If I drink once a week I'll get more matches on eHarmony. That's what a customer rep told me on the phone when I wanted to cancel my subscription. Here's the story.
I was on eHarmony for four months. An email arrives in my inbox saying that my subscription has auto-renewed. What?! I don't remember auto-renewing at all. I looked to see if I got any warning emails about the auto-renewal. I did not. I called up eHarmony's toll-free customer service number at 1-800-673-3548.
A very nice eHarmony rep answered and I explained to her that my account auto-renewed, and this was news to me and I didn't want to auto-renew. Given their shocking auto-renewal procedure here, I figure this would be a common problem that people call about. And if you just ask them to not auto-renew, they will revoke the charge.
THIS IS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING.
The rep said, "I'm looking at your profile right now and I see you have answered the question of how often do you drink set to a few times a year. The majority of the users on eHarmony have this preference set to once a week.
If you change your drinking preference from a few times a year to once a week, you'll get more matches."
Being rather surprised by this piece of advice, I told her, "Thank you for that insight and your advice. But I would want to stay honest and not put down that i drink once a week. To say that on my profile would be dishonest, and i thought eharmony was about getting honest matches. I would just like to cancel my account please since I do not wish to auto-renew."
In her nice voice she told me that in the signup process that eHarmony boldly states that when I sign up, I'm set to auto-renewal, and that I would have to stay with that.
I do not remember the site telling me that when I signed up.
I told her that as I was honest before with telling her that i don't want to change my drinking preference to get more matches, I will be honest here and say I do not recall the bold message that i auto-renew, because when i signed up for four months, I had in my mind clearly set that I was going to try this just for four months and I was not going to renew again.
I went on my soapbox a bit and continued, "if eHarmony was holding to the honesty that they clearly promote themselves as, they would send a notification email a day before or a week before your account renews. I'm looking at my email now, and I don't see any such email. I believe you if you say the message is bold at the signup process. I honestly don't recall it. If I saw it, I would have turned that off.
And more, "If eHarmony wants to be truly honest, they would notify people a day or a week before they just auto-renew someone for three months."
She then gave me a discount and charged me for one month. She said that if I wish I could continue using the service for one more month.
To which I replied, "Thank you for the discount. As I've come here with the honest intention of not wanting to auto-renew or use the service anymore right now, I am sticking with that intention. It's nice that you offer me to continue to use the service. But I want to be true to what I'm saying and not use the service anymore for the moment."
She honored that and said she would send me a customer feedback. To which I told her that she was very nice given the parameters she had to work in. And that how she handled the situation was very professional and nice.
Now granted, I didn't tell her this, but I don't think eHarmony's policy of telling people to lie on their profile to get more matches is professional. It's clearly dishonest. It's a clear contradiction to what their brand is. But at least the customer rep was nice in delivering the dishonsety to me.
