Match.com review

[insert_name]

There seem to be a few threads recently by people asking about Match so I thought I would leave my thoughts on my experience as a male who has had a few dates from OK Cupid (ie I have had some limited success from OLD)

 

I had heard good things about Match recently, people on various forums who knew people who had met and married through Match. The general consensus being thst the women are not just there for an ego boost so, as a man, theres a possibility of a better response ratio as well as less douchebag dudes drowning you out in the noise with their dick pics as it requires a subscription.

 

My optimism, however, appears to be short lived. To put it bluntly, I dont think I have ever had less value for money. Ever. I wish I had given that £29.99 to a homeless man as its been nothing but a waste for me.

 

Everything about the site is lame- they dont regionalise you like they do on OKC, so you end up with loads of profile views from women who live at the other end of the country- how is that helpful? So its the same when you view your 'matches' - none of whom are within a 100 mile radius. So you have to actually set up a search through a specified radius. The profile config is so hum-drum it makes the whole process even more like pulling teeth than it does on OKC. A small box to put some kind of summary and convey some character and then the rest is done via checklists of interests.

 

The infuriating thing for me as a guy is that a lot of the girls dont fill out the summary so they convey no sense of character at all. You just get some bland photos and a list of bland activities that they like doing, ususally 'hiking', 'travel' & 'theatre'. Its hard to know what to say to make any kind of impression without having a feel for their character first, to the point where I havent been inspired to message anyone yet and probably wont. The idea of opening with 'so you like hiking, wheres the coolest place you have hiked?' just bores me to tears.

 

The final nail in the coffin is Match's ability to design your ideal date. Jesus wept, what a horrendous facility. In essence, its a good idea as it allows a bit of screening or whatever, but I'm pretty sure it wasnt meant to be used like some sort of creepy Weird Science-esque tool where you can design a mate. I kid you not, so many women have listed the weight range, height, age, build, eye colour, exact interests. You end up reading through a spec sheet...and of course then right at the end there is the salary which is sometimes quoted, sometimes not- but its noticable that when it is its pretty much always starting at £50k - which is fine if you are some hot youbg thing with a high flying career, not so much when you are a 41 year old woman who works in a low key admin role with a low wage and still lives at home with her parents! Thats the saddest thing about Match, you realise how deluded some women really are in their expectstions. If you took the screening element of match at face value you really would believe that most of the women are after the top 20% of the men. It does however serve as sobering reading as to why i may not get replies on OKC. Seems a lot of women are after athletic/heavyset guys and I am firmly in the slim camp- fair enough, I wont sweat it so much when i dont get replies on OKC now at least.

 

So if, like me, you are a guy who likes to have a good natured laugh and like girls who have the same outlook I would warn against Match, I have on occasion had a laugh (a positive laugh!) at the OKC profiles as it seems that the way the profiles are designed manages to elicit a bit of character out of the girls on there. Match is a very dour experience, perhaps precisely because its a very serious business- that may be my problem!

[Kav]

In my opinion all match services, match.com, great expectations etc are a complete waste of money.

[irc333]

Match.com have a database of faces of women and men who signed up, but not PAID members. So you could be a PAID member, email a woman, but they can't see your email because they have to be paying in order to see it.

 

So it can be a waste of time and money.

[PegNosePete]

^^ Yep that was my rationale too. Sure, maybe you get a higher percentage of "more serious" people, but the percentage of people who make free accounts "too look around and review your matches" as the ads tell you to, is surely higher than that. So overall response rate would be lower than on a free site.

 

Plus that interface sounds pretty terrible...

 

I've used a paid site and know people who've used 3 different ones, all say the free ones are better. There's no reason to use a paid OLD site, IMO.

[normal person]

Everything about the site is lame- they dont regionalise you like they do on OKC, so you end up with loads of profile views from women who live at the other end of the country- how is that helpful? So its the same when you view your 'matches' - none of whom are within a 100 mile radius. So you have to actually set up a search through a specified radius.

 

God forbid you have to actually set your parameters. You're right, there's 30 seconds of your life you'll never get back.

 

The profile config is so hum-drum it makes the whole process even more like pulling teeth than it does on OKC. A small box to put some kind of summary and convey some character and then the rest is done via checklists of interests.

 

The box isn't "small." You can write as much as you want. Then you can check off things that interest you. How else would you rather it be done?

