When it comes to online dating, there are just so many options out there that it can be hard to find one that’s right for you. You don’t always know which websites are legitimate, if you should be paying membership fees, the type of people you will find, and if the websites are even helpful. I’m here to tell you about my personal experiences with Match.com, and exactly what you can expect if you decide to use the site. You may have been reading through dozens of Match.com reviews and just aren’t sure what to do. I’m not here to talk up the website, or make you sign up for your own account–I just want to give you all the facts so you can figure out what the best decision for you is.
The first thing that most people notice when they attempt to use Match.com, including myself, is that it’s not free. Yes, you can start a free trial, but once the trial ends you have to pay for membership. The free trial also doesn’t allow you access all of the same features that a paying member would get. For example, you can message some people, but there is a cap. Once you are a paying member, your messaging is unlimited. The website claims that the price tag is to weed out the people who aren’t really serious about finding a match. In theory, that sounds nice–you get to meet with like minded people that have a similar goal in mind. Still, this is a little bit of a turn off, as there are hundreds of other sites out there that are free to use. The price comes out to around $42.00 a month but is a little cheaper if you buy a 6 month or longer subscription. If you choose the 6 month or longer option, you are locked in for the entire time–there is no option to cancel your subscription early.
Once you’re a member, you can use all the features that the site has to offer. You’re able to view all photos posted on the pages of other users, send and receive an unlimited number of emails, and see who has viewed your profile. There are also premium add-ons that you can purchase, like the email notifier, which lets you see who has open and read your emails.
One really good feature that Match.com has that I haven’t seen on any other sites is their matchPhone service. How it works is it allows you to talk on the phone or text with another person on the site anonymously. It generates a new unique phone number, and calls and texts are forwarded to your phone. This way, you don’t have to give out your personal information. Now, there are free services out there where you can go this yourself–but if you aren’t very tech savvy, like me, then it comes in handy.
Another service Match.com offers that I haven’t heard of from anywhere else is hosted events. Match.com sometimes hosts live, local events for members to attend so that you can meet a group of other singles at a bar, restaurant, etc. If you live in a rural or smaller city, this service isn’t particularly useful.
One thing that I really liked about Match.com was the ability to search for very specific things that you’re searching for in a match. There are a variety of things you can do to find a specific type of person. If you’re looking for someone with a certain physical attribute, you can sort using through things like eye color, hair color, etc. There’s a search filter called Match Words where you can search for specific tag words, like funny or baseball. Then, it will list the profiles that have the match words you’ve listed. This is great when you want to find someone that has the same types of hobbies. Reverse match is also a good search function, that allows you to look at the people that have searched for you, but you have not searched for them. If nothing else, this gives you a good idea of the types of people that are drawn to your profile.
If you’re worried about finding matches, it’s good to know that the website will automatically do this for you–you don’t have to find anyone on your own, though you certainly can. Every day, Match.com has a feature called Singled Out, which is a daily match that they think would be a good match for you.
Now, I’m aware that so far it sounds like Match.com is perfect. I just haven’t gotten to the parts of the website and experience that I wasn’t particularly happy about. Like any website, there are thousands of people on there, and some of them can be very creepy. There are people on there that have fake profiles and are trying to get money or personal information from you. This is something that you have to watch out for and avoid on every type of dating site though, not just match.com. I have heard rumors that Match.com has fake profiles themselves, as a way to pad the website up and make it look like it has a larger user-base. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I figured it would be worth mentioning at least. I will say, however, that if you take a look at the websites terms of service, it does say that Match.com “may create test dating profiles for the purpose of testing the functionality of our Service and website processes to improve service quality for our Members.” So, yes. They can create fake profiles, and even send you fake messages. It may happen, or it may not.
When it comes to fake profiles, the most frustrating is that it doesn’t seem like Match.com does anything to remove them or flag them. You may get matched with someone, only to click on their profile and it says profile not available. I’ve heard about a lot of people having this issue as well. It can get very frustrating when this happens multiple times, and flagging the profiles doesn’t seem to do any good.
As far as customer service goes, again I’d have to ding Match.com with a negative. I had some issues getting my profile set up after purchasing my membership, and I had an incredibly difficult time getting any help. The hardest part was getting a hold of customer service in the first place. Afterward, it felt like they kept giving me the runaround in the hopes that I would eventually just go away. That was the only time that I tried talking to customer service. While this could be the experience that every user has when they have an issue, it could have just been a one-off bad experience as well.
Probably one of the biggest and most concerning issues that I had with Match.com was when I wanted to cancel my subscription. You have to buy your membership month-to-month, or, as I mentioned earlier, you can get a plan of six months or more. If you happen to meet someone, or just want to leave the site, you have to wait until your membership is up. I had the problem with them continuing to try and charge my card after I canceled my membership, at which point I just canceled the billings.
I will say that I did get the chance to talk to and meet with some very nice (and real) people during my stint on Match.com. I was able to get to know them in a way I felt comfortable with online and through emails. We then progressed by texting and talking on the phone, to eventually meeting up for dates. I wouldn’t have met these people otherwise, as a lot of the people I met only had profiles on Match.com and not any other sites. People on Match.com do seem to be more serious about dating and forming relationships than hooking up, but that could be my own skewed perception. On the other dating sites I tried I did seem to get more frequent messages about people just looking to hook up or that wanted me to send them explicit photos.
Overall, you might be wondering if you should try Match.com yourself, or continue on to read a plethora of Match.com reviews. The real outcome is that you won’t know if the site is for you until you try it. While I was satisfied with the site myself, I don’t think it was any better than other sites out there that are free to use. In fact, having to pay for a membership makes me believe that the website isn’t as good as other dating sites out there–because it doesn’t really provide anything that stands out to me or makes it worth that price tag. I didn’t meet or even talk to more people than on other sites. At the end it wasn’t a bad experience, in my opinion.