The Relationship Company Doesn't Do What They Promise

None of the control of an online dating site and none of the features of a true match maker, plus it's VERY expensive. I paid $2400+ for the next-to-the-lowest level of service, or 12 matches.

During my interview with the company owner I went into great detail about what I was looking for and the trouble I was having in finding that kind of match in my area. My emphasis was along the lines of values, life experience, uniqueness. She assured me she knew exactly what I was looking for and that I'd probably be able to find it in her service.

But the process, I now know, precludes anything but the most generic matches: You're interviewed by the company owner and she fills out a profile card with all of the information she gleans about you in that interview. As it turns out, the card is merely distilled-down, amazingly generic information. (I didn't recognize myself when the card was later read back to me.) The card is then passed along to the "match maker" ...Who you won't ever meet even if you ask to! The "match maker" then matches up your card info with that of whoever else is in their service. When she finds a match for you, she sends the match info along to yet another person--the coordinator--who you may or may not ever meet in person. The coordinator, who it turns out is the only person with whom you'll have contact from then on (unless you pay for the highest level of service) then calls about the match and gives you nothing but the following information: Height, weight, religion, eye color, job title, hobbies, and "one thing they would like you to know about them." You don't see a picture, you don't ever get a feel for who the person really is, when you ask questions about the match the coordinator generally doesn't know the answers. The couple times I asked why I'd been matched with the particular fellow, I was told something like, "He's a really nice guy." But you're supposed to determine from that call whether you'd like to meet that person and have the match count toward the total number of matches you've paid for! Regardless, I could tell even from things like job title and hobbies that the match and I would likely have no interests or values in common.

No matter how much info I gave them on what I was looking for (including pics of men I've dated, descriptions of my family members, my profiles from dating websites, etc etc etc) they simply DID NOT GET IT. I kept repeating and repeating, in more and more detail, what I was looking for. The matches were ridiculously off-base. From the second laughably arbitrary match onward my friends were convinced I'd been screwed. A stranger on the street would have known they weren't good matches for me.

I asked for my money back, they only offered to downgrade me to a lower level of service for a partial refund and have the owner and match maker work with me personally. I took them up on the latter part of the offer but the matches remained ridiculously wrong. I'm in the third round of the complaint process with the Better Business Bureau; The Relationship Co is painting me as impossible to please.

I don't think there's any malice behind what they do, I just think it's a service designed and run by people who have no clue. They can't possibly make the kind of match they promised me when they run their business the way they do. So, unless your only criteria for a match are height, weight, eye color, hair color, job title, hobbies, and "one thing they would like you to know about them," don't waste your thousands of dollars on this company!!

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Wow, you paid $2,400 to to try and get a date. I would say at this point in your life you are better off investing in some cats and and a boat load of tissues to dry your eyes as you cry your lonely ass to sleep.