I Am This Woman

Normally, I try to be all willowy and wonderful and positive on this blog. But sometimes, the tiger has to show her claws.

I just received a cheerful notification that my subscription in an online dating service “automatically renewed”!! Isn’t that GREAT?!

Except I canceled it at the end of my subscription period, de-selected auto-renew, hid my profile, turned off matching, and put a piece of black electrical tape on the port of my computer where that service comes in. Plus I give the Bronx cheer every time I see one of their ads on TV.

It’s the one that claims to be “scientific” but isn’t, and may really be racist, elitist, conformist and seeks to homogenize the gene pool. Plus BONUS “feature” they match you with inactive members or prospective members in order to get those cattle to sign up and pay their money, so that you can all NOT find true love or even a decent cup of coffee. That is, IF you are “acceptable.”

I could go on and on, but I won’t! Read the google hits on this (dis)service and think twice about any kind of relationship voodoo/pseudoscience. True love is found the old fashioned way – at church, the grocery store, in class, on the golf course, at parties, with friends, by chance.

Anyway, the quote from this page mirrors precisely what happened to me, though I received no solicitation phone calls… just automagically, it renewed!

> Without my knowledge, they changed the
> Account Setting on my eHarmony account
> to an auto-renew, which I had
> originally set to NOT auto-renew. I
> believe that, as a result of a phone
> solicitation from eHarmony, three
> months ago, when I extended my account
> from my initial trial period, that
> this triggered the auto-renew setting
> change. However, the phone
> representative for eHarmony did not
> inform me.
>
> A charge for $69.95 was placed on my
> bank account, which I am not
> contesting. I have completely canceled
> my account with eHarmony, which, in
> itself was a fiasco. The site is
> deliberately misleading and difficult
> to use, when attempting to cancel your
> account.

AND I AM DISPUTING. I’m contentious and litigious. I have a nationally renowned and board certified consumer fraud attorney ON SPEED DIAL. I eat fraud perpetrators for snack (surprisingly, they are only 2 WW points each!). Their home office is in California, and you’d better believe there are some really juicy consumer fraud statutes that will fatten up the class action. Californians are notoriously litigation- and legislation-happy to Protect The People.

If you insist on using online dating or any kind of “auto-renewing” subscription service, READ THE FINE PRINT and opt out of the automatic part right away. (Come to think of it, it took me about 10 months to get AOL to stop charging me too!) (And you know what? I have never had any issue with any kind of change to my account status/subscription with Netflix. Go, fight, win! NETFLIX!)

Even if I did find true love or a good boyfriend from their service, they should not be automatically renewing people who cancel or opt-out of auto-renew!

I will keep you smart cookies posted on the results.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 1:15 pm and is filed under advocacy, money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.