11. Quality Criteria for Dating Sites | Consonance (Gleichklang)

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General Quality Criteria for Dating Sites | Consonance (Gleichklang)

Using a relatively small number of criteria, you can quickly assess the quality of a dating platform. Quality is defined here as the likelihood that you will meet people with genuine relationship interest in order to build a romantic partnership with them, without being exploited, deceived, or defrauded by the provider or other users.

These criteria apply across all different dating platforms, including dating apps, matchmaking services, and dating sites.

However, matchmaking services are most likely to meet all or most of the quality criteria, since they focus on the search for long-term relationships and generally make more effort to attract only those individuals who are genuinely seeking a long-term relationship. Nevertheless, there are quality differences among different dating apps and dating sites that are worth paying attention to.

Cost as a Quality Feature

Who doesn’t enjoy using a free service from time to time?

Many comparison portals rate it positively when a dating platform also offers a free trial or test access.

However, upon closer examination, this assessment is short-sighted. Precisely on the internet, where everything is quickly available, anonymous, and non-committal, charging a fee can separate the wheat from the chaff. This applies to online dating to an especially high degree:

• If the barrier to registration is low, it is readily taken advantage of. Countless unserious individuals sign up, many with multiple profiles. Men become women, and married people become singles. Some are only interested in voyeurism or playing games. The phenomenon is so widespread that the term “fake profile” has become established.

The background is that people tend to try out a free offer, even if their interest in the corresponding offer is not serious. In online dating, the many other motives that can lead to registration come into play, such as the desire for distraction from boredom, entertainment, self-affirmation, or the virtual satisfaction of sexual needs. There may also be curiosity about who is registered on the platform.

Of course, this can happen on all platforms, and no one is immune to it. However, the easier the registration, the higher the probability that individuals without actual relationship interest will sign up. The fee is a threshold that only those whose desire for a relationship is genuine are willing to cross.

Depending on the platform’s control and management, this can go so far that free portals become, to a large extent, collections of fake profiles:

• Profiles with incorrect information, multiple profiles of the same person, profiles that are no longer current and have not been deactivated, voyeurs, and photo collectors whose sole interest is to view the profiles of other participants.

Free portals are also a particularly inviting gateway for stalkers, fraudsters, and so-called love scammers. However, with these groups, charging a fee is not a guaranteed protection either, as they may pay with stolen credit card data. The topic of how you can protect yourself from love scammers in online partner search will be discussed in more detail later.

However, users of free portals should not be generally accused of providing false information or acting fraudulently. Especially on dating apps, millions of people move around with genuine interest in getting to know others. However, this interest rarely refers to a committed relationship, or at least this desire is not the primary focus. Accordingly, many profiles are genuine, but free portals are simply more likely to contain individuals who are not interested in a lasting relationship but rather in online entertainment, chatting, flirting, or virtual sex. Of course, there are also users looking for sexual encounters in the non-virtual world or indeed for a romantic partnership.

In principle, there is nothing wrong with maintaining virtual contacts and satisfying fantasies online, even if this can lead to risks such as addictive behavior and alienation from one’s real environment.

However, such purely virtual chats are bitter for those who are genuinely looking for a serious partnership. They invest energy and sometimes already emotions in an endeavor that is pointless from the outset. Ghosting is the term for the sudden and complete disappearance of a person from a (developing) relationship context. All contact options are deleted. Those affected react with irritation and astonishment, sometimes also with horror, despair, sadness, or humiliation.

The fundamental problem is that it is difficult within free platforms to distinguish between those who are interested in virtual fantasy gratification, flirting, or sex, and those who are looking for a lasting romantic partnership. It is a challenging endeavor to find suitable people in a sea of heterogeneous motives, unserious profiles, and fakes, even if they may indeed be out there.

The solution to the problem lies in choosing a paid provider. For only a few of the fakes and virtual chatters are willing to pay fees to participate in a dating site. Why would they? There are plenty of free platforms for that.

By the way, no portal gives you anything for free anyway:

• Completely free portals typically live off the large number of unserious members to generate advertising revenue through page visits. Some portals may also sell data.

• Many dating sites and matchmaking services offer you a largely useless free basic membership to entice you to purchase a significantly more expensive premium membership at a later date.

