An open letter to eHarmony
[ A couple months ago, I turned off the "auto-renewal" on my eHarmony account. Yesterday I got a "please come back and give us another try" email. Not gonna do it. When I tried to email them directly (using an email address listed on their "we're sorry you'e leaving" page) about why I was quitting eHarmony, the email was rejected, and the rejection notice said, "At this time, we are no longer accepting e-mail inquiries that are submitted outside of our FAQ web form." Fine. Like everything else on eHarmony, telling them to get stuffed is time-consuming, painful and ultimately unrewarding. I decided that, instead of telling them to get stuffed, I'd tell all of you that I told them to get stuffed and they told me to piss off. I am pissed off, and here's why. -- ed.]
To whom it may concern,
I have had a handful of “first dates” with women I met on eHarmony, and have had no second dates. This is not because I’m a horrid individual, and it’s not because the people I’ve been introduced to are horrid. It’s because your “highly scientific, 30 dimensions of compatability” matching thingy is not suited to me, and has introduced me to people who don’t suit me.
My personality cannot be boiled down to two hundred or so multiple-choice (strongly agree => strongly disagree) answers to ostensibly simple (but actually complex) questions that require complex answers.
Your matching system makes no accommodation for people who don’t believe in spooky, invisible men who live in the clouds. I am an atheist, and I am not interested in meeting people with strong (or even weak) religious beliefs.
The long, arduous process required to simply greet someone in my own words is painful, and given my results, I see no value in devoting the time needed to send a simple email to someone on eHarmony.
The “security timeout” feature is immensely irritiating. If it takes me more than 10 minutes to write an email (not unlikely), when I go to send the email, I get bounced out, and all my careful writing and editing is lost.
…and when you couldn’t find me anyone *you* thought was compatible, you’d send me “matches” which were so far off base, I couldn’t help thinking they were drawn from a hat. Then, you encouraged me to expand my search radius and open my criteria… No. I set my search radius to what I wanted it to be. I don’t want to drive more than 30 miles. Period. Stop telling me I should be looking a hundred or more miles away for romance. If there’s no one within my desired radius who is compatible with me, fine. I can live with that. I’m not going to lower my standards or spend countless hours on the road just to feel wanted.
Oh, and, on the subject of children, I fall into a minority category. I have no children, and I don’t want children of my own. I would be open to dating the right woman if she had a couple kids, but that does add a measure of complexity to the compatability equation. You have no checkbox or radio button for that.
All in all, I found eHarmony to be an abominable experience cloaked in pretty colors and new-age lingo, which I would not wish on anyone.
I hope, for the benefit of your “millions of members”, that you can make it work better in the future.
As for me, at a hundred and eighty bucks for six months, I’ve had my fill. I have closed my account and will not be returning.
Sincerely,
Paul Tourville