Dating Reviews

17 comments...

1. Posted by MIchelle 26th March, 2009 at 11:18 am

   I think this new service from DD doesnt compare to its original site. I joined 3 weeks back, and paid £114 for 6 months. Most of the 45 profiles that got returned as matches had no picture or hadnt logged in in over a month.. Flicking through was a complete waste of my time. They should have filters on, that returns profiles who are currently active (to at most, within 1 month – tho lets face it, if you aint logged in within a month, your not interested!) and they should also make pictures compulsory. Ok, the “request picture” tool is fair, but to allow members to have no picture, isnt. I was expecting a service much more professional than the plain DD and was very disappointed, and asked for my money back, giving the 2 above reasons, that very night. When I complained, the email I got back totally ignored these 2 reasons for me wanting my money back, and waffled on about something why the cost is fair. Felt totally insulted that they take your money but cant offer you a decent reply to your complaint. Since those profiles on the first day, Ive had 3 profiles returned as a match.. so either Im just really different to everyone else, or theres not that many people on it. Wasted my money. Will stick to plentyoffish in future. Thats free AND makes members put up a proper picture, as well as allowing to select what your not looking for.. ie sex! Ive had no trouble on that site at all.

2. Posted by tim roberts 4th June, 2009 at 5:55 pm

   i think this is a silly website, for what it costs they offer vey little – often it misjudges your personality in the survey and the telephone coaching is a waste of time, the site should tell you how many potential partners are in your area.

3. Posted by David Longstaffe 3rd August, 2009 at 11:59 am

   I am afraid I tend to agree that the cost for what appears a poor service is excesive
   I have met one charming lady.Distance is the problem, I will not be renewing this again when my subscription expires.

4. Posted by Jay 28th September, 2009 at 7:05 pm

   Unless Im using it wrong and Ive searched for tips etc theres serious flaws in its setup. Even if photos were compulsory, although I dont mind the ask to see option, im just going around in circles viewing the same people Ive ticked not interested in because they obviously are intrigued to see whos been viewing their profile and view back. Wouldnt it make sense that once you have clicked not interested that the person in that profile is simply not told you viewed them saving them and yourself from wasting time. This is made worse by the endless emails of incompatible matches and new members which I now ignore. The format of dating direct is better

5. Posted by Kev 19th October, 2009 at 10:50 pm

   The site is crap, all the top matches (70% and over) that I found were all dead, no logon activity for over a month, I recon they might keep closed accounts on there to boost numbers. Then they send you matches with 50%-60% compatibilty and still say it highly compatible. Everyone I’ve mailed I’ve had not reply. All the ones with a correct looking stats didn’t bother posting profiles, those with pofiles had no pictures and when there are pictures they choose to obscure them and you have to ask !

   I don’t see how they can charge for this, this should be a free tool for thier main site not make another site out of this. I would use it again if it was free, the site is totally dead.

   The service is also poor with the generic cut & paste replies you get that don’t seem to answer your questions.

   The site dosen’t even have a chat tool!

   Very poor indeed.

6. Posted by Guest 24th October, 2009 at 2:48 pm

   Agree with previous comments, but here is a quite thorough review of what I experienced

   This refers to UK users, just in case.

   It seems to be marketed as a companion more “serious” to the main datingdirect site. Customer service, in a minor query told me that they are focused on confidentiality. I sense that indeed the members are more serious, and i did get messages and responses, and so forth. So far so good.

   But I have some serious complaints that really annoys me to the extent of trying to warn people about:

