Match.com was introduced to the online dating community in 1995 and today the site claims to have hundreds of thousands single men and women actively using the dating service who are looking for love online. The Dating Cop’s team job is to explore and verify whether dating sites are legitimate or they use conning mechanisms to scam people like you.
In this review we focus on the workings of Match.com and explain how the site works. Continue reading to learn the truth and see whether we recommend the site or not.
What you should know about Match.com?
This is an old dating site that has been on the market for about 20 years, and must be very well aware of the common scamming tactics other dating services use, which are easily detectable. This may be putting the company who owns the site in great advantage because they know what to avoid and prevent their scams from being exposed.
1) They Can Freely Use Your Profile Information
When you sign up on Match.com you are immediately asked to create your profile by filling it up with flattering photographs of yourself, drop a few lines about yourself, your personal interests, hobbies, ect. But, what they don’t tell you is that the very second you post something on the site – Match.com has the exclusive right to take and use these information across other sites in their network and other affiliated sites. This means that the minute you post anything, it is no longer yours and can be freely broadcasted on multiple dating services.
EVIDENCE OF SCAM: “By posting Content on the Website or as part of the Service, you automatically grant to the Company, its affiliates, licensees and successors, an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, fully paid-up, worldwide right and license to (i) use, copy, store, perform, display, reproduce, record, play, adapt, modify and distribute the Content, (ii) prepare derivative works of the Content or incorporate the Content into other works, and (iii) grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing in any media now known or hereafter created.”
2) Replicated Member’s Profiles
This fact that the site is freely taking and reusing your personal info makes us wonder whether other dating profiles you see on the home page of Match.com are also created by the site using other people’s personal info. However, there is no way you can tell a real-person’s profile from a false one. Just like you can never be sure where your photos and description of self will end and who will but them, you also cannot know who is real and who is not on Match.com. Moreover, since you are not behind the replicated dating profiles, then who is? And who is running the fabricated dating profiles you encounter on Match.com.
One thing is for sure – it’s not safe to post anything on this site, nor can you know what is genuine or not. Plus, Match.com won’t have the need to import dating profiles from its other websites if there were really hundreds of thousands people using the site.
EVIDENCE OF SCAM: “You acknowledge and agree that Members of Match.com may be part an online community that includes other websites owned by the Company or its affiliates. Therefore, profiles on the Website may be viewable on other such websites and paying subscribers of one website may be able to communicate with other paying subscribers on all websites.”
3) Communications And Test Profiles
In the following excerpt from the term of use document on Match.com we found that they admit to sending you emails created by them, thorough the created members profiles. These messages are usually computer-automated, but they can also be sent by site’s employees whose job is to pretend they are real site members while hiding behind someone else’s profile data.
EVIDENCE OF SCAM: “When you become a Member, you agree and consent to receive email messages from us. From time to time, employees of the Company (or its parent or affiliated companies) may create test dating profiles for the purpose of testing the functionality of our Service and website processes to improve service quality for our Members.”
4) How Much Does Match.com Cost?
Of course you didn’t think for a second that Match.com would go through so much trouble for nothing? The site is costly and moreover, gives no reasons why a regular internet user who is looking for some online fun would doubt its legitimacy. This is how many men and women fail to be careful and fall straight in the hands of Match.com rip offs and scams. Match.com will offer you two types of subscription, each one at three different time periods. Here are your payment options:
Basic Plan
- $35 for 1 month of subscription to the site
- $59.97 for 3 months of subscription to the site
- $101.94 for 6 months of subscription to the site
- $191.88 for 12 months of subscription to the site
Bundle Plan
- $68.97 for 3 months of subscription to the site
- $119.94 for 6 months of subscription to the site
- $197.88 for 12 months of subscription to the site
5) They Will Keep Charging You
Let’s say that you gave the site your credit card info and chose to subscribe to the service for 1 month. Your paid membership won’t expire and end at the end of your initial subscription period. It will, instead get prolonged for the same amount of money and the same time period until you realize that Match.com has been automatically renewing your payment and cancel your paid membership.
EVIDENCE OF SCAM: “After your initial subscription commitment period, and again after any subsequent subscription period, your subscription will automatically continue for an additional equivalent period, at the price you agreed to when subscribing.”
The verdict on Match.com
If you are still wondering if Match.com is a legitimate site, there is only one answer – it’s NOT. After doing this investigation and research on Match.com, we can say with sureness that this site is only aimed at your money. They will not provide you with possible dates, or real communications. There is no way for any further meeting in person with anyone from Match.com.
During our research we also found the information that Match.com was sued by a woman from Florida, who filed a $1.5 billion class action lawsuit against the site because they took, and reused their personal information without notifying and used these info to fabricate dating profiles who were then used to rip people off.
