POF : My Email to Plenty of Fish and IAC for poor service, overcharging and not honoring their own company policy

POF : My Email to Plenty of Fish and IAC for poor service, overcharging and not honoring their own company policy

This is the fifth time I am sending this message.  Apparently, the company’s « Contact Us » webform is not working or does not have the ability to support the length of this email.

Good Morning,

This is the third time contacting you since I became a member 19 hours ago, and purchased my membership 18 hours ago.  As mentioned in my first message, I am very unhappy with this service.  

I have had multiple issues, within the first several hour:

First, I upload a picture with text… like many other have.  The picture gets deleted and I get a message from POF.  Other people have uploaded images similar.  I’ve encountered several many times.  Not sure why mine was different, but it did violate the Terms of Usage, so I am fine with that.  I was notified, and it was just a picture.  

Second, I write a specific in-depth description about me and what I am looking for;  A good description that took time to think up.  I included my phone number.  It gets deleted without anybody contacting me or informing me that it needed to change.  No notice was given, and no opportunity to make changes was given.  I understand that might have been against the terms of usage.  I didn’t read the entire 28 pages at that time, but I do believe I should have been given the opportunity to make changes before it got deleted and I have to start over from scratch.  

Thirdly, my Conversation Starters were deleted by POF.  The conversation starters did not violate any rules provided on your website or in your 28 page Terms of Usage.  Yes, by now I have read them.  The conversation starters were clever, witty, thought provoking, and easy to respond to.  It took a while to come up with something I thought would generate results.  I don’t know why they were deleted.  They shouldn’t have been deleted, and I was not notified that they were going to be deleted, or that they were deleted.  I at least would like to know why they were deleted, because they did not violate any rules.

Fourth, I sent several messages.  I would get the message that it was sent.  I would then look at my sent folder, and they would not be listed.  Now it is getting ridiculous.  Everything seems to be getting deleted, and I am not getting any explanation.  I do not believe any of the messages that I sent violated any rules, and I can’t find anything that says they did.  I do not think these were deleted, I think this may have been a bug on your website.  Frustrating.  I can’t expect every app or website not to have bugs, but as you can imagine, this is very frustrating, and I have to write messages again.  This time I am at least smart enough to copy and paste my messages.  Maybe I should be writing 1 or 2 liners.  I don’t know.  This is a dating app and website, and I want to be able to address my wants, expectations, describe myself, and add something to spark a conversation.  Not exactly a message that takes 30 seconds to come up with.  I don’t like having to repeat that for multiple messages.

Fifth, I paid over $70 for an upgraded membership.  The free membership allows many features.  I appreciate that.  I expect that the paid upgraded version of a good service that offers most features for free would provide me with all features.  I was wrong obviously.  Maybe I should have researched more before upgrading, but I was not expecting most of the features to be added expenses on top of the $70+ annual subscription.  I have to purchase tokens in addition to my paid membership to enjoy all the features. Tokens that I would have to continue purchasing throughout my paid membership as I use them.  This is quite absurd that I just paid a significant amount of money for a service that offers most features for free, and yet I don’t have access to most premium features without paying more.

Sixth, I finally contact customer service for a refund 5 hours after joining.  Obviously I am quite upset.  The dating app/website and service is inconvenient, costly, buggy, deletes content, and not only is extremely pricey given the perpetual purchases required to use the premium services in addition to already purchasing the upgraded service.  Let me just emphasize, that this is only 5 hours after subscribing.  I then get a response from customer service saying that POF doesn’t offer refunds and all purchases are final.  This is incorrect per your advertising and terms of usage.  

The Plenty of Fish Terms of Usage state that I have 3 days after joining to cancel.  I haven’t cancelled yet.  I requested to cancel, and requested a refund.  I assure you I will cancel within the 3 days, and will dispute the charges with my credit card company, since POF doesn’t honor its refund policy, however, I shouldn’t need to do that.  POF should follow consumer law and honor their terms of usage and refund policy (under section 8).

Please cancel my subscription and provide a full refund.  If you can not do so, please have a manager contact me at <contact info> to explain why the company refuses to honor its policies.  I will be contacting corporate tomorrow regarding the trouble I’ve had with the service.  I’d like to be able to say good things about the second customer service representative that resolved my issue.

I appreciate your time to read and address this issue.  I hope that I don’t have to continue to spend additional time attending to this.   Thank you.

Sincerely,

C. Eric Barnes

<contact info>

P.S.  I did not address the previous representative lack of addressing all of my concerns.  I hope I will not need to.  I respect the job of a customer service representative, as I have done similar work in the past.  I do not want to have any negative effect on any individual doing his or her job due to their employer’s incompetence.  Again, thank you for taking the time to read my long email and helping to resolve the matter.  

By. Living2xcess