LONG VERSION:
I signed up with eHarmony for an online dating account and at the end of the sign up process was asked immediately to pay as a premium member. There really wasn't a free option because as a non-paying member you are restricted from being able to contact any other members, you cannot read messages other members send to you, and you cannot even see the photos/pictures of other members until you sign up to the premium experience...
Right off the bat I get landed on a large splash-screen page that states I have less than 23 hours to accept the "Offer" of 50% Savings. (and in much smaller tiny print below there is the caveat that the 50% off is only for the first 3 months of what is presumably going to be a long term contract/subscription).
I'm pitched the PremimPLUS plan, right front and center as eHarmony's default selection/choice for me and in large orange/red font it says that its just $22/ per month off the regular price of $45.90/month. Then in much smaller font it indicates that this discount is actually only valid for the first 3 months, and then the rest of the term (presumably the remainder of the rest of the 9 months) will be at full price... So I'm reasonably expecting that my first payment would only be $22 dollars for the first month and this was a good value and I wanted to give it a try.
So I select this plan and go forth with the payment process. Here is where the misrepresentation/deception and ultimately the fraud starts to happen...
First, it turns out there is actually no $22/month plan at all, not even for the first three months. The customer is only actually given the option of either paying the entire thing upfront at once, which ends up being over $550 dollars or alternatively the only other choice eHarmony offers is a payment plan that goes up to a maximum of spreading it out between 4 payments. Under this 4 payment plan, the total due on the date of sign up would be $128.44 USD immediately charged to the customers credit card, and 3 subsequent month payment(s) of $128.44 each.
This is misleading and deceptive marketing/advertising on the part of eHarmony which made it sound like you were only going to be paying $22/month for the first three months, when instead once they get you to click onto the payment page they immediately do the bait and switch whereby you are on the hook for a $128.44 that day and then 3 more monthly payments of $128.44 each...So what happened to the advertised deal of $22/month for the first three month??? In truth this was really $128.44 USD per month for the first three month with an initial sign up fee of another $128.44 USD...
What eHarmony doesn't even inform the user in fine print and what I had to find out later the hard way, is that the second charge of $128.44 happens much sooner than expected and in my case was no were near a month apart from the first charge of $128.44
What is happening is eHarmony charges you $128.44 on the spot under this plan right then and there, and then if you so happened to sign up close to the end of a month, they will immediately bill you the second payment of another $128.44 at the very start of the next month, so if you happened to sign up towards the end of the month (like I did) you will get hit with the second payment of another $128.44 merely days after you already paid the first payment...
I didn't know this was how eHarmony was going to bill me, I just assumed it would be a real month (approx 30 days) after they did the initial charge to when they would charge me again, so when I signed up with Privacy.com (disposable/customizable virtual credit card number service) I had dedicated a new virtual card specifically to the eharmony vendor and specified that the spending limit on that card would be limited to $130 per month, thinking that I would be covered and protected...
So having used eharmony for only about a week or so since I signed up in late January, on the first day of February I noticed a banner on the top of the eharmony page asking me to "Extend" my membership... I thought that was weird because I had just signed up for a 12-month plan so having been a new member for just a week, I figured it was a system glitch in eharmony and chalked it up to that and didn't think anything else of it...
Later that same day, the eharmony app suddenly logged me out of it forcibly while I was actively in the middle of using it. When I tried to log in again, a cryptic message said : "Your personal area has been barred" and the reasons ranged from a possible technicial problemm with their system to vague mentions of their terms of conditions to possible unacceptable photographs or complaints from other members, etc etc etc there was more than half a dozen possible reasons but eHarmony refused to narrow down nor specify the reason or cause of my sudden inability to access my account.
I don't think it was an issue with my profile description nor photos since those have to be manually approved by someone from eHarmony before they even go live in the first place, and I didn't send any messages to any members that would even be remotely misconstrued as violating any of the normal terms of services and even if I was falsesly flagged or it was an inadvertent mistake or accidental reporting, eHarmony never contacted me about anything, never gave my any notice or even the slightest indication that anything was wrong or that they had any concerns about anything at all... Furthermore, after I was apparently locked out of my eHarmony account, the company made zero effort to send me an email nor contact me in any way to give any official explaination as to what had happened or what went wrong nor even to confirm that they took action against my account not to mention to give a reason for why such action was taken and for what it was they alleged warranted the locking of my account. In fact it was only when I attempt to log back into my account that I was ever given any indication at all that anything was wrong. Even if eHarmony decided to terminate my service, they also made no effort to give me an appeal process for incorrect or mistaken terminations, and also offered me no refund not even a prorated refund for portions not used...
So here I was, one week after sign up, locked out of my new account, with no customer support. EHarmony won't even let me log back in to my account to contact support because apparently support asks for a secret code that you have to read back to them before they can provide you with email assistance, but there is no way to get that code if you are having trouble logging into your account in the first place. I call them on the phone and they refuse to tell me if its because of a technicial problem or any allegiation of violation of their terms of service, etc
Around this same time I had recieved an alert email from my virtual card company (Privacy.com) that says a new eHarmony charge attempt on my card for yet another $128.44 had been declined this time because I had set a limit on the usage of this virtual card to no more than $130 USD per month and this was the second attempt in just one week or so... so Privacy.com automatically blocked this second charge for me. So I'm putting two and two together and I think the reason or cause for eHarmony blocking my account may have been when they realized they couldn't bill me for the second payment they immediately terminated my account access without even warning me or so much as reaching out to me to make contact to let me know of the issue and advise me of an oppurtunity to make a correction or to provide alternative forms of payment or to add a second card on file etc etc etc...
So effectively, I paid $128.44 USD to eHarmony and had only one week access to their service.
On a monthly rate this effectively came out to be $513.76 per month! Typically when you sign up to a dating site and pay per month, they charge you a standard rate and then after that month if you no longer keep paying them they will reduce you to an unpaid membership, but as it turned out, for eHarmony I paid $128.44 upfront for what was supposed to be a $22/month service, and was only able to use it for a single week before eHarmony decided that even though I signed up in late January that the moment they attempted to charge me the second payment on February 1st (even though these two charges were only about a week apart) my account was locked and disabled merely a week after I first signed up and I wasn't even given the ability to use my account for the remainder of the month (30 days) which I had clearly already paid for in full for that portion! Therefore as I only got to use my account for a week and eHarmony did in fact charge my card successfully for $128.44, that comes out to be an effective rate/cost/price of $513.76 per month!
Yet eHarmony initially advertised this as $22/month... So you do the MATH..... I ended up paying over TWENTY-THREE times (23x)+ the rate/price/cost that was deceptively advertised!!! That is a steep price to learn the lesson that eHarmony is nothing but bait-and-switch fraud!