• With matchmaking services, you generally only have serious matching prospects with a premium membership. The free part is really just a bait offer to attract you to a paid premium membership.

This is different with dating apps, whose functions you can largely use for free.

No Use of Chat Moderators

A scheme in the gray area of online dating fraud is the use of so-called chat moderators:

• Chat moderators are paid employees who flirt with members of a platform but are not available for real encounters or relationships. They work with attractive fake profiles that are operated by different employees in shifts.

Anyone who contacts such a profile is therefore actually chatting with different people whose only interest is to maintain the chat in order to generate fees. Because on such portals, users are generally charged per message sent, so the operators’ interest is directed at constantly involving members in chats and motivating them to write further messages.

The corresponding chat moderators are often paid on a performance basis. Therefore, the interest of the chat moderators themselves is also directed at encouraging their chat partners to send more messages.

The chances on such portals with chat moderators are, of course, zero. However, many users are unaware of this and sometimes allow themselves to be drawn into chats with (apparently) the same people for months. Nadia Kailouli and David Diwiak made an impressive film on this topic titled “Undercover als Chatschreiberin: Falsche Flirts auf Dating-Plattformen” (Undercover as a Chat Writer: Fake Flirts on Dating Platforms), which you can watch on YouTube.

You can usually recognize portals with chat moderators by carefully reading the terms and conditions. The operators generally mention the use of chat moderators in the T&C to protect themselves against accusations of fraud. In fact, they are operating in a gray area, as they are fully aware that most of their users skip reading the T&C and believe they can form real contacts on these platforms.

By the way, the general recommendation is to take the time to read the T&C if you are interested in a dating platform. This way, you will also learn what happens to your data and whether it may be used or shared for advertising purposes.

Of course, even studying the T&C cannot provide complete protection. In the past, portals have become known that used chat moderators without disclosing this in their T&C. The line to fraud has clearly been crossed in such cases.

Fortunately, the payment methods can help you identify potentially unserious platforms:

Stay away from platforms where you have to pay for read or written messages. On such platforms, the operators have an obvious interest in increasing the number of messages, which increases the likelihood of resorting to unserious methods.

Also stay away from platforms where, immediately after free registration, other members supposedly show interest in you or send you messages, which you can only view or respond to if you opt for premium membership. It is unlikely that potential partners would write to you within such a short time. Obviously, the platform operator only wants to pressure you into booking the paid version.

If you receive further notifications in the following days about more and more interested parties and messages, or if they even threaten that messages will soon be deleted if you don’t pay, you should stay away from such a platform even more.

Fair Pricing Models

Fair pricing models are based on a fixed participation fee for a booked period. Within this period, you can use the platform without restrictions, without any additional costs being incurred.

Such time-based flat-rate models are more trustworthy because the platform operators are not already motivated by the payment model to deceive you. However, please do not expect a proportional refund of the fees if you cancel early. Most providers will refuse such a proportional refund.

Legally, this is disputed, and currently consumer protection organizations are trying to enforce such a refund claim. However, this is questionable in terms of content and could even further promote unserious payment models, advertising-based models, or the resale of data as a business model in the dating sector.

After all, dating platform operators invest considerable financial resources in creating the platform, its continuous development, and the advertising of members. Without these resources, operating the platform would not be possible.

At the moment someone becomes a member of such a platform, the operators have already done a great deal of preparatory work, which is compensated for by the flat-rate fee for a minimum duration of usage rights.

If it were now possible to have fees reimbursed proportionally – for example, after successful matching – providers would be forced to drastically increase their fees, resort to alternative pricing models (such as payment per message), or generate income through other means, such as advertising and data sharing.

The possibility of proportional reimbursement would also increase the risk that more individuals without relationship interest would sign up, spend some time on the platforms looking at profiles, flirting, or mass-contacting other members, only to cancel after a short time and have almost the entire fee refunded.

Also problematic and legally contested in this context is the refund of the participation fee within the 14-day revocation period. Consumer protection organizations also take a clear position on this and want to fight for a pro-rata refund of the fee for users of matchmaking services with at most minimal deductions – a position that has now been strengthened by the European Court of Justice.

The background is that some matchmaking services charge a so-called compensation for value, which can refer, for example, to the number of mutual messages that have already been exchanged during the usage period. As a result, many users, even when canceling within the 14-day revocation period, receive only a small portion of the fees paid back.

