Dating Direct
Although DatingDirect is open to international members, its roots are in the United Kingdom, where it enjoys the status of one of the largest national dating services. They boast over 4 million active members. The site is very easy to navigate. Simply input which country you are in, who you are looking for and where, and your matches will appear. You can also specify your postal code if you want to find somebody who's reasonably close and not living the other side of the country. Profiles have pictures of a good size! No magnifying glass required. The picture is on the same page as the profile, with all of the details spelled-out underneath. You'll need to sign-up if you want to contact someone.
The profile details include occupation, smoking, drinking and eating habits as well as physical traits. There is a brief portion where they can comment, describe themselves further or explain who and what they are looking for. Many members don't specify exactly what type of person they are looking for, so you will probably see many people who don't seem very fussy who they meet! A table at the bottom points to what type of relationship they are looking for, what age and status of a potential mate. Relationships can be straight, gay or lesbian in nature. No adult content is allowed on the site, and all content is moderated before being published online.
A free basic membership is available, as well as a Premier membership for a monthly fee. Premier memberships have access to all of the contact features, whereas free memberships do not. You are able to browse the profiles and view pictures before you create a profile. Over three million member profiles worldwide listed and with pictures. Other popular UK dating services include MySingleFriend.com and Chatagogo, though both of these sites have fewer members to choose from.
DatingDirect was taken over early in 2007 by Meetic.com, and since that time there has been a number of negative comments about the changes (see below), particularly that contact forms and online support are not available on the site (or at least are not easily accessible), and that there does not appear to be a way of removing your profile and canceling subscription payments once you are registered.
The postal address for Dating Direct can be found here. If my opinion matters why are they not doing any thing to improve their service. With so many unhappy people on it, I am sure if they sorted the problems out it would be a good site.
Can someone help, i have paid my money but can not get onto the site, i have to be on the site to e-mail them of any problems.
DatingDirect.com has no possible means of contacting anyone. It's just a website and you cannot email, phone or get a message to anyone who runs it. I have replied to their standard emails 3 times asking them to delete my details and my profile as I am now in a relationship. They are ignored. I am very reluctant to part with money to an organization that you are unable to speak to or contact.
Thanks Dickie! I only think I like the idea of online dating then, straight away loose patience and think narrr. I look for the beloved unsubscribe button to cleanly finish the nonsense, and low and behold Dating Direct don't have one - there's a scam. This is singly the most important button to me on the whole site. Has any one ever thought about starting a dating agency for the likes of me who love unsubscribing from them.. Probably best not for it to be internet based?
I am absolutely disgusted at how difficult they make it to be able to contact Dating Direct and to delete my profile from their site. I guess the reason for that is so that they can continue to keep lots of active profiles and make as much money as possible. I am still trying to delete my profile from this site. Can anyone advise how this is done?
I have just found this review site as I was also getting very frustrated with not being able to cancel my account! I am surprised to find that so many other people have had the same problem. Tried e-mailing their customer service several times and just get an automated response which is no use atall. I was a member on DD before it changed and it was a good site then. Thanks to Dicky I have now cancelled my account..phew! Have tried Match.com who are very good and have a phone number so you can contact them directly with any problems. Good luck to everyone else out there...
Not being able to delete our profiles on this site has started to ruin the relationship we have, we did meet through the old site. I want to get in contact with Dating Direct to discuss this before we take it further!
This is a diabolical website. Notwithstanding all the previous comments about being unable to subscribe, it is overloaded with fake profiles placed there by romance scammers from Nigeria, so now you know where their millions of members are made up from. Believe me, I know, I had first hand experience and was left out of pocket, broken hearted and now suffering with depression. I know many more who have had the same experience there. My advice is to be very careful or better still.. avoid the site altogether.
They should put an unsubscribe button on the site on the homepage. Thanks a lot Dicky for the link to cancel. Websites like this should be banned. I joined, which was fine and then upgraded to premier plus or something and that was another £60. The old website was much clearer and concise. Now you get bamboozled with "someone has looked at you" every day in emails. I would recommend not joining this site - maybe try mysinglefriend.com.
Steer clear of this site! Once you have set up a profile it is almost impossible to remove it (thanks to Dicky, above, for the tip on how to remove - finally!). You will not find an unsubscribe button anywhere on the site. This is how the site manages to retain such a high number of subscribers.
Furthermore, the site is set up to automatically take money from your account once your membership lapses. You are not given the choice when you set up your membership. If you have already joined, visit your account details and remove the option for a payment to be taken automatically. It's a long-winded process but worth it. This is a highly unethical site that uses bad business practice and is probably breaking the law in several places.
I subscribed to Dating Direct today. Went for the one month option. Once I realised they'd automatically re-bill me the following month, I began looking for the option to cancel it (the rebilling). I then discovered that there is no such option, even though they give directions to it in their help section. After about 15 minutes of frustrating searching, I clicked on a box that I thought might take me to the desired section, but no... it got me billed instantly for another 6 months! I phoned my bank, but they couldn't stop the payments, although they did find me an address to write to. It is possible to contact them via the site as long as you're not signed in. They give you two options in a drop-down menu, neither to do with what I wanted.
There is a way to contact them but I think it has only recently appeared. Go into the "Help" section and the "My Active Pass" part. In blue there is a link for problems the FAQ does not answer. This takes you to a page you can send an email on.
I was a member and inadvertently deleted my membership number and couldn't remember my password and email address created specifically for Dating Direct and not used for any other purpose. I contacted them on their old site and was told that for security purposes they couldn't send me my membership number and that I should rejoin. As I only had around 15 days membership left, I rejoined and paid for a further 6 months. Since then they have continued to collect £9.99 per month for my old account which they know I cannot use! Now the site has changed there is no email address or anyway of contacting them to get my money back. Is is legal for them to have no way of conatacting them?
I have just had a similar problem, two payments in one month from my credit card, is there a whistle blower we can contact? I am going to cancel my credit card to prevent them doing this again. Isn't it illegal to not have customer service on such a large site?
I am so angry with datingdirect! Just as I was getting into the idea of online dating, I receive an email saying that my username was offensive so they had closed my account! The last time I checked the name elizabeth wasn't highly offensive or risque!
When I tried to contact them I found absolutely no email address anywhere! The FAQ section doesn't load on a mac. I have ended up feeling extremely frustrated and proven right that online dating isn't the way for me!
Everything seemed to be ok with the site until I tried to pay, then it refused all methods. As others have commented, there is no contact number or email and no link on the questions page so as a last resort, I altered my message on my profile to ask if anyone else had this problem and, guess what, they have thrown me out!! Don't they want my money? How strange for such a huge organisation, taking enormous amounts of money (or should be) to have no point of contact. Very dodgy I say.
Thanks for the link above will be using it immediately to cancel my membership - agree with all comments this site is a scam and while I used to reccommend it I now warn people about it! I have just joined mysinglefriend.com so much better and really good value.
Thank you so much Dicky, someone just registered an account using my email address and as there's no way of contacting anyone to rectify or report it to, I've been searching for a way to delete the account.
You're a star!
For everyone who wants to delete their account, here's how!
Log into your account and then paste this link into your browser
http://www.datingdirect.com/myaccount/myunsubscription.php
Hope that has helped you out!
Was once an excellent site. Now steer well clear. You cannot leave once joined. You cannot contact them.