Dating Site Reviews

I joined the following sites as a 53 year old woman seeking a man.  All the links to the site are free of any affiliate links.. this isn’t a site to make money.  I just got tired of feeling ripped off so here’s a comparison of what you get and how much it costs so you won’t be disappointed when you choose one. Click the link to get all the details

DATING SITE FEATURES AND PRICING COMPARISON

Current on October 29, 2009.

If you want a site reviewed or you know of any changes which should be made to any of the sites below, just send an email to webmaster at d8me.com.

Adultfriendfinder.com

Adultfriendfinder.com and found that I could join free, view a few profiles and then I had to pay to see more. Their $26.99 price point doesn’t include highlighted profiles ($8.95 per month extra) or the ability for free members to view them and contact them for free ($17.95 extra per month). The photos that I could see were really small in the profiles I was able to view – about thumbnail size. I was astonished that in order to get customer service in any timely fashion – within a day, you have to be a silver member at $17.99. If you need a quicker answer to a problem on the site you have to upgrade to the $26.99 per month membership. Top level with the extras is $53.89 per month.

The site appears to have a lot of outdated profiles and most of the people in my immediate area who were in my age group hadn’t logged in for months or maybe years. Some of the chatrooms are available to free users but I have to say that getting my first message of, “Hey babe, do you take it up the bum?” caused me to leave. Maybe that was a once-off occurrence but it caused me to back out and I like sex. A check with consumeraffairs.com found only one page of complaints about Adultfriendfinder.com.

SexyAds.com

SexyAds.com. This adult dating site offers a surprising amount for free. They let free members create a profile, upload a main photo, create a photo gallery, create a private photo gallery, join chat, create a blog, post comments on profiles, blogs, and photos (no contact details), read and post in the forums , join video chat, videochat one-on-one, SMS notifications of messages, contests, and a snappy trivia game complete with the option to chat to your fellow players. I’d have to say that they could use a snappy web designer on their staff but the site more than makes up for it with all the bells and whistles and most of them are free. When someone does pay for an upgrade they certainly have had ample opportunity to kick the tires.

One day when I was there I found hundreds in the chatrooms and felt a sense of community. SexyAds $24.97 price point includes profile highlighting, the ability for free members to read and reply to VIP mail, the ability for free members to contact VIP members by email, ad replies or voicemail, who’s viewed you, enhanced search parameters and x-rated photos and videos. SexyAds was created by two people who met through a personal ad on the net in ‘94 and created the site for classy, sexy adults. A check with www.consumeraffairs.com, www.ripoffreport.com as well as a general check on the internet found no complaints about SexyAds.com.  They’ve been online for more than 12 years so that says something to me.

Fling.com

Fling.com. Out of all the sites I joined, only Fling.com gets my dander up. Fling.com has an Alexa Internet ranking in the 300s which means it’s one of the most visited sites on the Internet so you’d think you could find someone special with just a few clicks. I filled out my profile and confirmed my email address and wouldn’t you know, before I could lean back in my chair I had 3 emails. What luck! The image to the left is of the 3 people who contacted me. All were young, beautiful women who were seeking men. All three emails were identical. “I’d really like to get to know you better.” Gimme a break. Like these 3 dollies want to get to know a 53 year old cranky broad like me? I highly doubt it.

So I began searching the net for complaints and wow.. did I find some. They range from charging credit cards after cancellation to having fake profiles. LOTS of complaints about fake profiles on www.ripoffreport.com. If my experience of 3 cam girl types emailing me so I’d pay to contact them – I have to agree on the fake profiles. So next I checked out their photo galleries. On a site where men and women are meant to hook up for sexy encounters, it surprised me that ALL the photos were of naked or half naked women in their 20s and early 30s. Not a man to be seen anywhere. Next I clicked the videos. Free members can view x-rated videos of the same pretty young women. I didn’t find any real people. So I’m left to assume that men are so gullible that they’d think these women are there on Fling to hook up with them? Probably at $1.99 a minute.

Match.com

Match.com. I was intrigued by Match.com’s outstanding 15,000,000 members worldwide. Only at first because as I did some research on the net, once you create a profile at Match.com it’s very difficult to get it off. I couldn’t find a delete my profile option and a check with www.consumeraffairs.com shows 48 pages of complaints about Match.com. Sure they’ve been online since 1995 but lots of sites have. Good customer service is really high on my list of must-haves, so I moved in cautiously, knowing that whatever I entered on that site would probably outlive me. Free members can join and create a profile and add photos – all adding content and value to the site but that’s as far as you can go. Only paid members can search all the profiles and communicate with other members by email.

