I really don't see the problem here. If I were joining an online matchmaking service with the purpose of finding a spouse (as opposed to just hooking up) I would want to join one that verified the marital status of its members, at the very least. I'd also want the company to do criminal background checks, credit checks, and civil courthouse checks. I'd even pay extra for a service that performed genetic screening to weed out any potentially lethal recessives.

It is also not unreasonable for them to ask her to fill out a new questionnaire after a year. Things change.

Cool, not only did I get the first post, but it was also the first blame the comsumer post. Woo!

Why bother?

Seriously, eHarmony gets creepier and creepier. They are so conservative, so religious, and so intrusive when all yer trying to do is find somebody to go get coffee with.

Oh, wait, no you're not. Users of this site honestly are hoping for instant, no work relationship creation. That's the most disturbing thing of all.

Here's a tip, passionate people meet passionate people. Go join whatever sort of club, interest group or roundtable discussion suits your tastes and meet somebody the old fashioned way.

eHarmony rejects people for no reason.

I actully think what they are doing is good. They are protecting their product. Give them the information they want or don't join....pretty simple.

@sicknick: Clubs are good when you enjoy same activities.

While relationship are based on characters and individualities.

So clubs could be a start, but a person who enjoys same activities doesn't make you a spouse ;) On the other hand, maybe his brother/sister/friend will.

My son tried them once. Matched him to a girl in Minnesota. They couldn't tell the difference between Maine (ME) and Minnesota (MN).

Yeah I'd have to agree that if your trying to find a soul mate while your still married, there's a big problem there. I don't see why they should just take your word for it now. You should just provide the information, and get on with it. It's not like you'll be too busy with all your dates.

@sicknick: I make a point of not using business who find it completely acceptable to discriminate. eharmony refuses to provide services to homosexuals and that's blatant discrimination in my book.

I'm married and wouldn't use them anyway, but I tell all my single friends to use a different site.

My eH questionnaire has been stuck at about 75% complete for over a year. :)

Does e-Harmony perform background checks on all of its members? While I suppose it's comforting to know that for people who're interested in possibly forming long-term relationships that may lead to marriage, wouldn't that be up to the couple to work out their "trust issues" (which include "are you really just separated or actually divorced?") before entering a committed relationship?

I've known several people've who've separated, but never bothered to finalise a divorce until they're ready to get remarried.

@COELACANTH: Exactly. My brother stayed separated until he was ready to remarry. The funny thing about it was the girl he was marrying, was doing the exact same thing.

@MaelstromRider: ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??? eharmony has no right at all to ask for all that information.

I've done the questionaire just for fun a few times, and they've never found a match for me. Ever.

It kind of made me wonder about the quality of the guys they have stocked up, if none were good enough for me. ;)

A friend starting dating again at age 50 using another online dating service. Background checks would be nice- one possible match she was able to google when she learned his last name.

Uh oh. Multiple DUIs and arrests for domestic violence. Oopsie. Guess he left that off his profile.

I think it's invasive for eharmony to ask all the details. Are they asking for all sorts of neb-nosed proof from every single person who clicks "divorced" when applying? I doubt it.

@wring: Actually, they do. They can basically ask anything they want. She has the right not to answer the question.

@wring: They are offering a service. If you don't like the terms and conditions of purchasing that service, don't purchase it.

there's gotta be a better way to meet people.....it's sad when someone has to resort to these things.....

People seem to use "they don't have the right to" interchangeably with "they're out of line." As others have pointed out, they do have the (legal) right to ask. But the whole point of being a good consumer should be making thoughtful decisions about where we spend our money, and I think many people would prefer not to do business with a company that has invasive business practices. It's not a question of whether eHarmony has the right to do this (they do); it's a question of whether they're douchebags (they are).

@wring: Uh, yeah, they have a right to ask whatever the hell they want. You, as a consumer, have the right to tell them to get bent.

