total failure of OLD user interface changes

[Happy Lemming]

3 hours ago, nospam99 said:

FWIW I WANT to go manually look at it. ... the site staff does the matching and, in my experience, do a terrible job at it. I want to be empowered to select the OLD women I wish to contact...

The fact that they DON"T allow you to select the women you wish to contact should be a "deal breaker" for this service.  Maybe its time to "break up" with match...  Vote your dislike with your $$$$, let them know you why you are cancelling or not renewing your membership.

2 hours ago, nospam99 said:

 FWIW it has always been fine with me to get NO 'Daily Matches', 'Recommendations', 'Top Picks', label du jour.

Perhaps the "marketing" people don't want you to receive a "NO Daily matches".  If word got out that a lot of people were receiving multiple "NO match" days, then it would be difficult to market this service and collect the membership fees.  I imagine (in the eyes of a "marketing" person) bad matches where there are "deal breakers" is better than "No matches".  That puts the onus back on you... like you failed to entice that woman, as opposed to them not providing a match to begin with.

[max3732]

2 hours ago, Happy Lemming said:

The fact that they DON"T allow you to select the women you wish to contact should be a "deal breaker" for this service.  Maybe its time to "break up" with match...  Vote your dislike with your $$$$, let them know you why you are cancelling or not renewing your membership.

Perhaps the "marketing" people don't want you to receive a "NO Daily matches".  If word got out that a lot of people were receiving multiple "NO match" days, then it would be difficult to market this service and collect the membership fees.  I imagine (in the eyes of a "marketing" person) bad matches where there are "deal breakers" is better than "No matches".  That puts the onus back on you... like you failed to entice that woman, as opposed to them not providing a match to begin with.

I'm having all of the same issues and am very upset about it. Also I don't know if they're real or not, but I send out tons of messages and get nothing back. Since they changed the system I have 18 "likes", but they're from women not even close to what I'm seeking. So I don't think I'm going to renew. Where else can a guy go?

Tinder is sending me matches in other countries across the world since they have this "passport" feature for some reason. So even though I have my preferences set within 50 miles I've got to swipe through matches thousands of miles away. On top of that there's very few filters. 

On Bumble I haven't had a match in months.

Eharmony also no matches. POF and OkCupid same thing.

Hinge has been my best bet, but I'm not exactly overwhelmed with matches. 

[nospam99]

Today, a new level of bullshyt from OKCupid. They now require that you give them your phone number to allow you to send messages. FWIW, zoosk used to require your FB address. I guess with a 'move' to phones instead of computers for OLD, they think this is okay. It's not. No matter what they say, I'm not going to trust them with MY phone number.

[max3732]

55 minutes ago, nospam99 said:

Today, a new level of bullshyt from OKCupid. They now require that you give them your phone number to allow you to send messages. FWIW, zoosk used to require your FB address. I guess with a 'move' to phones instead of computers for OLD, they think this is okay. It's not. No matter what they say, I'm not going to trust them with MY phone number.

Zoosk requires Facebook? I don't even have a Facebook account. I think I made up a fake on for Bumble before. How has your experience with Zoosk been? That's something I've been thinking of trying

[Happy Lemming]

1 hour ago, nospam99 said:

I'm not going to trust them with MY phone number.

They'll probably sell your number to some company that will call you about purchasing an extended warranty for your car, and keep calling and calling and calling.

True story... My girlfriend was calling different companies for new car insurance and giving them her name and number to get a return call about a rate.  Shortly after that she started receiving calls about purchasing and financing a new car. And of course, the extended car warranty people called her, as well. 

Every company is looking for a quick buck and they'll have no problem selling your name & phone number to make it.

[nospam99]

@max3732. About zoosk .... in late '17, I was new to OLD. I tried several sites. At the time zoosk required that you pay to be able to send messages. For all I know, they still do. The kind of money we're talking about means nothing to me, so I paid. ONLY AFTER I paid, did zoosk tell me that, in addition to paying, I also had to provide personal information to 'verify' myself. There were probably other ways to verify, but the option I remember as LEAST intrusive was to provide a Facebook account. I typically, and in that case, do not provide any personal information to the sites, not even a Facebook account. When a woman responds to a contact and wants to date, I provide personal information TO HER. The email accounts (I have dozens) I use for OLD are just that, for OLD and nothing else. For zoosk, money lost, lesson learned.

