

NY man sues dating website Match.com for deception - absconditus
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0939287520090609

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joel_feather
It _is_ deception. If you pay to contact a person, but the person has no way
of responding, then you have been deceived. You cannot even tell the person to
upgrade or so, since you cannot contact the person.

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msluyter
Seriously?

A.) Use okcupid.com -- much better site. B.) I agree that match.com should
probably identify which members actually are capable of responding, and it
might increase signup rates if it notified non-paying members when they
received a response and then allowed them to see what they'd missed once they
paid. But imho, online dating is inherently "humiliating and disappointing."

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sielskr
_imho, online dating is inherently "humiliating and disappointing."_

Even if that is true, that is no reason for the design of match.com to
increase the humiliation or disappointment.

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HeyLaughingBoy
I can see why some people find it disappointing, but why would you find it
humiliating?

Disclosure: I met a lot of women online (including the one I married) and
generally enjoyed it, but I'm always interested in hearing other perspectives.

~~~
benmathes
It's entirely likely that match.com's setup drastically reduces your response
rate in a deceptive fashion. If you contact 500 people on match.com and _not a
single one_ responds, you'd probably be humiliated.

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jambalaya
I wasn't humiliated from 1 date in 6 months with Match.com. I was humiliated
briefly with eHarmony when I fell for a fake letter of interest. I was very
excited and I emailed all my friends "Hey look this is great!" Then I slowly
realized over the course of the week that I had been duped. I received no
further response and was embarrassed. It should have been obvious with the
spelling mistakes and the woman being listed as a High School English teacher
:) I'm moving to offline approaches. I should get out more any ways. I may try
okcupid or something in the future.

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Goladus
Unless you are a paid member, you cannot even read messages sent to you. Also,
their homepage is always a gigantic advertisement, with a tiny little bit of
text, "member sign in," up near the top. Old correspondence is deleted after
something like 30 or 60 days. Pictures are limited in size.

Match.com is pretty lazy about retaining members and encouraging interaction
and seems to prefer to focus on marketing rather than improving its core
product. Okcupid is superior in almost every way. Match.com has made a few
attempts at upgrading their services but they seem to have been mostly
cosmetic or invisible/infrastructure changes. When I left, "recent views" was
still questionably accurate, the send-email page still had no link back to the
original profile (just a partial text dump of it), and generally poor use of
screen space. Not as bad as eHarmony, but okcupid is better and free.

I met a few cool women through match.com, but finally got fed up with it. I
don't care enough to sue but I have no sympathy for match.

~~~
wglb
Well the match.com business model is a bit difficult. If their service is
successful, two people meet and eventually take their profile down and leave
match behind. There is no retention, because a successful experience removes
two people from their customer list. In fact, there is a stage of dating that
follows First Date: "I took my profile down".

So attracting customers rather than the long-term experience would be their
priority. I met my wife on match, and many mutual friends met their now spouse
there.

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bts
Sorry, but how is this hacker news?

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avner
It highlights a flawed business model that misleads unsuspecting users to pay
for a one-way communication tool through sugar coated TV ads.

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shiranaihito
_A New York man sued dating website Match.com on Tuesday for misleading
members by posting profiles of prospective dates who are unable to respond to
any interest in them because they do not have a paid subscription._

Charging for the ability to send messages is pretty standard practise on most
dating sites. It's how they make money.

Unsurprisingly, this is just another typical American greed lawsuit.

As a sidenote, Match.com does engage in some slimy practises too. For example,
your subscription will get automatically renewed, and your credit card
charged.

If you ask about this, they'll say it's because they want to provide you with
"uninterrupted service", which is, of course, a load of bullshit. In the event
that your subscription runs out, you can have it back up in like two minutes.

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shiranaihito
Downvotes for "typical _American_ greed lawsuit"?

That's what it is though. There's no other country where McDonald's could get
sued for millions for serving hot coffee that's hot.

