Host: What is a dating service?
Gloria MacDonald: Another thing you may want to consider using is a dating service or a match making service. There are a whole variety of services and these are the services that you really need to look into carefully. I suggest you ask a service for references. Understand what the price ranges are. Dating services tend to range anywhere from $500 to believe it or not $250,000. So, a very broad range of services out there, you need to understand how many introductions you are going to get, is there a specific time period that your membership is good for, how does the service pre-qualify a man. You need to understand how personalized the service is.
For example, do you go to the office of the service and have an interview there? Do they come to your home and interview you in your home? Where did they interview men? Do they screen and qualify men any differently then they do with women? How did they do their matching? Is their matching computerized matching? If so, there is nothing wrong with that but the person who is matching you, have they met you and the person they are matching you with or is it just all done via computer? And there is no personal touch to it.
So, really important that you understand what you are going to be getting for your money. Also know what happens if they tell you about somebody and you decline the introduction. Very often, let us say, you bought a package of eight introductions and the service tells you about someone they have to introduce you to and you think, Gosh! That person just doesn’t sound like it’s a good fit for me at all.
Frequently, if you decline the introduction, it counts as one of your introductions that you have paid for. So, read the fine print and understand what your contract means and what it says. Ask those questions, ask for references.
Now, keep in mind they are going to only refer you to clients who they have been very successful with and clients that are happy with them and that makes sense but ask that client questions about what they learn through the experience, were there things they would have done differently, were there things they would have asked the service to do differently and make sure you talk to two or may be even three references.
One of the other things you really need to look at is how the contract is worded. Be really careful, read the fine print quite carefully. Lots of services you might buy a package of six introductions or eight introductions or 10 introductions and if they tell you about a person they have to introduce you to and you just don’t think its an appropriate fit and you decline that introduction, very often, that will still count as one of your six or eight or 10 introductions, even if you say, “No! That’s not a good match for me.”
So make sure you understand that in the contract. Ask the service what their success rate is. Now, before warned, a lot of the services will say that they have a 97% or 98% success rate and if they tell you that, all that means is that you bought a package of six introductions and they were successful because they gave you six introductions. It bears no resemblance to how many people did they actually find a life partner for, a spouse for, whatever how truly successful they were. So make sure you understand what they are saying their success rate is. 96%, 97%, 98% success rate is literally impossible.
Understand what they consider success to be. Ask them what their definition of success is and then ask them if they have people in your appropriate age range and find out how many people they have in your appropriate age range. I think the more questions you ask; this is not an insignificant investment. It can be quite a significant investment of money and your time but you really need to know what you are going to get for your money, and go out an interview with two or three different services in your city. And make sure you understand what the differences are between the services and really get a sense of who you are most comfortable with.
It’s a great way to meet people. It is probably one of the better ways to truly meet qualified people that are going to be most suitable for you but it is costly. Generally speaking, you have all higher level of personal comfort and security because anyone you are being introduced to, should have been very thoroughly screened by the company that’s doing the introduction.
So lots of good things about it; the downsides are that it is costly but the upsides are that you should be meeting quality people. They should be well screened; you should have a fairly high level of personal comfort and personal security.
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