eHarmony's Free Communication Weekend Lacks Features

(Online Dating Industry Journal) When most consumers get a "free trial" of a product, they expect that product to be functioning like normal while they try it out. That isn't the case with eHarmony, which puts limitations on its "free communication weekend" that it has offered twice in the last several months.

For one, eHarmony doesn't allow users of its "free communication weekend" to see photos of other members. You have to pay for that. In addition, eHarmony limits the matches to ten. Want more than that? Gotta pay. eHarmony also disabled its Fast Track feature so that users of the free trial couldn't skip the normal communication process and begin communicating instantly.

Joe's Comments
eHarmony's "Free Communication Weekend" is quite deceiving. Personally, I like the service, and have always had great success with it. But if you're going to offer a free trial, do it right.  In general people want to know "who" they are communicating with and seeing a picture of someone is an important element as to who they are. I always had my photos open from the beginning of communication because I wanted the people I was communicating with (or vice versa) to be able to associate a name with a face.

While deceptive in its practice of "free communication weekend", eHarmony knows that it takes more than four days to go through the entire communication process. They also know that by getting tens of thousands of additional subscribers during the "free weekend", they can claim those as new "members".

Keynote tells us that its research shows that a majority of online daters are disappointed with their experience with online dating services.  Perhaps online dating services need to do more to regain that trust than to continue down a path that people see as deceiving.

Click here for any current eHarmony Promotions.

Comments

[Luke]

Too bad there's always a catch! With dating traffic declining, dating companies are getting crafty trying to squeeze as much from their user base as possible. We will probably see a lot of fallout this year as many of the social networks are soaking up the traffic.

Matchdoctor is positioning itself by listening to our users, creating user loyalty, and evolving our site based on feedback. We are a hybrid free/pay site. There's not many like us around and we are unique. All basic features such as mail, forums, blogging, singles events, search, and more are totally free to use on our site. We have even integrated social networking into the site where members can create friends list, post bulletins, and more. We offer a optional paid membership to help support our cause, in exchange the ads are removed from your view, and you get some really neat features such as seeing who has viewed your profile, a private photo album, and more. By reading our forums or blogs you will see many users thanking us for listening and providing a great service.

I always wonder why many of the major dating sites do not include public forums or blogs. I think a lot would have to do with people posting their gripes and complains about them publicly ;)

[Cindy]

"eHarmony free communication weekend"....Ha, when you see free, beware because there's a catch and even with eHarmony there is a catch. Dating on liners want to see who they are communicating even if it's a free-bee. Let's face it looks do play a big part in a potential match so if you say it's free then don't set limitations to your "free" offer. eharmony is not cheap to join so the more you can get for your money the better for you and eharmony. If I am satisfied with your service I will recommend a friend, if not I will post my opinion as I have here. I am not saying this is not a good site I am saying the "free" weekend is not what it's cracked up to be.

[Andrew]

I have noticed that eharmony has expanded their free communication to this upcoming weekend as well. I assume this will become a common gimmick to bring traffic to the website. The marketing ploy seems to position them in the ranks of the work from home sites with the all or nothing attitude. In order understand the experience you have to dive in and commit to the price.

At some point they might as well offer a free service that can compete with some of the more popular social networking sites. After all aren't the two pretty much interchangeable.

[linda]

I signed up for free communication weekend. It took so long to get started, I didn't get anywhere with anybody. I wasn't about to pay $240 or even $50 to get a date so I disabled the account after the promo ended. Now they're sending me "nudges" that these poor guys want to communicate and are wondering what happened to me. I feel kind of bad for them but also bad for wasting many hours from my precious weekend setting up an account for nothing.

[Caly]

On the flipside though, I found it amusing how far you CAN get with the free communication weekends. I set up an account in early November 2008. It is a free account and I got my first five matches, etc. The first one stood out to me and he started communicating with me. The first free communication weekend was Thanksgiving 2008. I was finally able to respond to his questions and send him my own. The second weekend was in December, and I was able to respond to his answers with another set of questions I designed. He is a paid member so he has requested Fast Track. The next time a Free Comm weekend rolls around, I'll be able to accept it. It took time and the man must have the patience of Noah, but I was amused that I could even get this far without paying a cent!

[Jumanji]

Good luck for that guy dating someone as frugal as you! He'll be in the poor house in no time.

[Carla]

What free weekend! I had a match named Joshua from Ipswich. When I tried the free communication this weekend e harmony said no such person found, when e harmony found the match for me. Joshua if you are out there from Ipswich and a special ed teacher would you kindly e-mail me Carla808@hotmail.com. You chose me and I was interested in you, but e harmony lied to me and said there was no such person and all the websites I tried to go to for e harmony were unavailable . There was a picture of a paint brush and they all said they were under repair. |This could be a match made in Heaven (maybe). It certainly wasn't a match made from eharmony. Don't waste your money. I am the one who wasn't looking but wanted to be found. Joshua find me.

[Linda]

I found a man through free weekend over thanksgiving. Then over the new year found out it was a female?!?! I searched the name again and it came up with an almost identical profile but it said female. There are some sketchy people on this service, as with anything online - buyer beware

[Vaghunter]

Yeh that site wasted 10 minutes of my life and I want them back lol

Maybe we should sue them for lying :P