London - After a month of the most miserable online dating experience imaginable, the phone call to cancel my subscription to Match.com was bound to be an unhappy one.
Although I steeled myself for the conversation, it was, as I had expected, difficult, descending into a long argument as I demanded my money back and they refused.
What I hadn’t expected was what happened next. I visited Match.com to see if they’d cancelled my subscription as I’d asked, only to find out my hitherto embarrassingly quiet dating site inbox had suddenly sprung into life.
In the past month, I’d had just six emails from men expressing interest in me. All except one, who was far too young for me, looked pretty shady. None were the eligible single professionals I’d hoped for.
Yet, in the few minutes I’d been on the phone to the company, three strikingly good-looking men had emailed me through the site. And they weren’t just handsome. When I clicked on their profiles, they were professional and eligible, too.
I’d joined Match at the end of May after being pestered to do so by friends. I’d been single for six months after breaking up with my boyfriend of three years. I’m 43 and really don’t want to go to bars or clubs any more, so I thought, why not?
I signed up deliberately for the shortest time possible - a month - at a cost of £44.99 (about R800), as I was sceptical and only wanted to give it a quick try.
I posted a detailed profile of myself and some up-to-date photographs, including one of me in a bikini.
That first day I had three emails from men, but none was suitable. I approached one man, who was fiftysomething and divorced, and we went on a date that came to nothing as he was a hard-line atheist and I’m a Christian. And that was it. So I decided to let my membership lapse - or so I thought.
A few days into July, I told a friend I’d cut my losses. She warned me that she’d had trouble trying to cancel her own subscription. She urged me to check mine, so I went online and was aghast to see my profile still up and running.
What I had thought was a one-off payment, was in fact a never-ending subscription: the small print of the “one month” offer states that it automatically renews every month unless I cancel 48 hours before.
I tried emailing Match and was sent a stock response detailing a deactivation procedure so long and complex I didn’t even think about attempting it.
At 9am sharp the next day, I rang the helpline. I confess I was furious and probably quite rude, but I felt swindled.
For nearly £90, I’d been on a grand total of one date and received no other offers from eligible men. I demanded that Match not only end my subscription, but also refund me the £44.99 they’d just taken for July.
A very abrupt girl told me in no uncertain terms that I could take them to court if I liked, but Match owed me nothing. We carried on arguing for about 20 minutes when suddenly, out of the blue, she simply put the phone down.
After all that, I still had no idea whether I had successfully cancelled or not. I checked the website, and that’s when I saw the messages from the nice-looking men, sent within ten minutes of each other.
One was a handsome Italian man in his early 40s, another an Irishman in his late 30s who had said: “Morning, gorgeous photo and great profile. How are you?”
This was more like it! I started firing off messages to my new admirers. I even thought about ringing back customer services to make sure they didn’t cancel my subscription after all. Then I thought: “Hang on a minute. Are these genuine Match users? Or is there some other reason for this sudden interest in me?”
Was it possible the site had done something to encourage men to contact me? If the site wanted to hook me back in, wasn’t this a brilliant way of doing it?
After all, the global online dating industry is worth £2-billion a year and sites are competing furiously for business. Despite my suspicions, I decided to take the two handsome men at their word.
For the next week, I engaged in what I can only describe as a game of cat and mouse as I tried to get my admirers to show up in the flesh. The Irishman and I emailed back and forth. He told me he was a sales director for an internet company. Finally, he suggested we meet for coffee and offered me his mobile number.
This all seemed promising. But the next day when I texted the number, I got no reply.
Meanwhile, I was also emailing the Italian. He said he imported food from Italy and lived down the road from me in South London. He offered his number, too, and when I texted he did reply.
Rather unnervingly, there were strange similarities between his messages and the Irishman’s. Both asked me to go on WhatsApp, an instant messaging app that daters like to use because it’s free.
Again, maybe I’m being paranoid, but when I looked back at the messages, I realised that a few hours after I told the Irishman I didn’t have WhatsApp, the Italian texted me to say: “You don’t have WhatsApp?” I hadn’t told him, so how did he know?
Four days later, the Irishman texted me. I asked him to confirm he was genuine, because I had received such a lot of interest since trying to cancel my subscription.
He didn’t reply and I never heard from him again. I suppose I probably sounded like a bit of a loony, so maybe he cut his losses and fled.
Meanwhile, I asked the Italian out repeatedly until he agreed to a date on a Monday night, but he added: ‘I warn you, don’t wear high heels because I’m a fetishist.’
What a strange thing to say before I’d even met him. Surely he’d have kept that to himself until after the first date? It felt like he was trying to turn me off him. Calling his bluff, I texted back: “Monday it is!”
But when Monday afternoon came, he texted to say he’d suddenly been called away on business. He asked me if I would like to Skype video call him instead of going on a date. What a cheek! No, I would not.
And that was that. Seven days after it started, all contact with good-looking men dried up and I was left with a vague feeling of having been toyed with.
Six more men emailed me before my account was closed down, but all were unsuitable.
So I rang the Match.com press office and put it to them that I’d had a miserable time and was curious about the spike in activity.
A spokesperson apologised for the difficulty I’d encountered in cancelling my account, saying: “We take all member feedback seriously and continually review our policies and processes to ensure they are as transparent and accessible as possible.”
Of the sudden interest in me when I tried to cancel, he insisted it was a coincidence and ruled out any possibility the men weren’t genuine.
“Match.com employs a team to review member profiles and monitor for any unusual behaviour or activity,” he told me. “We have looked into this case to confirm that both profiles are of genuine members.”
Fine, so I just got unlucky with two men who blew hot, then cold. Maybe every woman struggles to get a decent man to actually take them on a date, being forced to make do with a virtual meeting instead. How depressing.
But that still didn’t answer the question of why so many men had noticed me and got in touch minutes after my phone call.
Was it possible, I asked, that Match.com did something to make more men notice my profile at that moment? I saw that they were advertising a boost function, where you can pay £1.99 to have your profile seen by more members. Had they given me a free boost, perhaps, to help persuade me to stay?
The spokesperson didn’t give me a definitive answer. “We successfully create more matches by automatically increasing the amount of times members’ profiles are viewed.” Was that a yes?
It was all rather baffling. But I couldn’t shift the feeling that I had been played for a sucker.
In the end, I resigned myself to not knowing what the Italian and the Irishman were up to. Maybe they were never serious about a date. Maybe I put them off by asking for too many details.
Whatever the case, my subscription to Match.com has now been cancelled. My account was still active until the end of the month, and in that time, one lonely email pinged into my inbox from a forlorn-looking man asking me to go to his flat in Vauxhall.
For what, he didn’t say. But I can guess, and I won’t be going.
Daily Mail