At first glance, the approach of the consumer protection organizations clearly serves consumer protection. However, a closer examination reveals a different picture:

• Matchmaking services want to protect their members from unserious intentions and place importance on ensuring that only individuals genuinely searching for a partner are on their platform. In contrast, matchmaking services do not want to serve the interests of individuals who are only interested in collecting photos or non-committal chats. Matchmaking services also strive to keep out individuals who harass other members or have fraudulent intentions.

• The fee is not a guaranteed protection against this. Nevertheless, individuals with unserious intentions will think twice about becoming a member of a platform for which they must pay fees that they will not get back.

• If it were now to become the standard – as the consumer protection organizations wish – that anyone could fully use a matchmaking service for 14 days and then have their fee essentially fully refunded, there would be a risk of online matchmaking services being flooded by individuals with non-relationship-related intentions.

Therefore, when choosing a provider, pay attention to fair pricing models where you pay a fee for a specified minimum period, and do not assume that you will receive a refund if you cancel early.

Seriousness of the Platform

The aspect of seriousness is closely related to the quality criterion just discussed, but there are additional aspects beyond that, so it can be considered a separate criterion despite the overlap.

With a serious provider for partner search, the focus is on matching people for serious romantic relationships. The platform ensures genuine and authentic profiles. It makes clear statements about member numbers, target groups, matching principles, and fees.

If a platform has free and paid offers, this should be immediately visible, including prices, terms, and the differences between the free and paid features. Interested individuals should not first be lured by a free offer only to then discover that almost nothing can be done with these free functions.

Serious platforms, of course, without exception refrain from using paid moderators who contact members as apparent interested parties.

A serious platform will also not only explain its matching principles in a comprehensible way but also offer advice for effective use of the platform. Exaggerations and excessive promises (contact guarantees, etc.) should not be found on the pages of serious providers.

A dating platform’s website should also do significantly more than try to get you to register immediately. The site should provide you with comprehensive information on all important aspects of partner search.

It is worth searching Google for a provider to better assess its seriousness. Reviews, for example on Google Maps or Trustpilot, can also make it easier for you to assess the platform and its seriousness.

It may also be helpful to look at assessments from specialized comparison sites for dating platforms. However, you should consider that the operators of these comparison sites are often affiliated with the platforms’ revenues and are therefore certainly not completely independent. A positive review on such comparison sites is probably best viewed as an indication of the platform’s economic success. Nevertheless, you can still get a fair amount of substantive information on such comparison sites.

However, you should not ignore the often high subjectivity and variability of consumer reviews – restaurant reviews are a good example of this. For as important and informative as studying reviews of a dating platform by former and current users may be, such reviews should be interpreted with caution and not overestimated.

This situation is exacerbated in partner search because many people approach online dating with overly high expectations and sometimes expect miracles from dating platforms. Moreover, consumer expectations are also shaped by the dating offers themselves. Dating apps, with their immediate and diverse contact options, have set new standards in terms of what users expect from dating platforms. Entertainment, liveliness, many suggestions, or even cost-free usage may thus become evaluation criteria, even though these may not have a favorable or may even have an unfavorable effect on the prospects of partner search.

Finally, there is also a human tendency to leave reviews especially when a service has been experienced as disappointing. Statements in such negative reviews may then be exaggerated. Especially with dating platforms, there may also be a tendency to blame the platform for the lack of success in one’s own partner search while overlooking one’s own contributions.

Despite all these weaknesses of consumer reviews, they can still provide indications, for example if negative reviews pile up based on understandable reasons or even fraudulent practices become apparent.

On some review sites, such as Trustpilot or Google Maps, platforms can also respond to reviews. Get an idea of whether these responses are individual and comprehensible or whether only generic boilerplate phrases are used to cover up or brush aside existing problems.

Therefore, do not choose the first dating platform you come across, but ensure that you only use serious platforms for your partner search. First inform yourself about a platform before you decide for or against participation.

Proven Is Worth It

The internet is fast-moving. The half-life of many online services is short. Most new online offerings soon go offline again. Sometimes offerings are even briefly trendy and forgotten tomorrow. This also applies to online dating. There are countless failed projects and only a few providers that have been around for many years and have demonstrably sufficient response and matching success.