Match.com Scam Questions
If you have anything else you’d like to ask, feel free to post in the comments section below. You can also share a personal experience about Match.com or any of its affiliated sites to warn and help other readers.
Match.com Contact Info
Address: 8300 Douglas Avenue, Suite 800, Dallas, TX 75225
Email Contact: Contact Page
Fax: 214-576-9350
Phone Number: 214-576-9352
Report and File a Complaint
Contact the Better Business Bureau to file a complaint and report the site if you feel you have been deceived, conned or overcharged.
Match is crooked. They WILL renew you after you cancel. So pay the extra cost per month to join monthly, not yearly. You WILL pay for an extra period. They will not refund. They will not hand you up to a supervisor. They are just plain crooked.
They have been at this since before Dr. Phil vouched commercials. I was scammed in 2008 by them. I created a paid account and within a week Of browsing and getting responses that I suspected were fake I deleted my account. The months that followed, Match.com pulled money from my account at different amounts and sometime twice a month. I caught it after about 5 months. I called them and they put around $600.00 back into my account. They knew what they were doing and once I caught it didn’t even bother with excuses.
THis just happened to me! I didnt want to join in hte first place six months ago. I argued and they said I had no choice. But, they sent me confirmation I was not set to auto renew. Well, They just auto renewed me again. I cant find the email stating they would not do so. Customer service basically said too bad and sent me an email saying they wont renew again but i am stuck for six more freaking months. Also, someone from match went into my account and reversed the do not auto renew section. This is unbelievable!. I plan to go to BBB, write endless renews, and call my credit card company. Why does the government allow them to keep getting away with this bulllshit? Look at all the bad reviews!
well, I just tried to send a message to the link you provided. lol, another joke. It is promting me to call customer service or chat live and will not accept my message. It is only giving me an option to check, yes, my questions are answered. You guys are wasting your time giving people this link. If i call service, they barely speak english and dont listen to a thing you say. went down that road six months ago!
I recently signed up for match.com as user name MYSTAGIC, and got a few people that contacted me, but I couldn’t view or click on any of this stuff or even know who was viewing me, until I pay for service, so I paid for service to see who was messaging me, so I wrote some responses to a few people and started talking to someone and we were really hitting it off, but I had to sleep it was 3 am, so I logged out and the next day my account was terminated and no indication to why, and I know I didn’t write anything offensive or bad, I uploaded a single photo, and barely used the site, I didn’t even have service for more then 12 hours so I wasn’t even able to setup anything or proceed with talking to the person I was talking with and now that I am no longer on the site I have no way to contact them. Using match.com was one of the most awful experiences I have ever had with any online site. They give no warning or even explain why your service was terminated, when you try to talk to them they simply refuse to give any real information, and after doing so research into this company they have had serious issues dating as far back as 2011.
I paid for service on: 10 December 2017 at 00:11 am
account was terminated at : 10 December 2017 at 06:14 am
I only used the site for roughly 3 hours and got permanently terminated, for some unknown reason that they won’t even tell me. The only response I got was some automated message of:
————————————————————
Dear MYSTAGIC,
We received your inquiry regarding the status of your Match membership.
Please know that due to our Terms of Use, your Match account has been terminated. We believe this action to be in the best interests of our member community.
We can also confirm that a full refund has been issued. Your bank can provide you more details about when it will appear on your statement, when the funds will be available to you, etc.
If you paid to attend an upcoming Match Event, please know your name has been removed from the RSVP list and any charges associated with the event have been refunded.
For reference, our Terms of Use can be accessed at the following link: http://www.match.com/registration/membagr.aspx.
Regards,
Match Corporate Care
————————————————————
Overall, I do not recommend this site for any reason whatsoever. They robbed my chance of talking to someone that I found very interesting, though it’s very possible that the activity sent to my account was entirely fake and generated by match.com to be fooled into buying service. Seeing how, not even moments after signing up I receive allegedly all this winks, profile likes, and private messages, from real users, which I find it hard to believe I got all that activity within my first 10 minutes of using the site with a incomplete profile. Then after buying services I could respond to these items. But then suddenly without warning my account is terminated, and I have to get a refund, thankfully, I paid through paypal and have buyer protection. If your looking for dating sites, I wouldn’t put match.com any where near my choices, and I will never recommend this site to anyone, and anyone asking about this site, I will tell them the very short experience I had with it.
Thanks so much for your information I new it was false really anyway and the winks literally go up and down as does favourites!!
I think Match dot com scams men way more… Think about the man that this commenter was talking to till 3 am then the account was terminated… her account was then used to scam a guy who thinks this is a real person, the man goes on to spend more money to chat, boost, and use a service called Match phone all worth over 15$ each … I know because weird phishing goes on all the time I have had this service… I only went on two dates… as a man I can tell you it is most humiliating.