 

The infuriating thing for me as a guy is that a lot of the girls dont fill out the summary so they convey no sense of character at all. You just get some bland photos and a list of bland activities that they like doing, ususally 'hiking', 'travel' & 'theatre'. Its hard to know what to say to make any kind of impression without having a feel for their character first, to the point where I havent been inspired to message anyone yet and probably wont. The idea of opening with 'so you like hiking, wheres the coolest place you have hiked?' just bores me to tears.

 

While I agree with you a bit, isn't this more a criticism of the women rather than the service? You can easily ignore a profile that doesn't interest you. There are plenty of others.

 

The final nail in the coffin is Match's ability to design your ideal date. Jesus wept, what a horrendous facility. In essence, its a good idea as it allows a bit of screening or whatever, but I'm pretty sure it wasnt meant to be used like some sort of creepy Weird Science-esque tool where you can design a mate.

 

I agree that it's a bad feature as your attraction to someone isn't dependent on an activity, but at the same time, 95% of the profiles I read haven't filled it out. It's an optional, free feature. If you don't want to use it, don't.

 

I kid you not, so many women have listed the weight range, height, age, build, eye colour, exact interests. You end up reading through a spec sheet...and of course then right at the end there is the salary which is sometimes quoted, sometimes not- but its noticable that when it is its pretty much always starting at £50k - which is fine if you are some hot youbg thing with a high flying career, not so much when you are a 41 year old woman who works in a low key admin role with a low wage and still lives at home with her parents! Thats the saddest thing about Match, you realise how deluded some women really are in their expectstions. If you took the screening element of match at face value you really would believe that most of the women are after the top 20% of the men.

 

Do you have parameters and tangible qualities you look for in a person? Why are you so surprised to hear that women do too? Is it so bad for someone to at least be vocal about what they desire? Women punching above their weight class will get a reality check when they can't get the guys they want. The ones who demand a lot are probably in pretty high demand themselves. Everyone gets market price.

 

So if, like me, you are a guy who likes to have a good natured laugh and like girls who have the same outlook I would warn against Match

 

I'm a guy who likes to have a good natured laugh with similarly natured girls and I would endorse Match. I've met ~20 girls in the last year and a half. Of the women I've dated in the time period, I met 75% of them on Match. If you can give women an easy avenue to contact you, why wouldn't you? A lot of the time you just don't "click" with the person you meet, but the few times you do make up for it. You can still enjoy your experience and learn things from people you wouldn't have met otherwise.

[insert_name]

God forbid you have to actually set your parameters. You're right, there's 30 seconds of your life you'll never get back.

 

 

 

The box isn't "small." You can write as much as you want. Then you can check off things that interest you. How else would you rather it be done?

 

 

 

While I agree with you a bit, isn't this more a criticism of the women rather than the service? You can easily ignore a profile that doesn't interest you. There are plenty of others.

 

 

 

I agree that it's a bad feature as your attraction to someone isn't dependent on an activity, but at the same time, 95% of the profiles I read haven't filled it out. It's an optional, free feature. If you don't want to use it, don't.

 

 

 

Do you have parameters and tangible qualities you look for in a person? Why are you so surprised to hear that women do too? Is it so bad for someone to at least be vocal about what they desire? Women punching above their weight class will get a reality check when they can't get the guys they want. The ones who demand a lot are probably in pretty high demand themselves. Everyone gets market price.

 

 

 

I'm a guy who likes to have a good natured laugh with similarly natured girls and I would endorse Match. I've met ~20 girls in the last year and a half. Of the women I've dated in the time period, I met 75% of them on Match. If you can give women an easy avenue to contact you, why wouldn't you? A lot of the time you just don't "click" with the person you meet, but the few times you do make up for it. You can still enjoy your experience and learn things from people you wouldn't have met otherwise.

 

I understand people having preferences, but being detailed to the nth degree about whatyou are looking for is going to potentially disqualify a lot of people that you may have ended up getting on very well with as well as diluting the pool of available women for the guys.

 

I myself am more open minded about who I could meet so I take each person as I find and weigh them up on their relative merits. I am certainly not so cynical as to look for a woman earning alot of money. Although I am pretty sure that if I was earning that sort of money I dont think I would be on OLD looking for a woman over 40 who still lives with mummy and daddy. I can imagine how I would be laughed out of town if I put that on my profile. In fact I may well do that for ****s and giggles- theres very little else that Match has going for it really.