   The whole model of how we interact with others doesnt work for me.
   I explain: you cannot see a pic of short profile of sb without creating a “visit” in the others. When you get search results, get a visit or a message or any other alert, you get a plain result or email, without any pic or description, so you need to go and check out which is a pain, you have to browse there, needless to say, you probably cannot check that at work as normally dating sites are (should) be blocked.
   That cycle can become repetitive if you have a bunch of visit and you just want to go through again. And the lady does the same, gets a visit, and checks it out, then I get a visit and may check it out. (after a while all those nicknames look the same)
   Then the “interested” feature also creates an entry in the “fans” club in the other. I would like to have my favourites without needing to advertise. Ok I can understand it is to encourage interaction, but I wonder how many actually want to expose like that to every single contact you feel it might be worth writing.
   As you are basically stumbling into people all the time and there is no easy way of knowing if there was interest or not (in match.com you have sort of a preview, so if you visit, you are already interested a little bit).
   This flaw (imho) seem to have created a modus operandi for women to express interest subtly, they dont show the picture by default, so you just bump into profiles without pictures, and if they like yours they “show the picture”. I find it frustrating, in the end you just have to wait for the ladies to bother to show the pic, which happens quite often I have to say, but I am not yet sure if that is that when I receive the alert is always because she shows the pic to me or to everybody.
   Amazingly, when you blacklist somebody it actually sends the person a notification and you need to provide a reason!!! wth, who was the genius or drama queen that implemented that feature, i wonder. If I want to block sb, most of the time I don´t want to make a scene, basically they are discouraging that completely, which goes against the confidentiality values. The fact that you keep getting visits because the whole system is geared to make you click every time to see who was that person, unless everybody is consistent in using “not interested”, makes me want to have a quick blocking feature whereby that user will not see me again, thats it, I am actually saving her time.
   At a risk of sounding sexist, I suspect they take more feedback from women or there are women at the helm, and it does feel a bit not capturing how men prefer to operate, I ve went through a couple of dating audiobooks and the “strategies” they suggest may find it a bit difficult to implement here.
   -Quite a lot of spam, badly written first messages already including funny email addresses, some from US, some from eastern europe, a lot from netherlands.
   -What else, the “not interested” button is slow, requires two clicks.
   -Using in mobile phone is ok, iphone copes with it well, but the to and fro from email to website and then back is annoying.
   - Updating the profile is not very quick, for a paid site, I ve been in match.com (UK) and here it does drag a bit.
   - As for the recurring billing, i ve havent had issues but what I do is to immediately cancel the subscription a week after enrolling, so I ensure that by the end of the 3 or 6 months it will be definitely over. That said I had one very concerning experience, when the first cycle ended, towards the end I was having tons of visit, and one day after the expiration I got a message, which funny enough was an email from the dda team, recommending me to contact some random user!!! the b… they never have sent an msg like that, they can send me alerts via email (which I disabled anyway), but not a “message”
   I complained to the CS and their answer was woolly referring to rotation of users and some bsht, coincidences could happen, of course, but I remain quite convinced that they really push it to try to hook you back. Btw, everytime i contacted them, even within a thread I was dealt with another person, so it is not “ticket” based but you just get a random agent to respond, which is somewhat frustrating.
   Then some of the personality profile … like the question if I like my body, or how I rate myself (style: casual, sophisticated, attractive, sexy…), what are you supposed to put there? They provide 3 levels, so it is either cranking up everything, or putting a noncommittal average. Totally useless.
   The other profile stuff is unimpressive, but I guess it more or less the standard. As for the matching-suggestion features, I had them on for a while and really wasn’t getting much value, but again, this could be me.
   No idea of number of users (they could do some marketing there, but they don’t seem to be bothered, so I suspect it is not great), but it does feel that there are a decent number of new users, and the search does provide contacts, even if mostly do not show the pic
   So overall, I think it obviously can yield results, but it am not convinced, you may want to give a try but don’t over commit and at least you will know what you get
   Hope it is useful

7. Posted by Matt 11th November, 2009 at 2:33 pm

   datingdirectaffinity offers an extremely poor service in a number of areas, most of which have already been mentioned by other reviewers here.

   Having had quite a lot of success with match.com, I decided to give datingdirectaffinity a try just to see what it was like, and signed up for the six month package costing £117. It was WAY more expensive than match.com, but I thought that maybe the service would reflect the price.

   Bearing in mind that I used exactly the same profile as I use on ‘match’, where I average around two winks / contacts a week, I was contacted by about five people the entire time I was a subscriber on datingdirectafinity, three of which were almost definitely spam.

   That, coupled with that fact that hardly any of the searchable profiles contain a picture, has made for an extremely poor experience and completely pointless hole in my wallet.

   Oh, and to cap it all off….having attracted absolutely no interest for a solid three months, the very day after my subscription expired I miraculously received an email from somebody who had a clearly read my profile, but whom I tragically would never get to meet because she lived at the other end of the country. Apparently, she just wanted a chat….or more likely for me to fork over another £117 in order to embark upon a wild goose chase with a directdatingaffinity employee!!

   directdatingaffinity is a waste of time and money!! Don’t be suckered in by the fraudsters!!!!!!!

8. Posted by David Walls 9th April, 2010 at 9:16 pm

   I agree with the above – give it a body swerve – it might do well in Afghanistan as almost all the women on the site don’t show their face – it is a total waste of money!!

9. Posted by Susan 18th April, 2010 at 10:17 am

   I joined dating direct affinity the next day I changed my mind withing the legal cooling off period. I emailed them to cancel my membership two days later the deducted 114.00 from my bank account I sent another 2 emails complaining to date they have not replied. DO NOT JOIN.

10. Posted by Dirk 6th June, 2010 at 3:21 am

    Match Affinity (DatingDirectAffinity) have been running a TV campaign (as of June 2010) stating their site is free for the weekend, so I thought I would try it. I’ve never joined anything like this before, so was uncertain of what to expect.
    The personality test was in depth and the results revealed things that I wasn’t really aware of about myself. That said, some of the questions are ambiguous, some don’t make sense due to poor grammar/ bad sentance structure, etc. Some questions even compromise of 2 potentially conflicting statements, it can be confusing.
    The matches that are returned give a percentage of compatability, based on three ‘value’ matches, again expressed as a percent. It would be nice to search for matches based on, in what order you value these three attributes.
    Which brings me on to searches and matches. The matches seem to be very random, mainly due to a lot of bugs in their search engine.
    For example, searching within 15 miles of my location returns people from up to 100 miles away. Likewise, specifying certain employment/religious/etc criteria, returns people from those criteria you ommited.
    The whole matchmaking seems to revolve around that magic compatability percentage and little else that you may specify.
    All in all, very disapointed. Glad it was free to try, and I very much doubt I will pay the asking price for their very bugged and lacking service.
    Oh and signing up to Match Affinity just sends you to Dating Direct Affinity, at least that’s what happened to me.