New things are certainly often exciting and interesting, and of course, there is nothing wrong with trying a new platform. However, when it comes to a serious partner search, it is advisable to try the proven providers first or at least also. This is all the more true because new offerings often either have no users at all yet or fill their databases with spam and unserious profiles through free trial access.

To be able to survive long-term on the internet as a dating provider, sustainable concepts and a lot of work are required. Moreover, fraudulent providers quickly disappear from the market or at least change their name. The chances of partner search are therefore likely to be higher with a provider that has proven itself on the internet for years than with a provider that is just trying to enter the market.

Therefore, find out how long a particular platform has been in existence.

However, this recommendation is not set in stone. If a new platform corresponds to your ideas to an exceptionally high degree, it may well be worth a try.

Is Platform Size a Quality Feature?

Many people think that the more members a provider has, the better their matching chances. However, in this generality, this is a fallacy.

In fact, matching chances are primarily influenced by how likely it is to find a suitable person with a provider and to enter into further communication with them.

The better a matchmaking service succeeds, for example, in suggesting suitable people to each other and motivating them to actually get to know each other, the higher the matching chances.

The ability to suggest suitable partners depends primarily on the seriousness of the platform and its users, the compatibility of the participants with each other, and possibly also on the matching algorithm.

The number of members does, of course, still play a role insofar as suggestions can only be made if suitable people are actually present.

However, since it is usually only about getting to know one person, and it is enough if that person is actually met in the course of time, platforms with few members can also have high chances of success.

Conversely, platforms with many members can have low chances of success if they do not fit your own profile or if the compatibility cannot be recognized due to superficial profile representations or being overwhelmed with suggestions.

Moreover, the chance of being noticed by the other person decreases the more contact options there are to different people. On average, however, the number of contact options will also increase with the size of the platform. Therefore, an undesirable side effect may be that the suggestions are in strong competition with each other, and in this way, the value of a single suggestion drops significantly.

A simple thought experiment illustrates this consideration:

• Suppose you receive 500 suggestions, and all these 500 suggestions also receive 500 suggestions. Suppose also that you could potentially have a viable relationship with five of these people. How likely is it now that you will meet these people? Because you cannot know who the five suitable people are, and because they have the same problem, it resembles the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack, and the probability of mutual acquaintance is very low in this way.

If the number of users were a significant factor, almost everyone should already have found a partner. After all, so many people are registered on dating apps and the major matchmaking services that if success were solely dependent on the number of members, nothing should stand in the way of success.

The decisive criterion, however, is ultimately not the number of participants, but the question of whether there are people on a platform (or who will arrive in the course of time) who fit your own profile and are interested in a long-term relationship.

Therefore, when choosing the right provider, do not look primarily at the size, but at the seriousness of the platform and its members, the compatibility of the clientele there with your own profile, and the way people interact with each other on a platform.

The quality of contacts, not the quantity, is the decisive factor that will determine whether you meet suitable people or not.

Summary of Quality Criteria

In brief, you can use the following guidelines when choosing a dating platform:

• Choose a platform with a fair and transparent pricing model without hidden costs. Bear in mind that free often means that many less serious registrations occur.

• Read the terms and conditions and stay away from any platform that uses chat moderators (red flag!).

• Look closely at the providers’ websites and research them on Google and review portals. Choose providers where the emphasis is not on the number of members but on the seriousness of the partner search. Convince yourself of a provider’s seriousness, with established platforms being potentially more serious than platforms that have just opened.

• Also look at a platform’s advertising. Does a platform advertise with trite slogans, unserious promises, sexist images, the size of its own member database, or free participation? Does a platform advertise in tabloid media or on television on undemanding channels or during entertainment and reality shows full of platitudes and stereotypes? Or does a platform emphasize the seriousness of partner search, the need for patience, and the search for a truly suitable person? Does the advertising refrain from all sexist slogans and platitudes, convey a realistic picture of partner search, and is it placed in sophisticated media?

• Check whether you feel well represented with your peculiarities, attitudes, and convictions on a platform. The more strongly a platform’s public image is perceived by you as fitting your own profile, the more likely it is that you will meet people who fit you here. Also make sure that topics of gender and sexual diversity are adequately represented according to your situation. The same applies to acceptance and inclusivity regarding possible disabilities, illnesses, or other special physical or psychological characteristics.

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