Member Comments on PARSHIP

@sara saint Whatever you do don't join the German branch. I wanted to delete my profile as the 3 months were coming to an end. When I went to delete it (on the last day before my subscription ran out), it stated I had to do that 7 days in advance. The first 3 months were about 131.00 GBP, but when they renewed my profile automatically they didn't charge me with the same choice of profile, but the most expensive 181.00 GBP! And the bill came from Utrecht (Netherlands), the site (administration) is in Germany and the info. Email is in Switzerland. I think that says it all about being a serious company.....and as for the blurred pictures so you cannot even see the person.... Whatever you do do not waste your time and most of all your money with this site ......Terrible!! Now my lawyer is taking care of it.

I took out a 3 months subscription and realised in a day or so that I had made a mistake and used it little thereafter. 2 weeks ago I received an email from Parship saying my profile was suspended because I hadn't used it for 8 weeks. So based on this, I assumed my account was closed and I could put it all down to a bad choice and never thought any more about it. However they deducted another 3 months from my CC last week even though THEY suspended my account because of inactivity a week earlier.

Despite many letters and calls to their office they insisted the payment they took was valid and that I had to cancel the subscription myself even though THEY had suspended my profile through inactivity. They offered me a 30% goodwill gesture as if it were my fault. I refused. I contacted my bank and they refunded my payment pending evidence from both sides. I will of course show them the "your account is suspended" email from Parship, so am confident of winning.

Avoid this company at all costs! People like this give the Internet a bad name. We can put poor websites down to our poor choice for using them, but there's no excusing immoral and unethical billing practices be the site great, or as in this case, POOR.

@Richard I quite agree with the remark about cancelling, it is very difficult and not obvious. The T&Cs say go to myprofile/data and settings but i have yet to find it (got 11 weeks left!!). It is expensive and quirky to use. I also joined Friends Reunited Dating at the same time, it is so simple to set no automatic renewal and IMHO I have had better contacts than with the more expensive Parship. I would not recommend Parship and also agree with Pauline's comment; the only transaction that was speedy and easy was them taking my money out. Be wary of joining - it isn't difficult to add a sensible link to allow auto renewal opt out but I guess Parship just want your money.

Initially I quite liked Parship, but was very quickly overloaded by contacts from completely the other end of the country and so would be unable to meet up with them, despite my settings stating I wanted relatively local contacts. Finding a work around to stop this was a pain.

When I did meet up with my contacts, they were all very good, however there were several others that I did not meet as they appeared way off the mark.

Despite not having many technical problems myself, most of those I was in contact with did have problems and found customer services to be very poor at getting things sorted.

However, overall, despite a few minor irritations, eg, site sometimes running slow and a couple of occasions when I was unable to gain access, I personally had a relatively good experience. And then my renewal came up...

I had a similar experience to Debbie above. I was not told how much it would cost and that the renewal would be significantly more than the original cost until I received an invoice email stating the transaction had already had gone through. They have an automatic renewal policy for subscriptions but they don't e-mail to say that it is about to expire. The cancellation policy (when you find it) is confusing and you have to cancel the day before your last day of membership rather than the last day as you might intuitively expect.

Before the auto renewal I had been thinking I would probably extend to a 3 month membership but wanted to delay my renewal till after I came back from a holiday during which time I could not use the service. I emailed them on the last day of my membership to see if this could be done, however each of the responses back from their customer services department were quite frankly insulting as they simply copied and pasted multiple irrelevant terms sections from the site rather than dealing with my actual enquiry. I was not originally looking to cancel with them but my experience with their customer service department has meant that I now have, and in the process have had to accept the loss of a month’s paid membership which I could not use.

It was very apparent that they are quick and efficient when it comes to getting your money, but they do not care at all about their customers. It is a shame - if they sorted out their various technical problems and gave a monkey’s about their customers, then they could make this into quite a good site, but I have left them now and will not be going back.

Parship is a difficult site to navigate, and does not let you automatically see your intended 'date', which strikes me as monumentally counter-intuitive. Also, you cannot find people near you - just people in a geographical 'region', which may be hundreds of miles across (e.g.: the South-West, or Scotland..!). Their billing system means that you may end up paying far more than you intended, and their 'customer support' is a joke. Parship is a site to be avoided.

I joined up with Parship three months ago, and thought I would get a 25% discount which didn't happen. Didn't get told amount of money I would be parting with until received invoice and transaction already had gone through. Parship has an automatic renewal policy for subscriptions but they don't e-mail you or contact you to say that this is due to expire. Their cancellation policy (when you find it) is very confusing and you have to submit about three different pieces of information regarding your account so that they can identify who you are. I am currently disputing the amount they have invoiced me. Be warned.

This is one of the most useless dating websites ever. For 100% certain at least the last three people who contacted me were totally fraudulent. I traced their IP addresses to Ghana. In fact two of them had the same IP address. One of them even used a mobile with a Ghanaian number. He claimed to be a jewellery designer from Manchester who grew up in Belgium or Italy depending on which one it was. I have e-mailed them several times to report this and got no reply. Next time I’ll try German to see of that gets a better response. Do not join this agency.

I joined Parship for 1 month and was approached by several people who were clearly scamming (1 asked me to phone a high-price 07031 mobile) and was also sent 2 different profiles with the same photo on! Now Parship seems to be refusing to cancel my membership and have just taken money from my credit card again. Beware!

I agree with Pauline, Parship.co.uk is one of the worst sites around (along with eHarmony apparently). I'm currently a member with Parship, signed up for 3-months because it looked and sounded good. Bravo on their marketing team, who use media, i.e. trusted newspapers, TV advertising etc to market their company. It’s been about 2 weeks now and so far haven't had any new recommended matches than the ones displayed for me when I first joined. And the blurry pictures stay blurry until the other user decides to release it for your viewing, really doesn't help, as you can't see who you're talking to. I'm basically wasting my £57 for a 3-month membership. What’s worse is that I checked my bank statement and I’ve been charged twice for the subscription. I had started to use my credit card to pay but then realised they had this thing called "One click" I think it’s called, which is a faster way to pay really, after keying in my info, it took me back to the same page as the credit card. Thinking I had to go onto that page to get to the completed payment stage, I clicked to register. I thought it odd that I got 2 emails one from one click and another from Parship... then I checked my bank account and yup, I've been charged twice.

They're only form of contact is via e-mail form and I have yet to hear from them regarding my partial refund for not giving me the service that's suppose to be there, and refunding the extra charge they took out.
Beware of this site!

My tip would be to do a bit of research and digging before joining any dating site, and be sure to take note of what other members of the site have said and not the marketing people giving glowing reviews.

I would not recommend Parship. I initially found the site difficult to navigate, so wrote asking for help three times, there was no response, this was within the eight day cooling-off period. As I was unable to contact any members on the site, I decided to apply for a refund. There's no easy explanation on how to get a refund if you wish to cancel your subscription before eight days, even though I wrote asking them how to do this, again no reply, so I forfeited my £20 subscription for no service whatsoever. A waste of money. The only transaction that was speedy was them taking my money out.