Match.com has thousands of complaints on file. They have employees of their company post fake profiles. They also don’t do refunds and do auto-billing. I used them for 8 months and got no responses 95% of the time. Avoid them like the plague.
Thank you. They did the same to me; charged my credit card again without notifying me, and refusing a refund. As soon as I saw tthe charge, I cancelled and asked for a refund. They refused.
It is a scam. Nothing good from that sight. For them to refuse a refund 2 days after the charge to my account (without additional authorization or even communication) should speak volumes about their service. Why would they stoop so low, at the risk of a poor review to other potential customers if their service was good enough to have positive feed back bring in more customers? Reason is they don’t depend on “good reputation”,but solely on a trick played on a vast number of people with a basic human need. It’s like selling someone who’s hungry rotten meat, and then refusing to give their money back after they open the package.
Avoid Match.com. Too many fake profiles.
FYI MATCH>COM HAS 2600+ COMPLAINS WITH THE OFFICE OF CONSUMER AFFAIRS!!!!!!!
To begin with, Match is a SCAM!!! They block your account access 2 days B4 free trial ends, so you cannot log in to cancel b4 THEY CHARGE your credit card. Look out for a class action lawsuit over this!! THEIR SUPPORT IS UNRESPONSIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Then their entire user interface is hideous, super slow and infuriating!
Their messaging system is awful. It does not allow searching your mail, so if you are looking for a specific email with a specific content or keyword, you have to scroll down and open each one of your dozens or hundreds of emails to find it! Then, if you answer to one email and you go back to your inbox, their system takes you back to the top of your inbox, so you have to scroll down and keep clicking “next page” a dozen times to get to the last email you viewed.
Custom searches constantly crash and you have to start all over again. It takes thousands of clicks and hours of work to do what other sites do in 20 seconds. I cannot believe there are millions of idiots paying for this trash. I bet most of them have been blocked out of their accounts, like I was, and Match keeps using their profiles to build false expectations in both potential new users and advertisers.
Hi Nikki, I feel your pain in this.
There are too many fake profiles and also you can’t narrow down your search for example; if you are in US you can not search and looking for someone in Canada….Also if you are looking for people with “no kids” still it shows all profiles and it takes time to read all to find out who has kids or not….after two days of subscription and paid $119.94 US I asked for refund and they replied me that I am not eligible for refund…It is awful website and total scam …please be aware before subscription
I signed up at Match.com as user xin in the middle of March and paid made 3 month of payment. I received messages from scammer while use the service. And I don’t find this website was useful at all. So I decided to cancel the service after one week. Match.com refuse to refund even a portion of my payment even I have my account completely deactivated. This is an absolutely rip off!
This is borderline mail and wire fraud. As many others posted, you sign up for one month, and you think that’s it. However, they renew your membership whether or not you cancel. I had numerous hits from people half my age and are allegedly somewhere on the east cost with totally fake profiles. I tried calling them and some woman with a heavy Asian accent answered. I could not understand a word she said. When I asked for her supervisor she said no, and terminated the call. I tried to dispute the charges through PayPal and that process was a joke as there are no humans there to talk to. I’m going to try my bank next to,see they can help. In summary, this is a total scam.
Anyone that has ever signed up for and paid for a subscription to match has already heard or had first hand experience with their reoccurring billing. But I have also found that a lot of the supposed profiles are exact copies of others, just have different pictures. I have come across about a dozen “stories” of what women have on their profiles that match word for word with other profiles. Either the people running this scam don’t count on someone noticing the exact similarities or they think that we are all stupid. Please everyone that reads this DON’T WAIST YOUR TIME OR MONEY!
WOULD NOT RECOMMEND !! I personally know friends who swear by Match.com, however, that is rare…. It is also highly rated. I have tried this site several times. 2 yrs ago for over 1 yr, and again recently for 3 mos after trying several other sites. Nothing has changed. I waste my time filtering & deleting profiles that at outside my parameters. They guarantee a match, but only if you match and email a certain number of users. BE CAREFUL with payments too. They will charge your credit card 1-2 weeks before the subscription renewal date. In it for the money, like any business. LOL, why not Boost?!
I was on for a few years. Spent hundreds on pounds on subcriptions. I had a few dates here and there. Did I find anything worthwhile, guys that wanted to get to know me in the hope of forging a relationship…NO
Mostly people out of my age range, distance, using fake pictures, got pestered daily from old fat unattractive guys or younger guys wanting to hook up. There is still a hook up.element to the site. Then if you actually get chatting to anyone, they stop replying or delete their account. If you arrange a date 9/10 they cancel.
Total waste of time and money. I am an attractive single woman and it didn’t work for me!
Just like everyone else, I would not recommend the match site to anyone. Have been chatting with someone for over a month. Just realized today he is a fake. The name and address he gave me belong to someone else and his voice when he called was obviously not a match to a video recording of the real person.
