POF : Never using PoF again
What an absolute piece of shit of a dating site. Yeah I know it’s free, but that’s not an excuse for how shitty and predatory the entire site is.
1. The chemistry test system is a total fucking joke. My top 3 best matches for the chemistry test are all women who didn’t take the chemistry test. After that there are a bunch of women who want children, which I specifically selected « does not want children » when making my profile. Almost everyone the site recommends for me wants children or has children.
2. The amount of spam bots are unbelievable. You have to expect some on dating sites, and I would expect more on free dating sites, since there is no risk of losing money when your bot gets banned. But holy shit. So many of them have the exact same copy and paste message. Why can PoF not just implement a filter where if an account messages a lot of people with the same message they would have their account shadow banned or reviewed?
3. It seems like there is no moderation on PoF. I had one person attempt to [blackmail](https://imgur.com/a/0JapqIj) me. They wanted to go over to Kik to message, because messaging on the PoF is a pain in the ass. After the few messages you see linked above I reported the scammer on PoF. The account was active for over a week before I stopped checking since it’s such a hassle to find people.
4. PoF hides who wants to meet you in an attempt to make you pay. Again yeah it’s a free service, but that’s pretty scummy. « Hey this person could be your future lover, either pay us money to talk to them, or try sifting through hundreds of profiles of bots until you find them yourself. »
5. Blocked users are still shown to me for some reason. I had one [lovely person](https://www.reddit.com/r/POF/comments/d64sdq/she_messaged_me_out_of_the_blue/) show up dozens of times after I blocked and reported her.
6. Every time my phone had a notification from the PoF app it was a spam bot account with the exception of one woman I was talking to. Sure I could change my notification settings so they don’t show up unless it’s a message, but then I would be choosing to ignore potential real matches because the site doesn’t do anything about the spam bots. Usually I would get a notification that someone liked me, I would look at their profile pic on the notification and see that they could be model. Then I would just swipe the notification away, because they were obviously another spam account.
I just deleted my profile, and won’t ever be using that site again. I’m sure PoF doesn’t give a shit, since I wasn’t paying for anything, and I also closed out the app using the overview button on my phone instead of closing the app normally since it will show you an ad that you have to close out of just to close out of the app. So they weren’t even getting ad revenue from me. The biggest problem is the amount of spam bots. I considered paying for their premium or whatever they call it, but why? So I would be able to find the people who liked me easier? 99% of the people who liked me were spam bot accounts. Almost everyone the site recommended to me didn’t share the same desires and values that I shared. Why would I want to pay for premium to interact with spammers, bots, and people who I wouldn’t want to date?
That’s my rant. I think I’m just going to give up on online dating in general and hope to bump into someone irl. Worst case scenario I’ll end up being that lonely guy with a bunch of dogs. I know some of you will give me shit for bitching about a free site, but it kills me how a site as widely known as PoF could do so much better with a little effort. Oh well it must be making the owner money in some way or another.
By. TurboTertle
I’ve paid for it before, more local people were showing up on the meet me thing so that was cool. I’d go to their page and they haven’t even logged in for over a year. Bots see that you’re an upgraded user so they blow you up even more. So I basically paid to see the real messages to real people get unread;deleted, read;deleted, or just read and ignored. I met someone great on there in 2011 but I don’t even think they had a single bot back then. Place sucks now.
POF used to be a wicked good site. I had the best dates off of it up until late 2016. Now it’s crap
Yeah it’s pretty shitty, I get multiple notifications from bot accounts per day, and they’ve been putting more effort into their profiles to make them look more realistic now too.
Better off going to another app tbh
I actually just checked out this subreddit to see if people were having the same problems I am, and I think this post just totally validated me. I started using the site again about two weeks ago for the first time in quite a while, and I’m genuinely starting to think that there aren’t any actual girls on POF in my area. I’ve seen about two dozen spam accounts that are pretty obvious, like they’ll just have « Hey, text me to learn more about me » with a California area code, which is funny to me because I live in Virginia. Then there’s been a few that look totally normal that when you message them, then instantly respond back telling you to text them, again at a California based number. My favorite so far was one « girl » who told me her name was Emma despite stating three times in her profile that its Catherine.
The site totally feels like that old Reddit joke « Everyone is a bot except for you. » Like you said, it’s amazing the lack of moderation on POF. I can understand an occasional bot getting through, but actual dozens? You’d think they would be a bit more stringent, especially given that you have to pay extra for all the functions.
Why did it take you so long to realize this? Took me 2 years before I just deleted everything. Wish I had realized after the first month. I even paid for the account. Waste of time. I deleted everything this past summer.
Some ppl are real. Usually the girls that are 2x my size. Fml.
I seem to be having decent luck on there. Got a couple numbers in the past few days. The 500 messages from bots are annoying but they are easy to spot.
the recent changes came years too late. the spam bots were much worse before the update, they just started coming back.
doesn’t help that so many girls use « hey there » as a first message. because the bots use it as well, respond and it triggers a chain of emails.
if you’re getting links after the first message its a scam. don’t click on them.
they used to moderate at one time but that seems to have gone away. now its more taken care of by a bot. which deletes your account, and there’s waysfor people to abuse that. someone can get you banned simply by blocking you. unblock send message then block again.
I’ve gotten sent dick picks and gotten banned after responding.
pof is garbage, their updates are way too late it’ll be back to swipe porn in no time
Just leave. I did and it was a good decision.
The bots are just straight up bullshit.