Comments on: eHarmony Free Communication Weekend, July 23rd – Aug 1st 2010

By: Cynthia

Cynthia — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 19:51:35 +0000

It’s basically false advertising. You can’t initiate contact with a match… the match has to contact you. You can only go through guided communication answering multiple choice questions. At the end of guided communication, paid members can exchange emails, but with the free communication for non-paying members you get far enough to want to say a real “hello” and eHarmony says “Sorry” it was just a tease and you have to pay if you REALLY want to talk to them. I wish someone could expose that their ads are misleading. You spend 45 minutes filling out a detailed questionnaire just to be told you have to pay money after all.

By: Cinthia

Cinthia — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 21:40:43 +0000

Oh man, I just joined EH 2 days ago in hopes of finding what they promise. For the time being I am just seeing how it goes, and well, there’s the catch, they send me profiles of some really interesting guys, 2 of them already said would like to Communicate. I had no idea I had to “subscribe” just to read their message. Oh well… It’s disappointing in a way, they have no clue I won’t be able to respond.

By: Brad

Brad — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 02:05:41 +0000

Hey Jane – yeah, that is *really* strange that they would make you wait. They own the service after all! If they want to allow you to sign up for a deal they have advertised it seems to me they should be able to do that pretty easily.

Not only is it aggravating in the sense that they are creating an inconvenience, it is also aggravating because I’m sure there are plenty of people who are waiting to continue conversations they started during the event. Hopefully they address the issue soon.

By: jane

jane — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 23:08:44 +0000

My two cents. I signed up in the middle of the free promotion. I found a few people I would have liked to see their pictures that I started communicating with. They had advertised $45 off of a 3 month membership if you participated in the GC. I had been doing that and decided I wanted to sign up. I called and was told I had to wait until the free week (10 days actually) was over. Why would they make me wait? I had credit card in hand ready to sign up and they said no. They said I would receive an email with a link a day after the event was over. I have not yet received an email and I impatiently called again today and was told it could come any time this week, basically whenever marketing got around to it. So now I have been shut out of communicating with my matches at all and have to wait for an email I am skeptical is even coming in order to get their advertised $45 off a 3 month membership to a company/website I don’t even think is worth being a member of anymore. How aggravating. I would imagine most people are resorting to computer dating because time is short and valuable. This is proving to be extremely aggravating and a giant waste of my time and of the people that already have memberships and have been spending their valuable time communicating with me and are now wondering where I went. I used to recommend eharmony to a lot of my friends. Not anymore. It’s terrible that companies in our country are making potential customers wait and inconveniencing them when they are ready to spend money, WANT to become members and join under the promotion they advertised. I just don’t get it anymore.

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 22:59:20 +0000

Yeah, I imagine they are doing very well with this event and I also imagine they may be tempted to make this permanent.

I was thinking about a permanent FGCE and I could think of only one way I would think it could be an okay idea: if they made it clear who were the paying members to their subscribers. Put a little star in the bottom corner profile photos or something. I do hate the idea of a paying subscriber being “led on”. I know I would find it frustrating using a service that required me to invest a few days of communication only to end up waiting for an email response that would never come.

However, if subscribers knew who was paying, they could better decide if they wanted to pursue guided communication that may not lead to anything else. I think this could possibly benefit non-subscribers: if they were able to get several guided communications to the email point (hopefully in a short period), they could then say, “Yeah, this could be worth signing up for”.

That said, if they didn’t do something like this, I don’t see giving non-subscribers a benefit if it means a sacrifice on the end of the people who are already paying. I really doubt they would implement my idea, though. Dating services generally don’t like to reveal who is paying (for obvious reasons). I’m only aware of Match.com doing this (and they only do it if the subscriber signs up for the platinum package and then only these platinum users are recognizable as subscribers).

We’ll see what happens but I suspect they’re going to be very tempted to go with a permanent FGCE.

By: EHB

EHB — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 19:17:43 +0000

Brad, traffic to our promo codes page DOUBLED every day since Saturday, compared to the same day of the week one week earlier. Whereas typically this page receives more visitors only on the last day of a FCW.

Conclusion: If eHarmony decides to make this FGCE permanent, i.e., make GC free all the time, they stand to gain an enormous increase in short-term profits.

By: Brad

Brad — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 01:59:29 +0000

Hey Adriana…yeah, not very cool at all and I agree the marketing was rather misleading. My biggest concern is something that EHB hinted at, though. If eHarmony makes the rules of the “Free Guided Communication Event” permanent, all paying users will never know if they are communicating with another paying member or not. This in turn may cause paying members to lean towards jumping past guided communication all together which in my mind removes a lot of the value of the service (what can I say, I LIKED guided communication when I was using the service!).

Obviously, this may be a non-issue but his mentioning it did cause me to wonder. It’s strange because in almost all cases making additional parts of a dating service permanently free would be a good thing but I’m not convinced that is the case if the rules would be like this 10-day event.

By: Adriana

Adriana — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:29:22 +0000

Oh yeah, and I forgot to add, “NO CREDIT CARD, NO OBLIGATION”, really?!?!?!? What is the problem then……if there is no obligation, why can’t we use the site to its complete advantage.?

By: Adriana

Adriana — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 12:25:57 +0000

WOW!! This is not cool at all….all the hype about ‘Free Communication for 10 Days” is not really all that great!! So I get to open communication and can’t even read the mail without becomming a member, this is insane and not fair at all. Eharmony led everyone on to this so called great deal for 10 days and you can’t even communicate with mail. This upsets me because I always tell everyone how great this site is, but misleading the public is not cool at all. I refuse to become a paid memeber yet again!! I like to take advantage of free communication just to see how it goes, but there is a let down each time, so I will not pay. It is unfortunate because this guy I went thru all the steps with and myself will not get to know eachother now. I wish eharmony would have been more clear on the free communication until August 1st.

By: Brad

Brad — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 00:51:00 +0000

Yeah…I’ve actually emailed them about this. Not sure if I’ll get a response but I’ll post an update if I do. Thanks for the heads-up on this EHB.