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Muckrock.com has an interesting piece on the the number of online dating site complaints made to the FTC by dating sites. They made Freedom of Information requests to the FTC to achieve this. Their goal? Who has most dirt on their hands. According to Muckrock.com, a FOI requests were made regarding complaints made to FTC for eHarmony, Match.com, and OkCupid. At the time the article was written (March 21, 2013), the result yielded 2056 complaints against Match.com since 2005, 301 complaints against eHarmony since 2007, and only 7 complaints about OkCupid since 2008. So per year, Match.com got roughly 257 complaints a year, eHarmony has 50 per year, and OkCupid has only 1.4 complaints per year.
The complaints vary widely. Over half are due to “romance scams” where perpetrators tried to scam someone by pretending they are genuinely seeking a relationship. The complaints indicate that they felt the relevant dating sites did not curb or act fast enough to these complaints. To the dating site’s defense, they need to be sure the accusations are real before they can shut down a profile. They need to go through their own due diligence to ensure the accusations are not false. Another complain was regarding improper use of member’s photos without authorization. I can imagine with social media, the profile pictures may be used as advertisement. I am pretty certain that each site has disclaimers indicating that all pictures and details will be waived upon your agreement to use the sites. Who really reads those disclaimers anyways?
Other complaints are similar to what you would experience at any companies – poor customer service, billing issues, subscription cancellation issues.
Take a look at Muchrock.com to read the full article!