 

Did you find that a lot of profiles are not filled in? If so how did you approach that? I dont get why someone would pay for a subscription and not put theeffort into at least selling themselves- unless they expect the bare minimum to be enough to entice guys to write. Could always be fake profiles i suppose.

[normal person]

I understand people having preferences, but being detailed to the nth degree about whatyou are looking for is going to potentially disqualify a lot of people that you may have ended up getting on very well with as well as diluting the pool of available women for the guys.

 

You'd be surprised how lax women can be about what they're looking for. Just because they list something as a preference doesn't mean it's an absolute deal breaker. I've met girls who've been looking for guys 6'+, muscular, or whatever other criteria that I don't fit. But just because they have their idealized partner in mind doesn't mean they won't consider something else that's different but just as appealing.

 

Did you find that a lot of profiles are not filled in? If so how did you approach that? I dont get why someone would pay for a subscription and not put theeffort into at least selling themselves- unless they expect the bare minimum to be enough to entice guys to write. Could always be fake profiles i suppose.

 

The thing is that it for a lot of girls, merely having a picture probably is enough to entice a good amount of guys to write. I've seen the accounts and phones of girls. They have dozens to hundreds of messages. Most guys aren't discerning enough to care what, if anything, a girl writes. If she looks good, that's good enough for them.

 

Here's how I act if a profile isn't filled in: Are they cute?

If yes, I answer whatever they asked and fire an innocent question or two back in hopes of learning a bit more

If no, I disqualify myself if the message was well thought ("I'm really busy these days but you seem nice so maybe I'll get in touch when things calm down").

 

Even if they are cute, if the message is terrible ("hey") and the profile is blank, I don't respond. If you can't write a small bit about yourself or don't possess the basic social skills required to facilitate a really basic interaction, I don't want to meet you anyways.

[d0nnivain]

My husband told me about his experience with Match before we met.

 

He initially filled out the profile & checked a box that said he preferred not to state his income. Not one woman responded to his profile. Not to brag (OK maybe to brag a little ) but my husband is a gorgeous man who turns heads where ever he goes . . . Anyway, he revised it, lied & checked the highest income box. he re-winked at women, & sent a few a message. Viola they all responded & he started getting winked at & messaged by a lot of women. He became very jaded after that.

[normal person]

My husband told me about his experience with Match before we met.

 

He initially filled out the profile & checked a box that said he preferred not to state his income. Not one woman responded to his profile. Not to brag (OK maybe to brag a little ) but my husband is a gorgeous man who turns heads where ever he goes . . . Anyway, he revised it, lied & checked the highest income box. he re-winked at women, & sent a few a message. Viola they all responded & he started getting winked at & messaged by a lot of women. He became very jaded after that.

 

I'm in the highest income bracket and I've found I get the same amount of winks/messages whether I have it visible or not.

[writergal]

The last guy I dated on Match.com was who brought me to LoveShack.

 

There is no guarantee that if you use a paid OLD website, that you will not encounter shallow, emotionally unavailable/unstable/trainwrecks.

 

Whether or not I hide my income bracket or re-write my profile, I still have to sort through the endless catalog of OLD profiles hoping the men whom I message respond with interest in meeting me.

 

No matter what changes I make, the results are always the same: I have to do the work to find men to send messages to. I have to initiate the coffee meetup, otherwise most OLD men want to waste my time emailing or texting.

 

In protest of OLD, I'm going to rent and stream the Cameron Crowe movie Singles instead of the movie You've Got Mail.

[insert_name]

You'd be surprised how lax women can be about what they're looking for. Just because they list something as a preference doesn't mean it's an absolute deal breaker. I've met girls who've been looking for guys 6'+, muscular, or whatever other criteria that I don't fit. But just because they have their idealized partner in mind doesn't mean they won't consider something else that's different but just as appealing.

 

 

 

The thing is that it for a lot of girls, merely having a picture probably is enough to entice a good amount of guys to write. I've seen the accounts and phones of girls. They have dozens to hundreds of messages. Most guys aren't discerning enough to care what, if anything, a girl writes. If she looks good, that's good enough for them.

 

Here's how I act if a profile isn't filled in: Are they cute?

If yes, I answer whatever they asked and fire an innocent question or two back in hopes of learning a bit more

If no, I disqualify myself if the message was well thought ("I'm really busy these days but you seem nice so maybe I'll get in touch when things calm down").

