Catholic Match - Dating Site Review

My recommendation is file a complaint with the BBB and Attorney General's Office.

I was a paying customer for 2 years. I was booted off unexpectedly for what I perceive as extremely "bogus" and "false" complaints against me. The site owner would not listen to my side of the story and let me back on the site. In my opinion, it was the worst customer service experience that I have ever been a part of in my entire life. I did business with the website for 2 years, and they were EXCEPTIONALLY rude and disrespectful to me as a paying customer. When I finally talked to the owner on the phone, he was very "self-righteous" and talked down to me (again, this is the way that he treated me after giving him 2 years of business!!!!!)

I would highly recommend NOT joining this site as I feel they "stabbed me in the back" with the way that they treated me. I am very angry about this and have voiced my opinion of the way that they have treated me to several other people. It's not right or worth it! Again, hands down the worst customer service that I have ever dealt with in my entire life!

@Evelyn Aside from what you stated, a lot of women are quite rude. I'm a chivalrous guy and cannot tolerate rudeness. Sad thing, when you speak out, then you're the bad guy. And it's supposed to be a Catholic site, but it's okay to support abortion or premarital sex! Go figure! Good thing I signed up for only 1 month.

Horrible experience. Beware of joining. The forums are horrible. Angry, bitter, single people. Administration is worse. They will automatically charge your credit card when your membership is up unless you go an extra step and put the membership on manual renew. (Deceptive practice). They will allow long term members to gang up on other members. If you complain about it, they will ban YOU, not the problem members. Brian, the owner, occasionally posts in the forums and is rude and disrespectful to members. Any constructive criticism of the site is met with him acting rudely and telling you to leave the site if you aren't happy. Worst online experience of my life. The customer service is non-existent because they feel they are the biggest Catholic dating site around and it isn't necessary to satisfy customers any longer.

I was really surprised to see some of the negative comments posted here. Like the other poster said you can use the site for just about $10 a month which is much cheaper than Match.com or eHarmony, plus on those site you don't know if the person is actually Catholic or was just born Catholic. There have been times when I find more possibilities than others, when I am not finding as many Matches I just look outside of my area. I have met some great guys this way even though I have not found my spouse yet. I also love the forums and community it is a great way to get to chat with other single who want to live their faith. I am not sure if I will meet my spouse online but I am hopeful CatholicMatch will help me one way or another.

If you want to use this as a dating site, my advice is to pay the **minimum** membership period, use it heavily and then bail. Being a long time user means that you are subject to running afoul of the monitors or admins or whatever they are called. They seem to think nothing of suspending or cancelling your service for trivial and arbitrary-judged "violations" of their TOS. They seem to think that they are running a grade school and that they customers are children. Don't trust them with too much of your money.

Catholicmatch.com was a major disappointment to me. This site has extremely restrictive policies which in my opinion are very deceptive. You can only send and receive messages if you pay to get a full account. If you sign up for a free account, you can't send messages or reply to messages, so although you have a profile on there, for all essential purposes it's meaningless to full members because you can't be contacted.

So you pay to sign up because you see lots of profiles in their area, thinking they are people you can contact. Unfortunately, once they have your money, you realize they are just free accounts and there is no way to contact them, meaning there are actually far fewer people who can be contacted than you'd originally thought. That just seems wrong to me.

To make matters worse, I wanted to be considerate and let people know that because I signed up for a free account, I couldn't be contacted, but the site specifically says you aren't allowed to include that info in your profile! That means they know that they are tricking people and want to perpetuate it!

Then I decided that to be fair to other people, I'd just delete my profile, but there is no way to do that on the site! They really want to perpetuate this deception any way they can. Even if it's legal, I think it's unethical.
At least in my area, it also seems like most of the people on there aren't even that serious about their faith, disagreeing with lots of church teachings. Seriously, why bother joining a Catholic dating site if you're not that into your faith?

At the end of the day you'd be better off just using a free dating site like okcupid.com, plentyoffish.com or even Craigslist.org, just being sure to mention that you're looking for other serious Catholics.

It cost $75 for the first 6 months to join. It is only free to sign up, but to respond and send messages you have to pay. I joined, paid, and was very dissatisfied, partly because there were not a lot of members in my area, and I realize that is not CMs fault. The forum area, which is stressed as a way to meet people, is extremely clique-ish, and as a new person it was hard to join in on thread topics. There is a high female to male ratio, and most of the guys I was matched with were older gentlemen, and that’s Ok, but I had a 58-year-old man tell me he only wanted a virgin. I found out, in the forums, some of the people are married and/or in relationship, but still hang around to post in the forums, and I thought that was weird. Forum topics are good, ranging from religion to more personal things. Air in the forums is extremely conservative, and other opinions are not welcome. So if you didn’t vote for McCain, you’re in for a real treat. I’m not planning to renew my membership.