Are Match.com Inactive Profiles Grounds for a Lawsuit?
Published on January 15, 2011
On December 30, 2010, Match.com had a a federal lawsuit filed against it that alleges that the majority of profiles belong to scammers or are inactive members.
While Match purports to have “millions” of active subscribers, well over half of the profiles on its site belong to inactive members who have cancelled their membership or allowed their subscriptions to lapse and/or are fake and fraudulent profiles posted by scammers and others. To the extent these types of profiles do not belong to the scammers that proliferate the site, the rest are unreachable by legitimate users attempting to avail themselves of the services offered by Match and paid for via subscription fees.
I understand that scammers are a bad thing and if any service could be proven to be willingly allowing scammers to thrive, that’s definitely a problem. I have my doubts that this lawsuit is really going to be attempting to prove this but with the claim that the scammers “proliferate” the site, I might be wrong on that one.
That said, the thing that really jumps out to me is the idea that inactive profiles are worthy of a lawsuit and if my guess is correct this will be the majority of the suit.
Are Inactive Profiles Really A Good Argument?
I should first point out for those who don’t know that I met my wife on Match.com. Obviously because of this I’m a big fan and found the service very helpful, so I guess you could say I’m biased.
My bias aside: is it really a strong argument to complain about inactive profiles? I see a few problems with this type of argument.
First, Match.com makes it clear how long it has been since someone last logged in. As a matter of fact, I just logged in to verify that my memory was correct and not only does it show you the last time the user was active but the searches actually place inactive users (anyone who hasn’t used the service within 3 weeks) at the end of the results. It’s pretty simple to see who is active and who isn’t long before you subscribe.
Second, there seems to be an argument that if someone unsubscribes that their profile should be removed. The problem I see with this is that I took breaks from Match.com several times but the last thing I wanted was for my profile to be deleted. I still wanted my profile visible. If a woman was interested in me and wanted to contact me, I wanted to know if I was paying or not. If Match.com deleted my profile, I would have been really upset about that.
To me, inactive profiles are an okay thing especially when the service makes it clear who is active and who isn’t.
The Unreachable
I’ve had the privilege of working with many people over the years as I’ve run this website. I can tell you that many of people, myself included, do a poor job of representing themselves with their online dating profile and interactions, especially early on. This is why I wrote my guide and it’s also why I encourage everyone to be committed to online dating if you’re going to try it. Don’t try it for 30 days and then say that online dating (or in this case, Match.com) doesn’t work!
Basically the last part of the lawsuit seems to be saying that the only reasonable explanation that a person wouldn’t have success (outside of inactive users and scammers) is because the service doesn’t work. My experience suggests otherwise. I dated online actively for about 9 months before I started having success. Was Match.com horrible when I started dating online and then 9 months later did the service improve dramatically or was it me who was improving? I can assure you it was the second. Some of the things I included in my profile and emails in the beginning guaranteed I wasn’t going to have success…although I had no idea at the time!
While I did struggle for a long time with Match.com, when I improved my online dating approach I was averaging two first dates a week. Yes, there were times that I did see Match.com as the problem but now I realize the service wasn’t the problem at all. Perhaps I’m the exception and this lawsuit will prove what it claims…but I seriously doubt it.
Author: Brad
Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.
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