 

Even if they are cute, if the message is terrible ("hey") and the profile is blank, I don't respond. If you can't write a small bit about yourself or don't possess the basic social skills required to facilitate a really basic interaction, I don't want to meet you anyways.

 

Good perspective- although if I could pick up on one point it sounds as though you have girls messaging you, why do you think this is? Strong pics I would assume? (Although the cynical part of me wants to believe its when you list your income ).

 

My pics are the one element of my profile I am stuck with and I have assembled just about the best pics I can given the circumstances. I like my profile pic especially but I am not always certain it goes across so well with women. Its basically a jokey pic of me wearing a pair of fox ears I stole off a friend and some sunglasses at a festival, I know sunglasses are frowned upon but its worth the shot as I look pretty down to earth and its a rare photo of me outside in good light surrounded by others. The rest are a combo of selfies and not great pics with others. I dont hang out with the kind of people that take endless photos , in fact the guys i roll with see it as an affront to their masculinity to take photos at all so improving my pics is nigh on impossible unless its more selfies.

 

With regard to blank profiles my problem with that is there is only so much you can message them about, asking about a hobby is what every other guy does, so how to stand out without throwing something random and bizarre out there that will look like a copy paste?

 

Edit: just to add, did you find then that the ideal date stuff was pretty flexible most of the time? I twnd to fall down on the body type and its put me off messaging a few girls thinking that if they are that specific they probably arent going to respond when they see I have more of a cyclists physique.

Edited November 13, 2014 by insert_name

[insert_name]

My husband told me about his experience with Match before we met.

 

He initially filled out the profile & checked a box that said he preferred not to state his income. Not one woman responded to his profile. Not to brag (OK maybe to brag a little ) but my husband is a gorgeous man who turns heads where ever he goes . . . Anyway, he revised it, lied & checked the highest income box. he re-winked at women, & sent a few a message. Viola they all responded & he started getting winked at & messaged by a lot of women. He became very jaded after that.

 

Yeah that sounds about right for Match! Although a girl whose profile i viewed yesterday i stumbled upon today by accident as her profile pic had changed. I recalled the reason i avoided messaging her was because she was looking for the magical 50k income bracket. By the time I saw her profile the second time she had removed the income from her ideal date section, reality obviously bites!

[normal person]

Good perspective- although if I could pick up on one point it sounds as though you have girls messaging you, why do you think this is? Strong pics I would assume? (Although the cynical part of me wants to believe its when you list your income ).

 

Yeah, I don't message anyone unless they message or wink/like first. If I knew why they did, I'd tell you. This was happening long before I listed my income. I don't really know what a "strong" picture is but I have a lot of pictures and a really refined, funny profile that girls usually comment on. I made my photo captions irresistibly hilarious too.

 

I've sort of found that when you update your profile or change your photos, you get highlighted with a "new photo!" tag on your profile so you're a bit more visible. Also, Match has a feature called "Top Spot" which allows you to show up first in everyone's searches (it's about $20 for 10 of them, I think). So every night I do 2 or 3 of those on weeknights between 9 and 11pm when I know girls are home looking at their computers. Also, when it's raining hard out, tons of girls are home online. I just "Top Spotted" 15 minutes ago and I've got an email, wink, 2 likes, and a chat since. By the end of the night I'll probably have 10-15 communications, not counting OKCupid, on which I do the same thing.

 

 

With regard to blank profiles my problem with that is there is only so much you can message them about, asking about a hobby is what every other guy does, so how to stand out without throwing something random and bizarre out there that will look like a copy paste?

 

Ask them how their online dating experience has been. It's always an interesting topic and usually everyone has a funny story or two.

 

Edit: just to add, did you find then that the ideal date stuff was pretty flexible most of the time? I twnd to fall down on the body type and its put me off messaging a few girls thinking that if they are that specific they probably arent going to respond when they see I have more of a cyclists physique.

 

I don't really pay attention to it. I don't message or wink at people, I assume if they get in touch with me that I tick all their boxes, or at least enough. Everyone has preferences and it's ok to be vocal about them, but if I were you I wouldn't necessarily put so much stock into a cyclist's physique over a rugby player's or whatever. It can't hurt to try, I guess. If they like what they see, they'll go for it.

