The affinity questions, and the affinity comparisons are actually pretty good, but the usability of the is so terrible you may as well not bother. For example

– you can only view a text lists of users – with no photo! You can only see what someone looks like by clicking on their link
– You cannot open links in new tabs, so you have to click / back, click / back to view multiple users

I’m a web developer (a damn good one too) and my professional opinion is that they have actually tried *on purpose* to make it difficult to use, forcing you to flounder around, as actually they don’t have that many people on there, and most of them probably won’t suit you.

If their subscription was a month, and the site was usable, you’d give up in a few days, which is why you are forced into a 3-month subscription.

I suppose what I am saying in real terms – is that Match Affinity is as close as legally possible without breaking any laws – a scam.

You can though (I know, as I did it) call their customer service and ask to pay for a 1-month trial if you are curious.

When looking for my match, there are two crucial factors that are just as important to me as his personality, values and vision. I am looking for a non-smoker who wants to have children. You would expect any dating site to take these (most basic) criteria into consideration when matching people. However, Match Affinity does not take this into account at all. Hence, out of a sample of 50 “matches”, I immediately ruled out 80% because they didn’t match my basic criteria. It’s also worth mentioning, that whilst I am happy to date people of any ethnicity, there are many people who are more particular. Again, Match Affinity also doesn’t consider this, so sends me “matches” where I do not fall into their list of acceptable ethnicities!

Consequently the usability of Match Affinity is absolutely diabolical. It’s certainly not been a pleasure as I have wasted a lot of time trawling through the “matches” and I have come to the conclusion that I won’t find my Mr Right there. Who knows, he might be there, but given the poor matching and filtering facilities, we are unlikely to ever find each other as it’s like finding a needle in a haystack!

In a nutshell, the site has been a total waste of my time and money, so I have requested a refund, which has been refused. I phoned Match Affinity six days into my membership, and have had many emails going back and forth since. Here is an excerpt from their last email to me:

“While we wholly appreciate that issues such as wanting children or smoking are paramount when considering a long term partner our site prioritises psychological compatibility. As such you’ll notice that questions referring to smoking and drinking are not in the Affinity Test… As mentioned above we prefer to match people based on their ‘core beliefs and characteristics’ as we believe this is the most solid foundation for a successful relationship. Bearing this in mind I’m afraid we will be unable to offer you a refund as we feel we have fulfilled our objective.”.

Let me make it clear, I am not expecting Match Affinity to reinvent the wheel by revolutionising online dating, but how hard can it be to get the basics right (which most other sites do)?! It seems to me they haven’t even bothered to build on the things that Match.com, does do well. The thing is, had Match Affinity refunded my subscription fee, I was planning on going back to Match.com, but now that I know they’re the same company, there’s no way I would ever use either site again due to their poor customer service. They’ve really missed a few tricks here.