You know a dating site is not right for you when…

April 8th, 2009

Occasionally, I go and check the email account I sign up to sites with when researching them. Sometimes I find useful discounts and offers sent only to registered users to encourage them to subscribe, other times there’s notices of people who contact me or dating tips. Occasionally, the site will try to entice me to return by providing me with a list of potentially suitable matches or new users who recently joined and live in “my area”. I just logged in and found one of those emails telling me about new people in my area. Unfortunately, this was an American site and their UK membership is obviously rather sparse. The “people in my area” were from places like Manchester and Hull. I live in London.

It’s unfortunate for the site, as something like that would achieve exactly the opposite of the intended result – I realise the site has no one to offer me and will stop going there, I definitely wouldn’t spend any money on a subscription for a site that is so desperate to attract me it attempts to deliver me people who live hundreds of miles away and tells me they’re local. Wouldn’t it be better to just not send anything at all and hope I might decide to subscribe anyway?

I guess in America the distance between London and Manchester is somewhat more acceptable in terms of locality than in the UK, but still. I don’t think anyone would be under any illusions as to the suitability of the site when presented with such a poor crop of distant matches.

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2. The problem with online dating site reviews
3. Online dating tip: Are you still wasting your time with ice breakers?
4. How long should you stay on a dating site before I give up?

Entry Filed under: Industry stuff