eHarmony Falls Flat

So Sophie tries for one last time to explain to her that she feels that their matching system is flawed; it’s broken maybe. Charlotte explains that something on Sophie’s questionnaire deemed them worthy of a match. At this point Sophie isn’t thinking very highly of herself.

Vulnerable and frustrated, Sophie asks for the supervisor. After fifteen minutes of hold music, Alan comes on the line. “Let me take a look at your account here, ma’am” he says boldly with this Texan drawl.

Sophie repeats much of the same arguments to Alan. “I’m not happy with the service,” she pleads. “I have not gotten regular matches since the initial batch in the first week and the ones I do get are entirely mismatched. You promised compatibility but are delivering shy of mediocrity.” Alan is upholding his end of the conversation but inserting the obligatory “right, right” in between her complaints.

“We are America’s number one trusted relationship service, ma’am,” he says.

“Yes I know your tagline,” Sophie answers. “But you promised me a service and eHarmony is not holding up to their end of the relationship. I want to break up.”

Alan refuses a refund and instead encourages Sophie to stay with the service for the entire three months. “It only takes one person to be the love of your life, ma’am. Only one of the matches needs to be Mr. Right.”

“But I’m not even getting Mr. Maybe Rights.”

Alan explains that in the compatibility questionnaire, you get to choose which types of things are important to you and how important they are—very, somewhat, or not at all. “Maybe you chose too many things as important to you,” Alan suggests. Perhaps you should go back through your profile and change what’s important to you. But be careful,” he forewarns. “You could get upwards of 300 or 400 matches!”

“Great news,” Sophie says, optimistically. “So basically in order to find more matches for me out of your twenty million users, you’re suggesting that I go back and change what’s important to me?”

“I can do it on my end,” Alan says excitedly. “We can regenerate your matches.”

“No thanks, Sophie snaps. “I can change my settings by myself.”

“Thank you for calling eHarmony. Have a great day!” Alan, the matchmaker, cheerfully says.

Alan at eHarmony, helping people find their soul mates one call (to the secret customer contact number) at a time.

So Sophie tries to change what’s important to her. She goes into her profile and clicks “not important at all” on every one of eHarmony’s categories. She clicks “Find New Matches.”
 
Five new matches.

Essentially Sophie gave up everything that was important to her on eHarmony’s selection criteria to yield five new matches. Fiddler on the Roof’s Yenta the Matchmaker would not be proud.

Sophie begins the click through process for the new five. Three of the matches are Hindu since the religion element is no longer important. One of the men is a Christian high school math teacher who stresses that he never drinks or smokes; party girls should look elsewhere.

So Party Girl Sophie clicks open one last match—John.

John’s profile doesn’t have a photo. In his profile, he lists his occupation as “gggggggg,” his passion is “ddddddd” and most influential in his life is “kkkkkk.” He does make it a point to fill one thing out—his life skills. The first skill he lists is “using humor to make his friends laugh.”

So Sophie laughs just long enough to Control + Alt + Delete, restarting her computer and her dating approach.