Now here’s a concept I can get behind. BuyYourFriendADrink.com (BYFAD), the leading online social gift service for buying drinks in bars and restaurants, has partnered with HurryDate to integrate BYFAD’s drink gifting technology and service within HurryDate’s dynamic online dating environment, exclusive to the New York and Boston markets.
A novel idea, after all, who doesn’t like free drinks? A few issues though: If I were a woman, what signal am I sending if I accept a drink from a man? What if I reject it? What happens if I do nothing? I just sent a few friends drinks, let’s see what happens.
You can only redeem drinks at participating establishments. The bar selection in Boston is so-so, and most of the listings say “Coming Soon”.
The $.99 cent transaction fee is bearable.
The sooner this is a Facebook application and runs on cell phones the better.
If you haven’t checked out HurryDate in a while, I highly recommend giving it a once-over. The site is chock full of features, from parties to speed dating to sending drinks along with the usual dating site functionality. I had not updated my profile there in years, so I went through the process of updating things and filling out new profile fields.
Then I found a few interesting matches and hit the $24.99 paywall. I’m sorry, I haven’t been on your site in years, I just spent 20 minutes updating my profile and now you want $25 bucks to email one person? There is something to be said about the pay-to-contact credit model, which seems to have fallen out of favor except at Lavalife.
It’s too bad, maybe she was an amazing woman, and maybe I am feeling cheap, but it’s not going to happen. Maybe I am getting tired of all the people who say “$25 is one night of drinks, isn’t finding that person worth one night of beverages?” Of course it is, but when you have dating sites fleecing you with auto-payments and flat-out refusing to refund partial months, the idea of spending up to $70 to send one email is depressing. I’m not picking on HurryDate here, most paid dating sites fall into this category as well, especially the larger sites.
My only complaint abouts HurryDate are that they should throw parties in better locations and to remove the circa 2001 javascript code from your profile pop-ups.
Still waiting for my friends to get back to me, I’ll update in the comments.