[Looking Outside In]

There seem to be a few threads recently by people asking about Match so I thought I would leave my thoughts on my experience as a male who has had a few dates from OK Cupid (ie I have had some limited success from OLD)

 

I had heard good things about Match recently, people on various forums who knew people who had met and married through Match. The general consensus being thst the women are not just there for an ego boost so, as a man, theres a possibility of a better response ratio as well as less douchebag dudes drowning you out in the noise with their dick pics as it requires a subscription.

 

My optimism, however, appears to be short lived. To put it bluntly, I dont think I have ever had less value for money. Ever. I wish I had given that £29.99 to a homeless man as its been nothing but a waste for me.

 

Everything about the site is lame- they dont regionalise you like they do on OKC, so you end up with loads of profile views from women who live at the other end of the country- how is that helpful? So its the same when you view your 'matches' - none of whom are within a 100 mile radius. So you have to actually set up a search through a specified radius. The profile config is so hum-drum it makes the whole process even more like pulling teeth than it does on OKC. A small box to put some kind of summary and convey some character and then the rest is done via checklists of interests.

 

The infuriating thing for me as a guy is that a lot of the girls dont fill out the summary so they convey no sense of character at all. You just get some bland photos and a list of bland activities that they like doing, ususally 'hiking', 'travel' & 'theatre'. Its hard to know what to say to make any kind of impression without having a feel for their character first, to the point where I havent been inspired to message anyone yet and probably wont. The idea of opening with 'so you like hiking, wheres the coolest place you have hiked?' just bores me to tears.

 

The final nail in the coffin is Match's ability to design your ideal date. Jesus wept, what a horrendous facility. In essence, its a good idea as it allows a bit of screening or whatever, but I'm pretty sure it wasnt meant to be used like some sort of creepy Weird Science-esque tool where you can design a mate. I kid you not, so many women have listed the weight range, height, age, build, eye colour, exact interests. You end up reading through a spec sheet...and of course then right at the end there is the salary which is sometimes quoted, sometimes not- but its noticable that when it is its pretty much always starting at £50k - which is fine if you are some hot youbg thing with a high flying career, not so much when you are a 41 year old woman who works in a low key admin role with a low wage and still lives at home with her parents! Thats the saddest thing about Match, you realise how deluded some women really are in their expectstions. If you took the screening element of match at face value you really would believe that most of the women are after the top 20% of the men. It does however serve as sobering reading as to why i may not get replies on OKC. Seems a lot of women are after athletic/heavyset guys and I am firmly in the slim camp- fair enough, I wont sweat it so much when i dont get replies on OKC now at least.

 

So if, like me, you are a guy who likes to have a good natured laugh and like girls who have the same outlook I would warn against Match, I have on occasion had a laugh (a positive laugh!) at the OKC profiles as it seems that the way the profiles are designed manages to elicit a bit of character out of the girls on there. Match is a very dour experience, perhaps precisely because its a very serious business- that may be my problem!

 

 

I too speak from experience. I noticed a trend between Match and Yahoo! personals. What I noticed was it was the same dating pool for both sites!

 

All the women I saw on Yahoo! eventually went to match; the women on match who found nobody of interest went to Yahoo! I did see a profile on match that I swear was fake. Why?

 

It was a perfectly lit outdoor photo as if someone had it professionally lit. The woman was more like a model. Near my locale, women have a butch do and are typically morbidly obese. When I saw the pic of the profile, I knew there was no way it could be someone local as women simply don't look like that near me.

 

Right before my membership expired, I did get one hit. The person was legit. The problem was she tended to be a bit too controlling for my liking and just a touch too forward. The control part turned me off.

 

After I had left, I had found someone who noticed me from match. She found me elsewhere on social media and started to talk to me. Things looked like they were going well-till religion came up. Simply put, she's Protestant and I'm not. The end.

 

I forget what I paid, but like any other paid dating site, forget it. The dating pool was so limited, it was unreal.

 

Here was another thing I didn't like. They had some crap by Dr. Phil on there for a test. The test was clinically flawed. I say that as it contradicted a lot of things a certain psych professor said, and it was as if whomever wrote it got their terms mixed up as if they were somewhat dyslexic. Their ideas of compatibility and personality traits were polar opposites as compared to what's clinically accepted. Secondly, the criteria they used didn't allow for other variables to explain things.

 

In all honesty, you might be better off with Craigslist than these paid sites. I'm not saying I'm a big fan of that site either, but at least you can get someone who is for real and it is free. The quality of what you get is a whole other story though.