Match.com Questions and Answers
In my last post I covered questions on winks at Match.com. This time I wanted to cover other types of questions that have sent people here.
How Do I Hide My Profile on Match.com?
What Happens When I Hide My Profile?
Can I Hide My Match.com Profile but Still Quality for Guarantee?
How Do i Contact Non-Paying Members on Match.com?
What Does a Green Highlighted Profile on Match.com Mean?
How Can I Tell Who the Paying Members Are?
How Much will the Match.com Six Month Guarantee Cost in Total?
Does Match.com Have Any Other Deals?
How Do I Change My Primary Photo on Match.com?
What Does It Mean If She Looked at My Profile but Didn’t Wink?
What If I Get No Replies to my Emails?
What is the Number of Members at Match.com?
Do Match.com Free Weekends Exist?
How Do I Hide My Profile on Match.com?
As someone who signs up for services to review or test them, I’m very familiar with this process! To hide your profile:
1. Click on Profile at the top of the screen
2. On the left, you should see a section labeled Visibility Options. Simply click Hide Profile.
What Happens When I Hide My Profile?
There several things hiding your profile do but primarily it removes you from search results. You can still contact people when your profile is hidden but they won’t be able to look at your profile so that sort of defeats the purpose (so remember to make yourself visible if you start contacting people). Additionally, you will not be shown in people’s “Who’s Viewed Me” section. However, if you unhide your profile you will appear in this section for anyone you viewed. Keep this in mind if for some reason you’re hiding your profile in an attempt to not let people know you were looking at them!
Can I Hide My Match.com Profile But Still Quality for Guarantee?
As I covered in my discussion of issues with the six month guarantee, you cannot hide your profile and still qualify for the guarantee. Be sure to read all the rules as there are additional qualifications.
How Do i Contact Non-Paying Members on Match.com?
If you are a paying subscriber to Match.com, you can contact anyone you want regardless of whether they pay or not. However, if you contact a non-payer then they will not be able to contact you back. Unfortunately, Match.com doesn’t reveal who is a paying member and who is not. The only people you can be sure pay are those with a green background around their profile.
What Does a Green Highlighted Profile on Match.com Mean?
A profile highlighted in green is someone who has signed up for the platinum package. Anyone who is attempting to qualify for the 6-month guarantee has to sign up for this plan. This package also allows the member to see when people open emails that they send and their profiles are shown to new members first. Obviously it’s also highlighted in green.
As a side note, I had always thought that the Match.com 6-month guarantee came free with the standard 6-month plan but it is actually a separate plan (that costs a dollar more per month than the standard 6-month plan). I suspect this had been changed at some point but it’s only a dollar more per month so I guess it isn’t a huge problem.
How Can I Tell Who the Paying Members Are?
One question had asked if a green profile meant the user was a subscriber. As I described, green is actually the platinum account. To be clear though, I don’t believe there is a way to differentiate normal users from paying users normally.
How Much will the Match.com Six Month Guarantee Cost in Total?
The plan to get the 6-month guarantee is $17.99 a month or a total of $107.94.
Does Match.com Have Any Other Deals?
Match.com has a 7-day free trial. If you use this trial you can still sign up for the 6-month guarantee if you want to try to take advantage of both promotions.
Match also has a promotion where you can get 20% off the priceof any of their standard plans. I believe that this would work with the 6-month guarantee but it’s not clear to me if it would work with the 7-day trial. If you decide to try this be sure to follow the instructions on the sign up screen in the link above.
How Do I Change My Primary Photo on Match.com?
Changing your primary photo is pretty simple although you will have to wait up to 24 hours for them to approve your new photo as your primary. To change your photo:
1. Click Profile at the top of the screen
2. Click on Add/Edit Photos on the next screen (it should be just below the “My Profile” heading)
3. Any photo that can be set as your primary photo should have a “make primary” button. If you have other photos that can be made your primary photo just click the button and the process to change it should begin.
4. If none of your other photos are marked as “make primary” your current photos are not seen as good candidates for your primary photo. This would normally be because they want your primary photo to be a clear headshot of only you.
What Does It Mean If She Looked at My Profile but Didn’t Wink?
To be honest, it doesn’t mean much of anything at all. Most people look at a large number of profile but contact very few (or sometimes none at all). Don’t take it personally and if you think she’s interesting why not contact her?
What If I Get No Replies to my Emails?
In my online dating guide I discuss this in great detail in my section on an absence of responses. There are more reasons than you might think for this sort of thing to happen so it’s best to not take this personally. For all you know the people you are contacting aren’t even paying members.
What is the Number of Members at Match.com?
I’ve not seen any numbers on the exact count of members but I do know that as of June 2009, Match.com was getting close to 3.5 million visitors a month.
Do Match.com Free Weekends Exist?
To date, I’ve never seen a Match.com free weekend. To be honest, the service doesn’t have very many free time promotions that I’m aware of, although they do offer several discount promotions such as getting 20% off when subscribing.
