What comes to your mind when you first heard match.com? A dating site, a matchmaking site, right? Well, there’s more than that. The site is a real player of making money by not pairing people successfully together.

Let’s take a closer look at how match.com’s site works and where’s the problem.

One can create a profile for free, but that’s actually not helping.

So anyone can create a profile, and it’s 100% free if you make it public. Of course it is! Direct profiles add value to the platform, making it seem popular and active. The more active accounts there are within the platform’s pool, the more likely they are to have attractive people and witty profiles for people to find near them during searches. It immediately makes complete sense on the surface.

Anyone can click the like/wink/whatever buttons for free.

Usually, these are free to use, but there’s actually no plus point of these things from the point of a person looking for a partner. In the best possibilities, they let the other person know you’re in some way interested. At the same time, it also shows that you lack either the courage or enthusiasm to do anything beyond a single click. They literally might as well label it the “meh” button. Quite literally, these free buttons only exist to create user-generated click-bait. It looks like a way to put pressure on the recipient, making them want to respond with a message.

Anyone can write a message to anyone whose profile is visible. 

Okay, it’s possible. You can totally write whatever you’d like to the profile of your dreams. If they like you or winked at you or whatever, if you feel like taking things a little further than like or winks, then it’s quite possible they’re going to want to see what you have to say. Okay, so match.com is working great so far, except …wait for it!

You cannot read messages without a subscription.

That’s it! That’s the story behind all drama. Sooner or later you’ll receive a notification that Match is happy to tell you that you’ve got the message, but this is as far as your free access will ever go because that’s exactly where they start to make their money. Once you receive such a message, you are left with two choices. Either ignore the message or pull your credit card and hand them some of your cash, just to see the message. The irony is if you are on the other side and you’ve sent someone a message, you’ll never know if your message was received and ignored or simply just never received, because who knows your recipient might not be paying for that message. There’s not a single way to know this.

But you might pay to read the message, because you really want to read that message and you trust the platform.

How are you going to respond when you know that an attractive person has decided to send you a message? You can check out their profile, and get to know about their hobbies and basic information. You find them quite good match according to your future vision. But as for now, you can’t read that message because you’re not paying. So what are you going to do? Reach for that credit card, because a few dollars shouldn’t keep you from the love of your life, right?! Well, that’s the game.

Is it worth spending money to read a message?

Once you decide to whip out your credit card and pay the money to read that unknown message, and within a moment you just find out that message is fake, like completely fake. That’s really disappointing for anyone. The truth is, the site is riddled with fake accounts and bots that will ‘like’ people and send them messages seemingly at random. They have zero verification process for users. So it’s completely based on your luck to get an actual message instead of a fake one.

Unbelievable…result!

This strategic move of the company grabbed Hundreds and thousands of people subscribed to Match.com after receiving communication from fake profiles. There are 1700 unanswered customer complaints. Just Imagine how you would feel if you ever became a victim of such ugly games?

And …there’s more!

Match even failed to keep their promise of giving a free six-month subscription if a person did not “meet someone special.” And if that’s not enough, Match users face a big problem while unsubscribing from the platform. When a consumer signs up for the site’s three-month offer, they assume they’re making a one-time payment. But, that’s not the truth if you scroll the several pages and read the whole terms and conditions page.

One of the reviewer Shane says she felt deceived when her $88 12-week subscription was automatically renewed. She called match to ask for a refund, but she never received it. Shane is now looking for love offline.

What’s Match’s initiative on fake profiles?

As per the Match, they are monitoring the situation and addressing abusers with harsh and swift justice. To be very honest, the fake and aren’t monetarily hurting the platform’s business. In fact, they are helping it by encouraging more people to subscribe. Many people have witnessed such fake accounts on Match. Many users are switching to off-line dating after facing such issues, and we don’t blame them.

In all these people, one person came out and filed a complaint. After receiving a complaint, the Federal Trade Commission is suing Match Group for allegedly using fake love interest ads to trick customers into paying for a subscription to dating site match.com. The FTC said hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to Match.com after receiving communications from fake profiles. Match.com’s CEO disputed the FTC’s claims in an internal email, writing that the company “detects and neutralizes” 85% of fake accounts within the first four hours they pop up and 95% within 24 hours.

Are you a Match user? Do not miss to share your experience with us.