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 Editorial:
A New Year and a New Challenge to the Online Dating Industry
by Joe Tracy, Publisher of Online Dating Magazine
(January 2006) A new year is upon us, presenting a
great opportunity to issue a challenge to the online
dating industry. And that challenge is this:
We challenge online dating services to become
more
customer friendly in 2006 and we'll feature those that
do. There was one unfortunate consistent theme among online
dating services in 2005 - to become less customer friendly.
It's sad, but true. As services look for ways to increase
paid memberships, they implemented ideals that made
them less customer friendly. For example:
When a member used to email you at Match.com,
you had the benefit of knowing who emailed you even
if
you weren't a member. Then you could decide if you
wanted to sign up in order to read the email and respond.
But Match.com changed
it so that you now don't know who emailed you. You
are simply sent a message that
"someone" emailed you and in order to read and respond,
you must first become a paying member.
American
Singles has been guilty of the same thing
for awhile. You receive an email saying someone has
emailed you, but in that email they don't tell you
who.
Services that do this are doing a great injustice
to their prospective members. Could you imagine going
to buy a car, but being told by the car dealer that
you couldn't see the type of car you were buying until
it was paid for?
What's worse is that some services with this rule
(and there are several) will email out "site news"
and you receive a notice that "someone" has emailed
you only to find out it is the site's newsletter or
a service announcement.
The decline of customer service in the online dating
industry, however, has gone beyond that.
True, which we have written
extensively about because of their misleading techniques, stopped allowing
people to cancel their service online. In addition,
they raised their prices to more than $49 a month -
nearly double what it used to be! So when you sign
up for True, you are charged a recurring
high monthly fee and when you want to cancel, you must
call them on the phone.
LavaLife found a new way in 2005 to make money and
annoy customers at the same time. They started publishing
those annoying flashing ads that mislead users into
believing that they have won a year's supply of gas.
"Congrats. You’ve been Selected. Free Gas
for a Year. Click Here to Claim," the ad says while
flashing in your face. It's a third party company advertising
on the service.
eHarmony.com spent
millions of dollars to apparently upgrade their customer
service center and support. However,
we still receive a high amount of emails complaining
about eHarmony's customer
support. These range from members not getting a response
to members who had problems
asking for a refund, but not getting any money back
- only an offer of "two free months."
In 2006, we want to see online dating services become
more friendly towards customers. And when we find larger
online dating services making moves to do that, we
will feature them on Online Dating Magazine.
If you
see a service making changes for the better, then
let
me know. We want people to know which online dating
services are making strides to become more customer
friendly. When you
put people over profits, you will make more money
than when you put profits over people because people
will
respect you and recommend you. How do you think Google
managed to become the uncontested leader in the search
marketplace without any banner ads or pop-up ads
on their site? They put the user experience first.
That's
how. And that's what we'd like to see the online dating
industry do - put the user experience first.
Wishing you an awesome 2006,
Joe Tracy
jtracy@onlinedatingmagazine.com
P.S. 2006 will be a great year for Online
Dating Magazine. The publication is now updated on
a daily basis and we are adding several new writers
and columnists. One of those new writers, columnists,
and contributors is James
Houran, Ph.D. who is bringing
his extensive experience to the publication. We warmly
welcome him to the team and urge you to visit his new
column,
"Office Hours
With Dr. Jim". And, as always, Online Dating Magazine
remains free. You'll never find pop-up ads or flashing
banners telling you your system resources are low and
to "click here." The publication follows a strict Code
of Ethics. We are honored to be serving you.
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