11. Posted by Norman 19th July, 2010 at 6:12 pm

    DirectDatingAffibity is a rip off! Difficult to telephone to cancel if you are abroad!! They take your money online so should allow cancellations online too!!

12. Posted by Nick 1st September, 2010 at 1:04 am

    I can only reiterate what’s been said above in most respects. (Oh, Match.com is owned by the same company as DatingDirect.com, for those who didn’t know. You can log in on both domains. Strangely, some of the profile description options are different from one to the other!) The standard price for subscribing is ludicrously high. I joined on a month trial, thank goodness, as the price is far higher than almost any other site i’ve looked at and it doesn’t even have an online chat facility. Stating that they’re trying to concentrate on people looking at the profiles is a load of trash,.. shouldn’t the subscribing people have the choice, not be dictated to? The customer service is poor. The site is very basic indeed and even the standard “datingdirect / match.com” site is rather annoying, as deleting a profile from your search results only works for the time you’re actually logged in! What’s the point? The Instant Messaging facility is reasonably good, however. I would strongly suggest you don’t pay over £30 to try the … affinity.com site(s), as they’re a complete waste of money! Onwards and upwards! )

13. Posted by Amy 23rd September, 2010 at 3:38 pm

    I have to say this web site is a total joke. It is a complete waste of money, the people they match you with are rarely in your area, relativley close to your age and ignore wthe information you provide when setting up the account.
    If you have literally hours to spent trawling through and di actually manage to find poeple that you are intressed in the have not logged on in over a month. I thought part of the point to this was to help busy people not to waste hours of your time to come away having found no one and feeling cheated, especially when you take the time to say what you are looking for when signing up and this is compleatly ignored.
    The cost of this site is extreamly expensive, especially when it says they will help filter people for you. DO NOT bother wasting your money.
    Also beware that they will automatically take money once the subscription you originally paid for ends.

14. Posted by Melissa Tilling 13th November, 2010 at 2:41 pm

    datingdirectaffinity complaint
    Be careful of your money. They use sharp practice and even after your active subscription has expired for six months they take your money again on the anniversary unless you have terminated your subscription. This is NOT clearly explained and feels like theft. Be very careful.
    The site is also innefective too.

15. Posted by Jan 1st December, 2010 at 7:12 pm

    I joined this site for a trial period and it was useless! I paid for a trial and then they took £87 out of my bank account. I didnt notice in the small print it says automatic renewal? I rang them up and they refused to pay me back the £87 even though after the trial I had not been on the site at all! It was a very expensive lesson and I do NOT recommend them. It is devious the way the take money from people

16. Posted by amanda 7th December, 2010 at 3:09 am

    Im really angry and upset with this site, paying £14 for trial, then i get email to say my confirmation for 3 months has been taken from my account yesterday 6th dec, i only paid for trial, but they have went against what i asked and took £75 aswell as £14, what can i do? i phoned the number and said no one available, so im trying to get that sorted asap, can you recommend what i can do????? Many thanks Miss Alison

17. Posted by Bobbo 18th June, 2011 at 10:39 pm

    I can only agree with most of what’s been said above. It’s a truly dreadful site for such an expensive joining fee. The vast majority of the profiles have photos that are blurred out even AFTER you’ve become a full member. Yes, you can request for these members to show their photos, but in my experience they always refuse. What is the point in posting your photo at all?! I’m not going to decide to go on a date with you purely because of your cheesy headline!

    I made a dud account and tried messaging across both accounts, just to see how it worked. I found that even though I was logged off my main account, I was still listed as logged in, and this was the same on both accounts. Some of the messages I sent didn’t even show up on the other account. And naturally, most of the people who have signed up for the site are not full members so will not even be able to read your messages, view your photo or be able to respondin any way unless they are willing to spend over £70 for the privilege.

    Joining is easy – it’s just a few clicks. Cancelling is not. You have to phone their customer service team… and good luck with that!

    I spent two whole days using this site, and must have looked at the vast majority of women in my age range in the whole country. Out of all them, there was only ONE person I was remotely interested in. We exchanged a pleasant introductory message… and then I never heard from her again. Naturally, I suspect about 100 other guys had the same idea I had – that she was one of the few people on the site that didn’t look like a cast member of the Evil Dead. So I’m sure my message is lost in the pile.

    One more thing I should note, and this is important. I filled out my dud account in roughly the same way that I filled in my main account (I was the same person after all). I got a match between the two accounts of 78%. And the personality match was only 57% Where on earth is the SCIENCE there?!?!?

    Avoid this site at all costs. You literally have a better chance of bumping into your soulmate in the middle of the street.

What do you think?