Susan, 39 of Ellis Grove, IL, I guess we’ll never know what might have been.

A few months ago, I signed up for EHarmony, for the same reasons anybody does: I’m single and not seeing anyone (something I’d like to change), and don’t really have any outlets to meet anyone.

Before I describe my experience so far, I need to explain the EHarmony process since most people won’t be familiar with it.

On Eharmony, you use a directed communication process where you receive a match, and if you are interested in the match, you send the match a series of multiple choice questions. If the match is interested in you, they reply to your questions and send their own questions. The next step is where you exchange a list of must haves/can’t stands. After that comes an exchange of short answer questions. The last step is open communication between you and your match, essentially mail messages using EHarmony’s message system. At any time, you can close the match if you are no longer interested, or you can just stop responding if you are either rude or if you aren’t really interested but don’t want to permanently close the match in case you can’t find anything better.

My experience so far hasn’t been very productive.

On EHarmony, I have only had two matches respond to my first round of questions, and as time has gone by, I have gotten less and less selective about sending the initial round of communication. One match got all the way to open communication before she decided their wasn’t any chemistry (which there wasn’t really, yet) and closed the match. The other match has been sitting at the “Waiting for her Must Haves/ Can’t Stands” phase since November 22nd.

I have also very recently had one match initiate the communications process herself, and that got all the way to open communication, where she sent me a message that she liked all my answers to her questions and was interested in communicating further with me, but she was using the free New Year’s weekend promotion from EHarmony, which was going to expire at the end of the day. She provided me her email address and asked me to contact her via email if I was also interested. I was interested, but didn’t have time to send her a well composed email at the time, and planned to do it the next day.

The next day when I logged back into EHarmony to get her email address from the message, I found that the match was closed because the user’s account was closed, and I could not view my past communication with the user because the user’s profile is no longer available, which is where her email address is, which sucks.

Hey, EHarmony, I am still a paying customer, why can’t I review my past communications with people who are no longer on the system? What if I want to review my answers and communication to help me answer and communicate better for the next match? What kind of free service is it if you erase it at the end of the free trial? Here’s a coupon for a free car wash, but on Monday, we’re going to come and throw a bucket of the muddy wash water on your car unless you pay us for the car wash. That’s not a trial, that’s a demonstration.