How to lose your heart — not your money

Laura T. Coffey • Profile • E-mail

Dorothy Kelly knows she’s hard to match. It’s not that she’s unattractive; at 50, Kelly often gets asked whether she has modeled — or whether she’s the mother of her young granddaughter.

Kelly said she has had a hard time meeting the right man for different reasons: Some men think her 6-foot frame is too tall. Her scuba diving hobby is not widely shared in her hometown in the middle of Texas. And a few potential suitors may be turned off by the fact that she is a practicing Christian who loves to help the homeless.

“It’s just been difficult for me to meet someone who really fits me,” she said.

To remedy the situation, she decided to try a matchmaking service in the Austin area that bills itself as the place to go for highly personalized pairings. She was interviewed for hours about her likes, dislikes and desired qualities in a potential mate. She felt sure she’d be matched up with like-minded men who were serious about wanting to meet the right person — so sure that she paid the company $2,000 for the promise of 25 appropriate introductions.

Before she ponied up the cash, she asked the salesperson how many men in the company’s database met her basic criteria, and she was assured that 500 did. But in the seven months that passed after she signed the dating service contract, she only met with two men in person.

“It dashes your hopes for sure,” Kelly said. “They hardly called me with any matches at all.”

Ted Law, franchise owner for The Right One in Austin, the dating service Kelly used, acknowledged Kelly’s complaints but insisted her experience is the exception, not the rule.

“We dropped the ball big time with Dorothy,” Law said. “We did not take care of her. … Once this came to my attention, we said, ‘Let’s offer her a refund of some kind and see if we can make her happy, and if we can’t make her happy, we’ll refund all her money to her.’ ”

Law added that his company has restarted Kelly’s membership at no extra charge and is continuing to send her possible matches.

Kelly may have gotten some relief after speaking up about her complaints, but according to the Better Business Bureau, hundreds of dating-service customers across the country aren’t. BBB spokesman Steve Cox said consumer complaints about both online and brick-and-mortar dating services jumped 73 percent in 2006 over the previous year, reaching a total of 2,525 complaints. The complaint figures for 2007 are still being tallied, but he expects them to break yet another record.

“This industry is growing so fast, it’s just phenomenal — and so is the number of complaints,” Cox said. “Whether you pay thousands of dollars for a matchmaking service or $50 a month for an online membership, you need to know just what you’re getting into.”

If you’re using a dating service to find someone special — or if you’re considering doing so — the following tips can help you avoid feeling heartbroken because you spent too much.

1. Realize that you may not meet your match through a service. Cox of the Better Business Bureau noted that the average cost per person to use a matchmaking service is $5,000 — and some people spend as much as $10,000. That, of course, is a lot of money. “And consumers still come up with a complaint that says, ‘Hey, I wasn’t matched up with the right demographic,’ or, ‘I was expecting 10 dates and I got two,’ or, ‘It’s been months and I’m still waiting for my first date,’ ” Cox said, citing some of the more common complaints about matchmaking services. Other complaints tend to focus on shoddy customer service and high-pressure sales tactics. This is not to say that people don’t meet and fall in love through such services — because sometimes they do. But spending such a large sum of money does not guarantee that you’ll meet that perfect someone. Even Law of The Right One pointed that out. “When people spend $2,000, $3,000 or $4,000, they expect their knight in shining armor, but that’s not always realistic,” he said. “In our business, we could give them 10 great dates, but until they really meet somebody, we’re schmucks.” Law said the matchmaking services he runs boost people’s chances of success by weeding out less serious candidates. Before you shell out this kind of cash for such a service in your area, ask the following questions: How long will I have to wait before my first date? How long will it realistically take for me to be introduced to, say, 10 people? Are there situations where I might be placed back at “the end of the line,” as it were? Can I speak with other customers — both past customers and customers who just started using the service within the past couple of months? What kind of a refund policy exists if I’m not satisfied?

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