No discussion about matchmakers and dating options is complete without a stop at one of the oldest names in the book — Match.com. But, just because Match.com is one of the oldest matchmakers, does that automatically mean that it’s one of the best?
On the cusp of the site’s 30 year anniversary, that’s what we’re going to explore in our Match.com review.
Match.com has been around for over 20 years but the legal troubles are concerning.
For those of you looking for the quick answer upfront of the biggest pros and cons of Match.com, here’s everything you need to know.
Match.com earns points for being an established brand in the industry for over three decades. However, Match was sued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2019 for defrauding customers, which may be too alarming for us to ignore. For us, the results of our Match review is a hard pass.
Keep reading as we share the details of the FTC case, and talk through other pros and cons of Match.
A similar matchmaking alternative to consider
In case you’re already turned off from Match and trust the results of our review, we wanted to make sure you don’t leave without a better option. If you’re looking for a matchmaking app that focuses on serious relationships, has a track record of success of over 20 years in the industry, is responsible for over 2 million marriages, and has not been sued for taking advantage of customers, you’re going to want to check out eharmony.
Below, we’ve included a link that will automatically set you up with an eharmony free trial account so you can check things out for yourself. Additionally, you can check out our full eharmony review and our eharmony vs. match comparison page for more information.
In 2019, the FTC sued match for using deceptive practices to trick customers into purchasing premium memberships.
Hands-down the most important part of our Match review is an understanding of what happened in the years leading up to 2019 that caused the app to be sued by the FTC. For us, it’s the reason that Match is a hard pass, but we want to present the facts to you and let you make your own review assessment.
Here’s the tl;dr and then we’ll share some quotes from the actual FTC complaint.
Between 2013 and 2018, 25% to 30% of every account that joined Match was from a scammer. These scam accounts would send messages to real users to try and scam them. Match knew that these messages were fraudulent and withheld them from paying members (until a review was completed) but let them go through to free members. Free members could only see that they had a match and a notification as you have to be a premium member to read messages.
Here’s where it gets really off-putting.
Along with these fraudulent messages, Match would send ads to users letting them know they had a match (that they knew wasn’t real) and inviting them to upgrade to a paid account to be able to read their messages. Here’s what those looked like:
They even included discounts to further try and get a sale.
According to the FTC, between June 2016 and May 2018, 499,961 subscriptions were purchased within 24 hours of receiving an ad based on a fraudulent message.
And when people paid, they either saw the scammer’s message or that the user was unavailable. When they would email Match to ask what happened, Match denied any wrongdoing. Here is what their response was:
“Please be assured, Match.com does not send members misleading notifications, e-mails or winks professing romantic interest. We have too much respect for our members to ever compromise their trust. If you have received communications from members with profiles that are not immediately available, the member may have temporarily hidden their profile.”
Yes. We are speechless too.
There is a lot more about false guarantees and deceptive tactics within the full complaint, but this is all we want to get into today.
To close this section of our Match.com review, here are a few pertinent quotes from the FTC suit.
“Between 2013 and at least mid-2018, consumers who were considering purchasing a Match.com subscription were generally not aware that as many as 25-30 percent of Match.com members who registered each day were using Match.com to perpetrate scams. These scams include romance scams, stealing consumers’ personal information through “phishing,” promoting dubious or unlawful products or services, and extortion scams, in which a scammer will induce a consumer to send the scammer compromising videos or pictures of the consumer that the scammer then uses to extort money from the consumer by threatening to send the materials to the consumer’s friends or family.”
Case 3:19-cv-02281-K Document 1 – Page 5
“For example, in some months between 2013 and 2016, more than half of instant message initiations and favorites that consumers received originated from accounts that Defendant identified as “fraudulent,” meaning that Defendant determined the Match.com user was likely to be perpetrating some form of scam.”
Case 3:19-cv-02281-K Document 1 – Page 6
“Defendant used these fraudulent communications to induce consumers to subscribe to Match.com. When consumers received these communications, they also received accompanying advertisements from Defendant encouraging them to subscribe to Match.com in order to view the content of the communication and the identity of the sender.”
Case 3:19-cv-02281-K Document 1 – Page 6
Match.com is owned by one of the largest dating app companies in the world — Match Group.
Something else that’s worth noting (that may be a pro or a con) is that Match.com is owned by Match Group, an $11 billion company that owns a large percentage of the dating market. According to the FTC complain, Match owned 25% of the market in 2019 with 45 different online dating services. Some of the most notable include Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and OKCupid.
Is this a pro or a con? Hard to say. You could argue that having so many brands could offer expertise, but you could also argue that so many brands could be a distraction.
One thing we’ve noticed is that Match.com’s interface looks wildly similar to how it did many years ago. To us, this shows signs of neglect, or more accurately, priority being given to the company’s bigger brands like Tinder.
The Match app can be used for both serious and casual dating relationships.
We mentioned our favorite Match.com alternative earlier (eharmony) and said that one of the things we like about the option is that it was 100% geared toward serious relationships. If you’re not looking for a serious relationship, though, that’s probably not the best option for you.
What does this all have to do with Match.com? Well, we use it to preface that Match can be used for several different relationship goals — both casual and serious. Here are your options:
Now, for us, especially as a company that heavily reviews matchmaking services, we prefer when an option focuses solely on more committed relationships.
In our opinion, when you try and serve both serious and casual singles, both groups get a watered-down experience.
But, if you are looking for something casual or you don’t know what kind of relationship you want, this may be a pro for you based on our Match review.
Is Match.com worth your time and money?
For us, we don’t think Match is worth your time and especially not worth your money. The company’s past transgressions are just to severe for us to look the other way just a few years later.
Will we change our tune on Match.com ever? Maybe. But the company is going to have to give us strong signals and a strong reasons to believe that they’ve changed their ways.
In the meantime, stick to the alternative options we recommended at the beginning of this Match review.