Comments on: Online Dating Insider Links December 2, 2008

By: David Evans

David Evans — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 18:10:32 +0000

Point taken, my perspective is that I talk to a lot of online daters, and women in general despise winks. If you’re not capable of sending a woman an email, what does that say about you?

Agree about not being able to cancel memberships, I should have used that as the argument.

By: Ross Felix

Ross Felix — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:00:34 +0000

SaÃ¯d,

I understand your comment about the winks. But there’s a second reason that the winks are there, not just to help shy people. Match.com only allows premium (read: paying) members to send emails. Winks allow the non-paying members a (albeit) useless way of contacting the paying members, or allowing a paying member to send a contact to the non-paying member that they’ll actually receive. The hope, of course, is to convert the non-paying member to a paying member.

That said, Match.com advertises that they have 15 million members, but their press releases indicate that only 1.32 million actually pay for the service. With a ratio like that, obviously their attempts at conversion aren’t succeeding that well.

Regards,
Ross

By: SaÃ¯d Amin

SaÃ¯d Amin — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 05:51:18 +0000

“Match serves one billion winks. Winks are the most useless online dating tool for serious singles, why even offer them?”

- not everyone is an outgoing and/or seasoned online dater like you Dave. some people feel their way into it, some jump right in. also, “winks” work as an ice breaker that leads to an opportunity for a site to send you a notification email (ie. brings people back to the site). i sometimes wish that you operated a dating site to get a proper perspective for why sites do what they do, and what works..

“Being alerted that a company is about to bill your credit or debit card should be a law.”

- sure, why not. while at it, let’s have the same expectations from our cable company, isp, cell phone provider, local gym, etc.. the renewals do not bother me a whole lot, so long as the terms are clear up front; what does hit a nerve is the inability to conveniently cancel a membership. AOL was the infamous king of making people jump through hoops to cancel their dial up service. i suppose that desperate times call for desperate measures. personally, i have been trying to cancel my gym membership for the last 3 months and after 3 trips to the gym to fill out paper work and speak with management, i am still getting billed and unable to cancel my membership over the phone *errr* some dating sites make it easier than others…while on this topic, check out comments from frustrated Meetic members sounding off – http://www.dating-service.com/blog/37/meetic-uk-review/ – ouch!

don’t miss the forest for the trees.

life,
-s