@curmudgeon5: Bah you got in before my post. I do completely agree with the douchebaggery comment. No question, it's lame. But the terminology used to argue it by wring was a swing and a miss.

@Nick1693: No, they have reasons. You probably don't agree with them, but they have them.

They want people that don't have severe social issues and they weed those out. They also will not accept anyone who's gay.

If you don't like it, use another service.

@curmudgeon5: Exactly what I was going to say, but way better worded. Cheers!

I don't understand the problem. She took the survey a year ago. I'd imagine a lot has changed in her life since then. Of course she'd have to retake the survey! If you're serious about meeting someone, then what's the big deal with taking ONE hour to answer some questions?

Can I point Morgan's mom to OkCupid.com please! Since they happen to be poly friendly, being not quite divorced (or still being married) is not a problem. They are also gay friendly which is fabulous. And they have even more fun tests than eHarmony. Oh, and they also don't tell totally cool people like myself that they are unable to find anyone who matches you. Which is just depressing.

What if his mother had initially said she was single? If she had, would they ever tried to find out if it was true? The way I see the site is it already works on the honor system, so why go to such lengths to prove a divorce has happened when they probably never check on all the people who claim they're single.

@chiieddy: They want people that don't have severe social issues and they weed those out. They also will not accept anyone who's gay.

That is a truly interesting choice of phrasing.

eHarmony is so damned creepy and artificial; when you meet people in real life, you have to run the risk that they're not being honest with you. The internet isn't the "freaks-only" place that it used to be, so you're meeting pretty much the same people.

I think Morgan's mom provided pretty much the right answer.

were I not engaged to some freak I met on the internet, I'd much prefer this site to eHarmony: No Longer Lonely

@MARTHA_JONES : from the other side of the coin (gay and therefore unable to marry), a big Thanks for steering your friends in another direction.

I'm with everyone who doesn't see the big deal here. eHarmony has strict guidelines, that's why they make such a big deal out of themselves.

Not sure how match.com does these things, but then again, I found my partner the old-fashioned way (by making friends "IRL").

@Dharma: which would happen to be where I met the freak from the internet whom I will be marrying, too!

I've recently started dating again after being out of the dating pool since before the internet existed (I'm 51.) I have to tell you, the quality and quantity of dating sites is just bewildering. I can easily see someone choosing eHarmony; their commercials are good, and they seem to be sincere. But filling out their questionnaire kind of creeped me out, and my profile sits there, incomplete.

On the other hand, you have sites like match.com and Craigslist that seem to me to be little more than lists of "let's hook up" which isn't something I'm interested in. Yahoo and a lot of other sites have matching algorithms that are just awful.

This whole issue is a fascinating intersection of social and technical issues, and doesn't appear to have been very well solved.

@MARTHA__JONES: I fully support gay marriage and gay rights in general... but I don't consider it discrimination if a company chooses to limit its service to heterosexual match-making. I wouldn't ever log on to a hindu or motorcycle-enthusiast dating site and demand that they find me a man when I know that that's not what they do.

eHarmony has a right to protect its integrity by ensuring that their clients are on the up-and-up with regard to marital status. I'd be pissed if I dated a "divorced" man through them that was only really separated. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I don't consider a marriage to be over until the ink is dry on the divorce settlement.

Pics of the mom?

OKCupid rocks. It never matched me all that well, but I'm a tough cookie, and I'm married now, but I still keep an account for the quizzes and friend matches and stuff. I loved those guys ever since they started the Spark way back when.

Also, everything Curmudgeon5 said.

They totally wouldn't ask someone filling out their initial survey to provide proof of divorce.

@SpiderJerusalem: You're bad people. But amusing.

Oops. that was supposed to be directed at iMike. >.<

But, the sad part is that anyone can lie and pretend when they are taking the survery on eHarmony. And yes some people will waste the hour and you should probably be more scared of someone who lies for an hour than someone who takes 2 minutes to setup a match.com profile.

