Relationships.com Changes Back to ChristianMingle.com

(Online Dating Industry Journal) In March 2006, Spark Networks announced that it was moving its Christian Mingle service to Relationships.com. The move was puzzling in that Relationships.com was a prime URL for a Relationship service like Matchmaker.com, eHarmony, and Chemistry.com. This week, just over a year after the original move, Spark Networks has announced that they are moving the service back to ChristianMingle.com. No reason was given for the move.

You can read about the original move in an earlier Online Dating Industry Journal report. The move was also taken to task in an Online Dating Magazine 2006 editorial titled, "Spark Networks Misses Golden Opportunity with Relationships.com".

When you try to sign up for a new member at Relationships.com, it now provides you with a button that sends you to ChristianMingle.com.

Joe's Comments
This is a smart move. Spark Networks should have never moved ChristianMingle.com to Relationships.com in the first place. This new move frees up Relationships.com to be used for a new type of online dating service (speculation) as it is a prime URL for a non-niche relationship service. It will be interesting to see what happens to Relationships.com in the coming months...

Comments

[Faye Parker]

I am wondering if any of your readers could help me and others register a complaint against Christian Mingle.com. In its infancy in 2002 they offered a lifetime membership for $49.95 for total access to all areas of the website. They ran that special for just a short time. Me and others wanted to help them get the funds to upgrade so we helped in advertising on the message boards and chat areas as well as purchasing that special ourselves. Now they threaten to "down-grade" us all if we do not check in during a certain time period. The down-grade is to that of a new user and limits the primary access to your mail etc. from long standing friends that you have made on the site. They now want "more money" to upgrade back to the very status you thought you purchased already. This should be illegal but it is definitely unethical and down right "greedy"!!

[Kerryn]

I tried to get my lifetime membership with ChristianMingle reinstated but Cara refused.
I have logged a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. If it isn't legal --what they did, breech the original contract, then all of us should get together with a class action suit. I am not going to pay them another dime.

[A Christian single]

Strange why they would go from a specifically Christian domain to a vague domain name like Relationships. Now they are back so I guess it wasn't working for them.