Intriguing idea, mercenary execution
Written: Aug 08 '05 (Updated Aug 12 '05)
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The ideas behind eHarmony seem intriguing: The system selects matches for you, therefore ensuring some level of compatibility based on the criteria you tell it. Then, the owner of eHarmony electronically guides you through a process by which you get to know each other.
In a meet market like match.com or ourspace.com, it's easy to select the young and pretty girls, because of course all guys love young and pretty girls, and bang your head out trying to get them to want to meet a middle-aged guy like yourself. By not allowing you to select your matches, eHarmony forces you to confront reality and deal with people your age. I suspect this is the foundation for the claim that it's created more marriages than any other service.
An incredibly pricey service
Because eHarmony leads you by the hand in dealing with matches, it is much, much more expensive than the other services. The stated rates are $50 for one month, $100 for three months and $250 a year. I really didn't much like those rates and was on the edge whether to subscribe or not. eHarmony finally popped up a window with a survey asking why I didn't subscribe and I said I thought the price was outrageous. By a remarkable coincidence, an email arrived about a day later offering three months for $50. I took it.
When I first signed up, I received similar notices over the course of a few months gradually lowering the membership cost until in the end it was $9.95 for three months. At this point, I didn't want to wait for that to happen, but if you want a genuinely economical membership you might want to sign up and ignore it until that email arrives.
An incredibly mercenary service
On other matching systems, you can initiate contact and the person being contacted can respond even if they are not a paying member. On eHarmony, you have to be a paying member to respond. They explain in their FAQ that they want you and the person you're contacting to have the same level of commitment to a long-term relationship. In reality, of course, this is an effort to force both of you to pay $49.95 or more to communicate.
In my case, someone actually did ask questions to me and I came close to subscribing because of this cruel joke of extortion. I didn't want to disappoint my match, but I didn't want to give in to the eHarmony ripoff rates, either. And of course my match might have said "What's your happiness with me for $99.95?" and I wouldn't have had a reasonable answer. She finally "closed communication" a few days before I subscribed.
Now, I don't think there's anything wrong with a little greed, but in this case, their excessive greed does not serve paying customers well. If I pay, I think it's reasonable to expect that the person I'm writing will be able to respond.
eHarmony Profiles
The eHarmony profile process is perfect for someone who can't write, or doesn't like writing in their own words. There is very little opportunity to be expressive or distinguish yourself from the pack. For someone like me, this is a very alarming aspect of eHarmony.
So when you read the profiles of your matches, about all you know is their sex, age and how they respond to a bunch of canned questions. Unlike match.com or other services, you find nothing out about the personalities of the people you've been asked to contact. All you know is that the good Doctor who put the service together thinks you're good matches.
Of course this worked against them, too, because if the match who initially contacted me had had a compelling profile in her own words, I might have subscribed to contact her. But the information in it was so vague and uninteresting that it didn't seem worth it.
Under no circumstances does eHarmony show pictures of your matches until after you have subscribed. I strongly suspect the reasons for this are obvious, in view of the service's older and less attractive overall demographics.
eHarmony Matches
Because of the scanty profiles, it's difficult to determine how good the matches are. But based on what I can see about them, it may be necessary to tweak the process and actually lie a little on your answers to get the kind of matches you need.
For example, it's certainly vital that my match be honest and that she loves me. But if I put that as the most important thing I need, I get a whole bunch of really dull people who likewise desire honesty and love.
When I changed my profile to indicate that I needed people with a love and enthusiasm for life and a creative spirit, I got better matches for my own criteria. So make sure that if you use this service, you select the criteria unique to you, not criteria that are vital but you have in common with most people.
eHarmony matches might be a little distant. I am presently in Pittsburgh, PA, and I got matches from Pittsburgh, Ohio and Maryland. I'm not sure if I really think an interstate relationship is likely to work out.
eHarmony People
I strongly suspect that the people on eHarmony skew to professionals who can afford the stiff subscription rates, or people who are desperate to be matched with others. If this is not the demographic you are seeking, a subscription to eHarmony is probably not going to get you anywhere.
I, for example, want a creative artist as a mate. This person might be poor and unable to afford rates like these. eHarmony might never get the kind of member I am actually looking for. If you're not looking for affluent professionals and/or the truly desperate, think twice before signing up for eHarmony.
Of course if you happen to meet that profile and you're reading this epinion, please do feel free to contact me. I don't bite, not really :-).
The eHarmony "guided communications" process
Instead of writing to someone and having them write back, eHarmony encourages you to use their guided communications process, where their fearless leader selects a bunch of questions and canned answers and tells you to pick "exactly five" you want to ask.
I tried this process for one of my matches, who had sent me her initial questions. I felt they were uninteresting but just to get a feel for the process I answered them anyway, using the "fill in the blank" answer most of the time to try and show my expressive flair. Then I selected my questions, none of which I felt were all that interesting. A few days later, I got her answers, entirely multiple choice without any expressive flair. I was then asked to send my "must haves" and "can't stands", which are yet more canned replies picked out through a multiple choice process.
After going through this, I felt the multiple choice questions told me virtually nothing about my potential mate.
It was then time to share our "must haves" and "can't stands". Curiously, I discovered a major weakness in the process: The must haves and can't stands may not be as rigid as the good doctor wants us to believe. I discovered that my potential spouse insisted on someone who was neat. The doctor tells us to immediately shut down communication when we realize this. I don't like being quite so cold-hearted, so I replied (within the rigid question and answer format; thank goodness for even little tiny text boxes!) by noting that I lacked a couple of her must-haves. She replied without mentioning this at all. I'm not sure what to make of this, except that matters of the heart might not be as rigid as he thinks.
It looks to me like the seven-day trial is useless, because you're never going to get far enough through this process to get to know someone in seven days. After going through as much of it as I have so far, I feel I don't know my match any better than I did at the start of the process, and it's taken about a week for me to get this far.
So even a one-month membership is unlikely to be enough time to put you in free communication with a match if you use their recommended introduction techniques. If you want to use eHarmony, a three-month membership would seem essential.
For another match, I tried "fast track", which lets you send them an email without going through this process. She apparently found this sufficiently confusing that she has not yet responded. This might be because of the pages of warnings I received when I tried sending it. Among other things, the good Doctor warns people to be very suspicious of matches trying to push the communications process too fast. In other words, he is not necessarily your friend if you don't do things his way.
A tip that's worth the price of this review, if it wasn't free already
Use the FastTrack process to contact your matches, and put your email address in the message so they can contact you outside of eHarmony. Do not initiate contact using the guided communication process because the majority of members are not subscribers and won't be able to contact you.
I don't know why it took me a whole week after starting to use this service to figure that out, but there you go. DO NOT use their guided communication, since it gives people no reason to subscribe due to the vagueness of the profiles and the apparent exploitativeness of the process.
Conclusion
It's probably obvious that I realized eHarmony wasn't a good system for me before I ponied up my money, so I will admit that I did so out of curiosity and because I'm creating my own online dating service and wanted to see how the rest of them worked.
In a word, eHarmony is too expensive, and yet too limiting to receive my recommendation. It's also almost obsessively serious and in that respect it seems determined to leech all the fun and joy from the matchmaking process. (I feel most matchmaking services are that way, and this is the most important problem I want to correct by starting my own service).
So unless you take things Very Seriously and want your match to do likewise, I would not recommend this service.
Recommended:
No
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daviddennis
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Member: David Dennis
Location: Woodland Hills, CA
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