As a gay person I set up a profile pretending I was a woman just to spite them. I only did half the questrionare though...

But life isn't about a secret detective or eHarmony doing a background check on your date but rather you trust your intuition. And learning to trust other people because it won't be pretty when your 'trust' in eHarmony or detectives goes sour. Your trusting someone, so why not your spouse.

I have no problem with this. I think for serious relationships, eHarmony has the niche (as much as I hate their commercials and lavish PR). If we're just talking about getting coffee or fun dates, there's okcupid and one other site (can't remember the name) that don't do all this bullshit. I think this is all fine.

Yeah, match.com is the other one.

People using dating sites should really be looking out for themselves vis a vis criminal backgrounds and previous marriages.

It only costs $50 do a full public records check on someone (without thier consent or knowledge), which I would probably be spending anyway rather than trusting a dating website's due diligence anyway.

Comment on eHarmony Doesn't Believe You're Really Divorced Yep, it's a long questionnaire, but five years ago I found my wife via eHarmony and it seems to work for us. The reason why there are so many questions is to filter out lies: it's pretty hard to lie consistently for such a long time.

Comment on eHarmony Doesn't Believe You're Really Divorced I¹m surprised this woman ran into trouble, since eHarmony sends my e-mail every few days asking me if I¹d like to meet the ³love of my life², despite the fact I¹ve been married for 2 years. No amount of attempting to unsubscribe from their e-mails has worked. eHarmony really doesn¹t care about policing their affiliates, of which many seem to be resorting to spam. I sure know if I were looking for love, I¹d want to meet someone else who was dull enough to respond to a spammed advertisement!

Is this complaint suppose to elicit sympathy because I am not feeling the pain here. The world isn't going to end because eHarmony won't let you in. Find another dating site that is more to your liking and move on.

Moreover, I really don't think this is complaint worthy. Although I don't agree with many of eHarmony's exclusionary practices, I side with them on this one. I don't think it's too much for a dating site to require that its members are single and otherwise unattached. Or that after a year since the first application, a member resubmit another one.

eHarmony was originally created as a matchmaking service for very socially conservative evangelical Christians. It was heavily promoted, and owes much of its success to its close relationship with Focus on the Family. While they've recently shifted their focus and are marketing it to a wider range of people, its roots are pretty deep, and they do apparently reject people for lots of reasons that they don't always articulate to potential clients, but that anecdotally seem to slant their clientele toward social conservatives.

Personally, what creeps me out the most about them is the fact that the couples in their ads almost all look eerily alike. Not only are they pretty consistently the same broad racial category, but they usually have almost always have similar features, the same skin tone, body type, etc.

So I figure I wouldn't need eHarmony even if I were on the market for something like that. I have two brothers, and I know how to get in contact with them already.

I'm not too familiar with eharmony, but couldn't you just say you were single on the questionnaire (which is technically true if the divorce has gone through) and bypass any future problems?

I get spam email from eh--so how sincere can they really be? Also, their commercials creep me out.

I guess I don't see what is wrong with dating the old-fashioned way: Throwing on a few gold chains, popping out your collar and heading to the local watering hole.

This eHarmony crap sounds like too much work.

Fracking elitists.

What wrong with a service that wants to focus on marriage minded individuals? If you just want casual, why waste someone's time who doesnt want a casual relationship? Similarly they have other qualifications of people who generally wouldn't make good marriage material at that point in their lives. I'm glad someone is taking the time to filter out all the people who wouldn't be available for one reason or another.

I guess the important question to ask here is e-harmony any more successful at matching compatible people than other inclusive sites.

That was exactly my point here (OP). Anyone can sign up and lie about whatever they want. But here they have a potential customer (taking the questionnaire is free) who is actually trying to be honest and they want her to jump through extra hoops to do so.

Asking her to take the questionnaire again, not a problem. But new members aren't required to send in documentation, so why should she have to do that just to continue using the account she already signed up for?