I wish I read that before I signed up again after a longer absence. I have been enticed to sign again, and I think this was a fake email. It looked like a guy you actually “emailed” me twice! So I got curious and fell into the trap! I responded to the guy who seemed to have been so eager to meet me, but then I never got a response back. Thinking more about it I came to the conclusion that it was a match employee to have sent it. Reading comments on this site only confirms my suspicions! Same experience as “Lou” above!
This site is not what it says it is. I have found duplicate profiles under my match that state they are new. This is false. My opinion is that the site generates false profiles to keep the funds coming in.
Meh, I met an amazing, hot girl in 5 days. Didn’t work out but we dated for months. As long as you cancel, they won’t keep charging you, they’re pretty clear about that. But yes, there is no way to tell who is a subscriber and who is not other than messaging them and seeing if it was read. And there’s not that many people on the site. And they all think they’re 10’s when they’re maybe a 6 on a good day. So it’s not a great site. But I know people who got dates there. I was one of them. Is it worth it? Probably not. Although anyone paying full price is a moron. It’s always 25% off. I got half off. 3 months for $39. That was worth it.
Providing you cancel 48 hours or more before your renewal date, you WONT get charged again so don’t fall for that one. What angers me though is the activity levels imidiately AFTER my subscription runs out. I get a few likes and the odd favourites in a month as a subscriber, yet the day after my pass has expired, I get treble these numbers. They basically put you on a permanent boost to boost your numbers thus trying to dupe someone into resubscribing. It’s deception, con artery and fabrication and they should be penalised for it.
Match.com ain’t the issue anyway. Its the fact that even girls that are 6/7 won’t respond to guys like me who are borderlines 8’s
“Its the fact that even girls that are 6/7 won’t respond to guys like me who are borderlines 8’s“
THIS!!!
That has been my experience for many years now.
I blame the internet. Average looking chicks, thinking they’re hotter than they really are, bc that’s all they constantly hear these days.
B#*ch act your face.
If you let your subscription run out, and don’t renew, Match.com will notify you that you have new messages. So, naturally, you want to renew so you can read them. But, the messages will be from phony profiles. So, they got your money again. This happened to me, and 4 other people I chatted with online. Even if you get no replies for a solid month or so, somehow you get new messages the day after you let your subscription expire. Coincidence?
I’ve subscribed to Match many times and rarely ever met anyone through it. This is mostly due to the fact that the male/female ratio is probably 10 to 1. Many women get so overloaded with messages, they simply don’t want to go to the trouble of answering them, even if the messages are from guys they would be interested in.
The bottom line is, Match is just another money making scam, pretending to be the answer to all your relationship problems. There are plenty of free dating sites out there, and granted, they are no better than Match. But, at least you won’t waste your hard earned money on empty promises.
I joined match last year . they had a good deal . the 3 month deal was $39.95 and if I subscribe now . They would give me 3 extra months . That would be 6 months for the price of 3 . So I took it . fortunately for me , I was smart enough to run out to the nearest store and buy myself a $50.00 Visa gift card and use that rather then using my credit card .That way , They wouldn’t be able to recharge me 6 months later. after my subscription had expired. ” DID YOU HEAR THAT PEOPLE ” . THEY ACCEPT GIFT CARDS ! .you will have to pay an extra 2 bucks for the card but. It’s worth it . isn’t it . Duhhhh . I spent the $11.00 balance on gasoline . Yes , gas pumps also accept gift cards. Anyway . It’s TRUE about receiving expired profiles and all but , You have to be patient and dig through . I met some very nice women on match . I had no problems with they’re site . And remember . don’t be a dope. ” USE A GIFT CARD “!
Edward [last name removed] of Naples Florida is a scammer. He refers to the women he is scamming as stupid old pigs. And laughs at them for sending him money.
Here is the issue. One, many people on there are scammers. Not all but many. Two, many of the profiles are no longer active. If you don’t see a Green Dot don’t even bother they probably aren’t on there. Three, the rate of return emails is very low. Research has shown about 1-3 percent of emails you send are returned. Anything over 5 percent is very rare. Four, you have to be realistic. Most people are average looking meaning seldom is there going to be this great mass attraction right away. If they list some characteristics you like email them and if they seem okay go out on a date. You just never know. Five, if someone emails you, you should at least acknowledge their email. I always do and tell them thank you. Six, the cost is an outrage. Seven, there are a lot more men on there than women.
My first try on Match I was immediately scammed. Tom from Sweden. Really!!! What a joke. I reported him, but of course his profile still appears on site. After a week of text, he had to go work in Alaska…then once there asked for $300.00 in Amazon cards. He had pictures of fake airline ticket and all. These scammers are good, but I was too quick. What a loser!!!!