Nevertheless I still have the zoosk account. I just can't use it to send messages. It's useful because a lot of the women I see on other sites also have zoosk accounts. I can often learn more about a woman I'm considering contacting by viewing her zoosk account.

I started my 'second dating life' in '17 with optimism and had about a year of apparent success meeting women to date via OLD. I was pretty much a cheerleader/fanboy for OLD here on LS. The next year+ has been pretty sparse. With that sparseness and the User Interface (UI) changes I've been describing in this topic, I'm seeing almost no continuing value left in OLD. Current exception: I just sent a message to a 'recommended' woman on Match who had given me a positive response about a year ago but said she was not interested in dating, in her words, 'at this time'. Since I have no dealbreakers for her and she 'pushes all my buttons' (mutual interests in dancing, hiking, skiing, and gardening), I thought it was worth another message. If she didn't have history with me, I'd have ignored her. So if women who (1) are superficially good matches (2) sounded positive but did not choose to meet me or date me (3) resurface after a year or more (4) as active users on Match (the only site which still has a marginally useful UI), I'll send them a message.

With OLD of limited value, I figure I'm going to have to continue trying to date with live social events. Unfortunately, with the virus lockdowns, live social events and places to have in person meetings (other than each other's homes) are not available.

[QuietRiot]

Not sure about the Covid 19 reaction, but I know with OK Cupid that when it went through its changes a few years ago, men were ticked off that they now can't send messages to women the old-fashioned way. That they both had to have a mutual "like" in order for contact to even be made. The site made changes to accommodate the women and shaft the men.

They did change the LOOK of POF, but you must be missing the right column...where you can change the parameters.

Edited May 19, 2020 by QuietRiot

[QuietRiot]

On 5/15/2020 at 5:32 PM, nospam99 said:

@max3732. About zoosk .... in late '17, I was new to OLD. I tried several sites. At the time zoosk required that you pay to be able to send messages. For all I know, they still do. The kind of money we're talking about means nothing to me, so I paid. ONLY AFTER I paid, did zoosk tell me that, in addition to paying, I also had to provide personal information to 'verify' myself. There were probably other ways to verify, but the option I remember as LEAST intrusive was to provide a Facebook account. I typically, and in that case, do not provide any personal information to the sites, not even a Facebook account. When a woman responds to a contact and wants to date, I provide personal information TO HER. The email accounts (I have dozens) I use for OLD are just that, for OLD and nothing else. For zoosk, money lost, lesson learned.

Nevertheless I still have the zoosk account. I just can't use it to send messages. It's useful because a lot of the women I see on other sites also have zoosk accounts. I can often learn more about a woman I'm considering contacting by viewing her zoosk account.

I started my 'second dating life' in '17 with optimism and had about a year of apparent success meeting women to date via OLD. I was pretty much a cheerleader/fanboy for OLD here on LS. The next year+ has been pretty sparse. With that sparseness and the User Interface (UI) changes I've been describing in this topic, I'm seeing almost no continuing value left in OLD. Current exception: I just sent a message to a 'recommended' woman on Match who had given me a positive response about a year ago but said she was not interested in dating, in her words, 'at this time'. Since I have no dealbreakers for her and she 'pushes all my buttons' (mutual interests in dancing, hiking, skiing, and gardening), I thought it was worth another message. If she didn't have history with me, I'd have ignored her. So if women who (1) are superficially good matches (2) sounded positive but did not choose to meet me or date me (3) resurface after a year or more (4) as active users on Match (the only site which still has a marginally useful UI), I'll send them a message.

With OLD of limited value, I figure I'm going to have to continue trying to date with live social events. Unfortunately, with the virus lockdowns, live social events and places to have in person meetings (other than each other's homes) are not available.

Well, there's this to consider.... dedicated sex buddies...

 

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by a LoveShack.org Moderator
Removed link to commercial site

[Cookiesandough]

Idk... I think that OkCupid change  helped both men and women because at least you know someone’s somewhat attracted to you before you send a message ...

