyles."

I've used match and eharmony and they both suck that way. There's no way of knowing (as far as I could tell) who was a paid member and who wasn't. It was a waste of time emailing around because 90% of the people you emailed probably didn't have a paid account and couldn't read your email. And, since I only subscribed to one of them for a short time, I know the frustration of the other end too. Why should I pay so much money to read one email that MIGHT be from a person worth knowing?

@Cant_stop_the_rock: You nailed it, you can search, and you can get emails from folks, but you can't read them or respond to them until you fork over the cash.

@Darrone: If I remember correctly, you can see how long ago a member signed in, so if Mr McHornypants is too busy hitting the send key one handed rather than reading the profile and noting when they last signed in, it's their own damn fault.

@Benny Zhang: As a gay man, I can tell you that being gay does not make it easier to find a date, if anything, it's harder for the men because we really are only interested in one thing ;-)

I tried out Match.com and actually did go on a few dates, plus I did end up in a relationship with someone for a few months.

What confuses me about this story is that I could have sworn that Match does actually show the last time someone was signed into their profiles. It was usually general like "Yesterday" "3 days ago" "1 week ago" "Over 2 weeks ago (I think that was the upper limit)" So I feel this was a case that he was not paying attention.

@Kelly Lum: already packed and getting the first train tomorrow morning....

wait what are NYC rents??? Ill stick to good ole gun toting Philly.