She said…. Are all online sites created equal? - Part 2

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I will say that there were some interesting elements to eHarmony (pros and cons) that you may want to be aware of before shelling out the considerable membership fee. On that note, eHarmony is a pay site, where your fees are determined by the number of months you commit to, rather than usage (as is the case with a site like Lavalife). Not surprisingly, you pay less per day the longer you sign up. Further complicating things is the fact that an “instalment plan” is only available if you sign up for a full year (3 consecutive months of payments) – talk about psychological pricing! Now, they do advertise the ability to “view your matches for free”, but this complicates things on two fronts: First, as a “free visitor”, you can’t view pictures for your matches (nor can you communicate with them); and, Second, the “free visitor”/”window-shopper” profiles are not differentiated from the “paying members”. As a result, it may look as though you have a great deal of matches (I would receive, on average, 15 new matches daily), when really only a fraction of them have put their money where their mouth is and fully committed to the process.

On the plus side, eHarmony has a great system of “safe communication” by both email over the site, as well as secure phone contact (even long-distance). They also offer “guided communication”, which takes matches through a series of communication phases consisting of: 5 multiple-choice questions; a shopping list of "must haves" and "can't stands" (Of course, I’m not sure who really CAN stand racists, bad hygiene, lying and cheating to name only a few – but perhaps there are some who would take a card-carrying member of the KKK as long as he brushed 3 times daily???); and finally, the exchange of long-answer/essay-type questions. At that point, if you haven’t offended each other (or died of boredom), you would go to “open communication” (secure email via the site). Of course, you also have the option of skipping “guided communication” entirely and going the “Fast Track” route, a personal preference of mine once I realized how lame I sounded in my “essay answers”. There really is something about back and forth in communication!

So, that’s eHarmony. On the other end of the online dating spectrum is Plenty of Fish, a free site. Now the pro and con (singular) of this site are fairly obvious, the pro being that it doesn’t cost you a thing, and the con being that, because it doesn’t cost you a thing, you tend to have to do more sifting through the riff raff – basically, anyone and their dog (and yes, some people think a picture of their dog makes for a great dating profile pic…hmmm…) seems to have a profile on this site. As a result, signing up for this site gets you your fair share of proposals of the indecent variety (but hey, maybe that’s what you’re after), even when what you are looking for (a relationship or dating or email or friendship) is front and center in your profile. But, if you are not offended by the occasional offer from a married woman, looking to explore her possible bisexuality while her hubby looks on, or someone looking for “one classy lady” to practice his “massage skills” (yes, both of these situations come from my own personal experience), Plenty of Fish, and other sites of its ilk, do offer an economical means of getting into the world of online dating. And, of course, it brought me and Martyn together – and not a moment too soon!

Lavalife would fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum between Plenty of Fish and eHarmony. It operates very much like Plenty of Fish (but with a much more appealing look and feel, in my opinion) in that you scan the profiles and can chose where your own interest lies. Unlike Plenty of Fish, there are fees involved with this site, but not to the same extent as eHarmony. Basically, you purchase credits that allow you to initiate communication. Once initiated, the back and forth communication is free. As advertised by the site it is “FREE to Join, FREE to Search, FREE to Reply and FREE to Flirt!”. So, you can post your profile, view others, and even “show interest” in profiles without having to shell out any cash. When I was a Lavalife member back several years ago, I never spent a dime and yet, still communicated with people. I’ve been told by many that this is often the case for women on the site – I guess old-fashioned chivalry isn’t dead (at least in the online dating realm)! One benefit of Lavalife is that there are three unique online dating communities: dating, relationships, and intimate encounters. While this certainly doesn’t guarantee you freedom from the types of offers you haven’t signed up for (as many have profiles in more than one community, if not all three!), it does tend to cut down on that sort of thing – unlike Plenty of Fish, where everyone is lumped in together and you have to look specifically at how that one profile field has been filled in.

So, that’s a basic overview of but three of the options out there for your online dating pleasure. The list is certainly not exhaustive, but I hope it gives you a flavour of what you might expect from the spectrum of sites available to you.

Happy Hunting!

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