[Erik30]

1 hour ago, Cookiesandough said:

Idk... I think that OkCupid change  helped both men and women because at least you know someone’s somewhat attracted to you before you send a message ...

That's true, but OkCupid is now basically just a crappy version of Tinder... I thought you could send one message to someone as an opener, but maybe they changed that? 

I always felt bad whenever a girl would send me a really nice message but I wasn't attracted to her, so I had no choice but to ignore her. (Cause you could only reply if you liked someone back)

Edited May 19, 2020 by Erik30

[Cookiesandough]

Honestly I feel bad too but I always just tell myself they just figure I haven’t swiped enough to get to their profile yet

Edited May 19, 2020 by Cookiesandough

[nospam99]

My topic, so I'm tacking an OLD 'war story' on. It's somewhat off topic but does relate a bit to the user interface (UI) changes. TL/DR warning.

I had let my match.com subscription run out because, with the UI changes, I can't get a good sense of whether I pass the filters of the women on the site. I received a couple of unsolicited messages from women. When you're not a subscriber, you can't read the incoming messages. I was going to let those messages go. But match presented a popup with a context that suggested that one of those unread messages was from a woman who passed my looks filter. To check that out, I signed up for one month just to be able to read the two messages. Match's pricing structure is that the per month cost gets lower, the longer the length of the subscription. But the total cost is higher, the longer the subscription. Since I just wanted to read two messages because of the popup, I signed up for one month - high per month cost, lowest possible total cost.

Well the popup was just subscription bait. Neither of the women who sent the messages was the one in the popup. I had no interest in either of them. Yet another lesson learned. At that point, I had a subscription, so I proceeded to use my ability to send my own messages and even got a few bites.

Fast forward to this morning. My subscription expires on Friday, at which time I will no longer be able to freely send messages or read those sent to me. Match sends 'recommendations' all the time, profiles of women that THEY, for some reason, think I'd be interested in meeting. One recommendation this morning was interesting enough that I was 'just about' to send the woman a message. But as I thought about what to say in the message, I considered that I'd have to explain about my subscription expiring and offer suggestions about how to keep in touch if she was interested in me. And as I considered, it hit me - too much OLD bullshyt. Not worth the trouble. The give and take of transitioning a OLD first contact even as far as meeting in person for the first time in the face of no subscription ain't happening.

So that's my latest war story. For me, OLD has become less useful as time passed. I did indeed meet a wonderful unicorn via OLD. But that was more than two years ago now. Since then, just ships bumping in the night. I've moved on to focusing on IRL attempts to find a partner. Unfortunately the covid lockdowns are making that super slow.

[QuietRiot]

43 minutes ago, nospam99 said:

My topic, so I'm tacking an OLD 'war story' on. It's somewhat off topic but does relate a bit to the user interface (UI) changes. TL/DR warning.

I had let my match.com subscription run out because, with the UI changes, I can't get a good sense of whether I pass the filters of the women on the site. I received a couple of unsolicited messages from women. When you're not a subscriber, you can't read the incoming messages. I was going to let those messages go. But match presented a popup with a context that suggested that one of those unread messages was from a woman who passed my looks filter. To check that out, I signed up for one month just to be able to read the two messages. Match's pricing structure is that the per month cost gets lower, the longer the length of the subscription. But the total cost is higher, the longer the subscription. Since I just wanted to read two messages because of the popup, I signed up for one month - high per month cost, lowest possible total cost.

Well the popup was just subscription bait. Neither of the women who sent the messages was the one in the popup. I had no interest in either of them. Yet another lesson learned. At that point, I had a subscription, so I proceeded to use my ability to send my own messages and even got a few bites.

Fast forward to this morning. My subscription expires on Friday, at which time I will no longer be able to freely send messages or read those sent to me. Match sends 'recommendations' all the time, profiles of women that THEY, for some reason, think I'd be interested in meeting. One recommendation this morning was interesting enough that I was 'just about' to send the woman a message. But as I thought about what to say in the message, I considered that I'd have to explain about my subscription expiring and offer suggestions about how to keep in touch if she was interested in me. And as I considered, it hit me - too much OLD bullshyt. Not worth the trouble. The give and take of transitioning a OLD first contact even as far as meeting in person for the first time in the face of no subscription ain't happening.

