Ok - I tried this thing for a week now so this is hardly a comprehensive review.

My experience in the past included Match, Yahoo and a few free sites.

I do have plenty of experience meeting people and understanding the whole online dating process. eHarmony is great for people who don't want their photo publicly displayed and who dislike writing a creative profile. Since the steps for communication are automated, this is a good system for first time daters who aren't sure how things are supposed to work. I'm not overly impressed with their claims of matching via "dimensions" as that still seems to omit important criteria. Where eHarmony is really terrible are the profiles. They are ALL alike, full of cliché, essentially created by checking boxes, lot's of boilerplate, give very little substance other than photo quality to judge someone on. I've gotten to the point of where I instantly close: - anyone out of state - anyone without kids (I assume this to be anyone who doesn't mention kids as one of the "can't live without") (I'm sure as hell not matching with a childless 45 year old woman) - anyone without a photo - anyone whose profile doesn't mention some remotely interesting item that the person likes to do - if it's all boilerplate I close Since eHarmony only sends 7 matches per day -- on most days this means 4 or 5 people of my matches are instantly closed. Then in those instances where you communicate, the people take varying degrees of time to return a 4 question multiple choice survey.

eHarmony suggests giving them 2 weeks to reply. Personally I think if someone cannot fashion a reply in under a week they're either too stupid or otherwise not available to date (for whatever reason - no interest, already semi-involved, etc.). It's not as if these are take home essays -- it's multiple choice! Yes, people can be traveling or have other valid reasons - but I bet those are the minority. I still find Match to be the best in my area for variety of people. The profiles give you more than enough information to learn whether you might have something in common with them. Plenty of Fish was the worst. It's free and attracts all sorts - the majority of which do not appear to be serious in their pursuit. eHarmony wins points with me for being expensive -- which I think in turn produces people who are much more interested in actually dating. Only about 2 to 5% of the matches I've received seem to be on other dating sites. I'll be surprised if I meet one person from eHarmony.