Email is the only way to interact with other members as far as I could tell, as there are no blogs, forums, chat or videochat to use as icebreakers for some of us who are shy about meeting a stranger for the first time. Match.com has a very well designed site and really good writers for articles on dating tips and relationships.

Lavalife.com

Lavalife.com. I liked Lavalife.com quite a bit. It was fairly easy to navigate although having to place three profiles if you are interested in a dating, relationships or a spicier version seems like a waste of my time. Frankly I think dating and relationships would be one big group unless what they’re talking about would be casual encounters and then wouldn’t that activity go to the intimate group? I’m just sayin… You have 3 email inboxes for each of the sub-sites which gets a bit confusing if the same person writes to you from 3 different spots. Maybe it’s just because I’m old?

The site offers instant messaging which is nice but there’s no way that I could easily figure out how to turn the damn thing off. It also has something that’s called Speed Dating which is really an online dating party that you register for and you have 3 minutes to chat with 5 different people. When I clicked the button to register I was told that there were no speed daters in my area so I should go to the Lavalife party instead.

Adultmatchdoctor.com

Adultmatchdoctor.com. I joined this site because I read that it was a 100% free adult dating site. That’s what the promo said when I clicked on it and when I got there, the site says it’s 100% free. Now, I might not be the sharpest knife in the drawer but if someone tells me that something is 100% free, why ask for $19.95 a month? The site does offer a lot for free but I found it to be a nightmare to navigate. The site offers free profiles, photos, videos, blogs but no chatroom and I couldn’t find videochat either. Their sister site, matchdoctor.com has chatrooms.

Free members can contact other members so for that reason I suppose they consider that it’s 100% free. A paid membership frees you of all the advertising that’s on every page and you can see x-rated photos and your profile gets highlighted. In addition you can have a private photo album that you can choose which other members can see. A paid member can also see which other members have viewed them.  I didn’t find any complaints about them so their customer service must be OK.

Redhotpie.com.au

Redhotpie.com.au. I chose this site to review because I love the design. It’s clean, easy to read and easy to navigate. Sadly, this wonderful design comes at quite a cost. It’s not free to contact other members and even if you pay the US amount of $44.69 a month, you can only send 5 messages per day. For this amount you also get to view restricted photos and you get webcam access. They have a mid-range price point of US $59.26 and this gets you 20 messages a day plus you get to see members’ listed phone numbers. Now wait for it.. their top level membership is $100.00 Australian dollars which at today’s US amount is $91.21 a month. A month!! I bet you’re thinking you’re going to get a lot more for that amount, aren’t you? I did, but the only thing you get for more than $30 extra is the ability for a free member to contact you, messages from you are highlighted in recipients’ email boxes and your profile listing comes at the top of the search results. Either the owners are really naive or Australians earn more than anyone else on the planet.

The site offers message board forums, dating articles and flirtys for free members. Contacting members and erotic stories require a paid membership. The site also offers photo rating of members’ photos and that’s a bit of fun. It’s one of those mindless things that suck away part of your day but we all do it. A check for complaints about Redhotpie.com.au turned up only one the day I looked.

Plentyoffish.com

Plentyoffish.com. Everyone that I told about this project said I must include this site in my evaluations because it was 100% and paid for by advertising. So I was expecting a busy site with lots of people and plenty of advertising and I wasn’t disappointed. Every review I read said 100% free, put your credit cards away. So imagine my surprise when I see that there is an UPGRADE link on the site after I join.

From things I’ve read and heard about, Plentyoffish.com uses really high tech filters to check every word you submit so if there’s anything that might be a trigger word, you lose your membership. Just remember not to say you’re going to Russia on holiday or that you wish you made more money at your job because not only will your profile not be approved, it will be tossed in the bin. They do try very hard to keep out the spammers but no matter how hard they try, the spammers and scammers will always be one step ahead of them. They have to be or they won’t earn any money. It’s certainly possible to meet someone through Plentyoffish.com but you don’t get any bells and whistles like chat, videochat, videos, blogs or games.

Perfectmatch.com

Perfectmatch.com. This review is going to be really really short. I went to Perfectmatch because one of my friends said she met her partner there and wanted me to review it. Well, I should have asked her for her login because all you can do is join. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes to fill out screen after screen of information — personality, lifestyle, you name it. Then you get to the last screen and you think.. now.. I’ll get to see what she liked so much. Nope. After you click to submit your last screen’s worth of personal information you get to a payment page. There is no link other than to buy. I even thought about it for a minute but then.. $59.99 for a month? Too pricey for me.

I’m guessing from the amount of detail you have to provide when joining that the site is similar to other “perfectly matched” sites like Chemistry.com and eHarmony.com. I hope to review those one day soon. A quick check of www.consumeraffairs.com for complaints about Perfectmatch.com showed 2 pages of member complaints.