So that's my latest war story. For me, OLD has become less useful as time passed. I did indeed meet a wonderful unicorn via OLD. But that was more than two years ago now. Since then, just ships bumping in the night. I've moved on to focusing on IRL attempts to find a partner. Unfortunately the covid lockdowns are making that super slow.

Match had a class action lawsuit filed against them due to these very shady practices.  I signed up for Match.com last year...and you can only pretty much tell the women are paid subscribers by sorting them by their activity geen dot. And...there's really not that many of them in my area...after about a dozen, the rest of the pages of profiles are of likely inactive/non-paying subscribers.

[Weezy1973]

As frustrating as OLD can be, and after doing OLD for over a decade (my first OLD site was called Lavalife, not even sure it exists anymore), it is my firm belief that most people get frustrated with OLD because they’re doing it wrong.

In short, OLD is a numbers game, but people naturally don’t want to date that way. It wasn’t until I changed and accepted the numbers game nature of OLD that I had success. And by success I mean met my wife. 

[QuietRiot]

16 hours ago, Weezy1973 said:

As frustrating as OLD can be, and after doing OLD for over a decade (my first OLD site was called Lavalife, not even sure it exists anymore), it is my firm belief that most people get frustrated with OLD because they’re doing it wrong.

In short, OLD is a numbers game, but people naturally don’t want to date that way. It wasn’t until I changed and accepted the numbers game nature of OLD that I had success. And by success I mean met my wife. 

I do agree that it is a numbers game in the context that men just rapid fire copy-paste messages to women...are we aligned in that?  I find that doesn't even work. There is no "doing it wrong".

In about the 10 years I've been doing it, I think my only success I had with it was in my more earlier years where there wasn't too much choice back then.

I have found meeting women in public, organically to be more successful. Most of the women I dated didn't care much about looks and when I asked them if they ever done online dating...they said they tried it for a few days to a week, then realized how crappy it was and never logged back on again. Too many emails from weirdos. One stated she saw one from the site in real life that was talking to a tree in the park. lol

[Weezy1973]

On 6/2/2020 at 2:23 AM, QuietRiot said:

I do agree that it is a numbers game in the context that men just rapid fire copy-paste messages to women...are we aligned in that?  I find that doesn't even work. There is no "doing it wrong". 

Not really what I was referring to, but I agree that many men do just send rapid fire copy-paste messages.
 

What I mean is that most strangers won’t be compatible, therefore (if dating strangers) you have to meet a lot of people if you hope to find a match. 
 

This is different from dating people you already know, where by the time you actually get to dating, you know enough about the other person to know there’s mutual attraction and likely compatibility to move the relationship from platonic to romantic. The first date in these scenarios is the first step in a relationship whereas the first date when dating strangers is just a feeling out process to see if you want a second date to get to know the person better.

 

What people do wrong is they want to impose the process of dating somebody you already know to dating strangers. So what they want to do ideally is filter through the site for somebody who checks  all their superficial boxes, send a message,  which leads to a date. Have instant chemistry, and go onto live happily ever after.

That doesn’t work with OLD although many sites market themselves as if that is what happens.

Edited June 3, 2020 by Weezy1973

[max3732]

On 5/15/2020 at 5:32 PM, nospam99 said:

@max3732. About zoosk .... in late '17, I was new to OLD. I tried several sites. At the time zoosk required that you pay to be able to send messages. For all I know, they still do. The kind of money we're talking about means nothing to me, so I paid. ONLY AFTER I paid, did zoosk tell me that, in addition to paying, I also had to provide personal information to 'verify' myself. There were probably other ways to verify, but the option I remember as LEAST intrusive was to provide a Facebook account. I typically, and in that case, do not provide any personal information to the sites, not even a Facebook account. When a woman responds to a contact and wants to date, I provide personal information TO HER. The email accounts (I have dozens) I use for OLD are just that, for OLD and nothing else. For zoosk, money lost, lesson learned.

Nevertheless I still have the zoosk account. I just can't use it to send messages. It's useful because a lot of the women I see on other sites also have zoosk accounts. I can often learn more about a woman I'm considering contacting by viewing her zoosk account.