Brad is a happily married man that found great success (and his wife!) using online dating. He now shares his thoughts and experiences, on this site and in his free online dating guide, to assist others in finding success. 
Brad
Many people are dumfounded by sneaky ACTIVE WITHIN practices via match.com.
A match rep with whom I spoke clearly stated a few points. This was in the discussion of paid subscribers.
All subscribers have an email account associated with their match.com account.
If a subscriber then opens a match.com associated email through their associated email account, it will show them as active within ever time period from the point of opening the email.
This means a subscriber does not have to log into match.com through the actual site in order for their “active within” time frame to update. It updates, many times unbeknownst to them, by virtue of opening correspondence.
The content of a match.com email is irrelevant be it from it a wink, correspondence from a subscriber as well as customer surveys sent from match. In other words: Opening anything from match will reflect activity update time frame. Gets many into trouble if they have agreed to not visit the site.
Updated activity time frame will NOT appear under the same circumstance if a subscriber has hidden their profile. A side note: the profile will not show up in a search when hidden.When logged into match, saved or non deleted former correspondence will show the hidden profile picture, but the account bio is invisible.
Profile removal – if the profile has been removed, there should be NO ACTIVITY UPDATE if that person still shows up in their database. Be aware that this is a common problem for people who have deleted their profile. Match has often showed people as being a subscriber when they have been long gone.
Let’s assume match is at fault in not removing the profile once deleted, the next logical step is to look at the “active within” period. This tells more about the truth. A few scenarios may be the culprit:
Match did not remove the profile though the subscriber deleted it.
Let says-
The active within period displays the user as being active within 24 hours, 3 days, etc.:
Then-
The subscriber is still opening emails from the match.com associated account.
OR
the subscriber has logged into match
OR
or someone has gained access to their match account.
OR
someone has hacked their associated email account and is opening match correspondence through that means or logging into their match account from the email address
OR
your exclusive significant other is full of you know what.
I personally feel opening winks or emails from match interests under any circumstance ONCE AGREED to be EXCLUSIVE, can be damaging to both parties. There should be none of that if two people have agreed to stay off the site.
The only way to know why a profile is active after deletion is to call match directly and insist on a clear, concise answer. Ask them to send an email to follow up as proof of your concern.
As many people that are brought together, a significant portion are broken up by match sneakily updating activity feed or failing to remove a profile that has been deleted.
Trust is essential in any relationship, but match is contributing to its violation when employing dishonest practices to boost their membership count in their success.
I wonder what the numbers of failure within match are because of this veiled practice.
Hiding the profile is easy and can be done in a couple of seconds.
Deleting profile should be. But often is not removed thanks to match.
Pictures can remain years after expired account or those that have not been removed by match.
Active within period would be more accurate for discerning your exclusivity – even if match is at fault for not removing the profile once the subscriber has deleted the account.
Unless you have given out your password.
Can I hide my profile from one viewer e.g it will upset my ex boyfriend as I know he’s on it to. If I hide my profile would it for everyone, or how about if I blacklist the profile I don’t want to report a concern just don’t want my ex hassleing me on a dating site or for him to see my profile.
Gem – you should be able to go to your ex’s profile and then block him. This would prevent him from seeing your profile (if given the option to block from search or block from contact, choose both of those options). He won’t be alerted when you do this and you’re not flagging him either.
oh well, i accused an ex-boyfriend of being “active within” and he swore it was just because he clicked on an email from match. I told him he was full of crap…. but then why was he opening the email .. this online stuff is so iffy sometimes.
I recently met someone else on match, he gave me the impression that he likes me and would llike to be exclusive, yet i see he’s still active often. He has an “IM me now” on his profile. what’s that all about
I’m fairly certain that “IM me now” means the same thing as being online. I know you can’t start and Instant Messanger conversation if they’re not online so…
Might be interesting if you *did* start an IM conversation with him at some point! Tough to deny being online at that point.
I also had a similar issue with a now recent ex. He was also showing up as being active in last 24 hours, which I was uncomfortable with when I went on one week to check after many weeks away from the site. He claimed it was because his ipad automatically logged him in…
When you put yourself in unavailable mode can you surf profiles and they dont see? Have never been sure about that.
Also I want to hide my profile as really do not want to be coming up on searches at the moment, nor found by anyone as needing some space. I would rather hide, than suspend my account. I have clicked on ‘My Account’ dropdown and selected ‘my profile’ but cannot see visibility options anywhere. I used to see this about 6 months ago but Match changed a bit. Can you advise?
Hey Jess – if you hover over Profile at the top then click on Settings, you should be able click a radio button to make your account hidden. I’m not sure about unavailable mode. Do you just mean not visible? If your profile is hidden and you browse profiles, they won’t know you’re browsing them. However, I do believe that if you later make your profile visible again, you will show up in the “Who’s Viewed Me” for those people that you had viewed.