I started my 'second dating life' in '17 with optimism and had about a year of apparent success meeting women to date via OLD. I was pretty much a cheerleader/fanboy for OLD here on LS. The next year+ has been pretty sparse. With that sparseness and the User Interface (UI) changes I've been describing in this topic, I'm seeing almost no continuing value left in OLD. Current exception: I just sent a message to a 'recommended' woman on Match who had given me a positive response about a year ago but said she was not interested in dating, in her words, 'at this time'. Since I have no dealbreakers for her and she 'pushes all my buttons' (mutual interests in dancing, hiking, skiing, and gardening), I thought it was worth another message. If she didn't have history with me, I'd have ignored her. So if women who (1) are superficially good matches (2) sounded positive but did not choose to meet me or date me (3) resurface after a year or more (4) as active users on Match (the only site which still has a marginally useful UI), I'll send them a message.

With OLD of limited value, I figure I'm going to have to continue trying to date with live social events. Unfortunately, with the virus lockdowns, live social events and places to have in person meetings (other than each other's homes) are not available.

That's very valuable information. I see you do have to pay to send messages on Zoosk. If they require a Facebook account can I make a fake on just for the site? 

I've been so frustrated with Match and Eharmony. Just message after message ignored.

I just don't know how to meet women now

[max3732]

On 5/19/2020 at 6:47 AM, QuietRiot said:

Well, there's this to consider.... dedicated sex buddies...

 

 

?

[max3732]

On 6/1/2020 at 7:55 AM, QuietRiot said:

Match had a class action lawsuit filed against them due to these very shady practices.  I signed up for Match.com last year...and you can only pretty much tell the women are paid subscribers by sorting them by their activity geen dot. And...there's really not that many of them in my area...after about a dozen, the rest of the pages of profiles are of likely inactive/non-paying subscribers.

What's weird is that my Match subscription ran out and a few days before I get 2 matches that look interesting. I sent them messages with no response. So just before my subscription ran out I sent them something saying that my subscription is running out, but it seems like we're a good match so I'd love to hear from you and gave my email.

Then the day my subscription ran out I get a "like" from someone and of course its blurred so I have no idea who sent it. I was on the site for 3 years and only met a handful of people

Edited June 3, 2020 by max3732

[nospam99]

@max3732. My first year, met 2 on ourtime, one on OKC, 4 on PoF, 9 on Match. Second year, 3 total. Last 7 months, 2 total. Last 3 months (covid time AND with the UI changes that I started this topic to describe), zero. For me, OLD has become just about useless. Something to keep in perspective is that, at age 66 and with my desire to meet a woman who is going to be physically active with me, my dating pool is going to be a lot shallower than for guys 25-60.

[QuietRiot]

11 hours ago, nospam99 said:

@max3732. My first year, met 2 on ourtime, one on OKC, 4 on PoF, 9 on Match. Second year, 3 total. Last 7 months, 2 total. Last 3 months (covid time AND with the UI changes that I started this topic to describe), zero. For me, OLD has become just about useless. Something to keep in perspective is that, at age 66 and with my desire to meet a woman who is going to be physically active with me, my dating pool is going to be a lot shallower than for guys 25-60.

Need to move to Florida and move into some of these larger retirement communities, plenty to meet that way.

[Cookiesandough]

Anyone wish swipe apps had a ‘ maybe’ category? Pass and come back to you later? Or  is that just indecisive me. 

[chillii]

 

Actually the date site l used back when did. It had like , maybe , no thanks , add to favorites , or something like that from memory.  lf someone put you in their favorites it'd send you a little pop up your such n such's fav' .

Edited June 6, 2020 by chillii

[Weezy1973]

6 hours ago, Cookiesandough said:

Anyone wish swipe apps had a ‘ maybe’ category? Pass and come back to you later? Or  is that just indecisive me. 

If it’s a maybe make it a yes. You don’t know anything until you’ve actually met anyways...

[chillii]

 

l'd just look at my maybes more for while, finish figuring our what l thought, not into wasting my time. From memory l never did follow up on any in the end. You could un maybe them once you'd made up your mind.