The Truth About Online Dating Reviews

Finding the right dating platform with abundant selections nowadays can be challenging and time-consuming. That is why many look for an opinion or experiences of others through online dating reviews. After all, who else can provide a more honest opinion about the service than someone who has been using it?

Now let's start from the beginning.

We can distinguish the two most common types of reviews when getting feedback on a Dating Site or an App. 

- User reviews, where supposedly actual members of a dating site share their experience about using a dating site. Such reviews are often published as comments on more prominent review platforms like https://www.trustpilot.com/.

- Expert reviews, where the online websites editorial team, sometimes calling themself dating experts, share their judgment and personal opinion. Usually, reviewers are review website owners themself. Their valuation is often based on hands-on testing results, overview, analysis of a dating site, or financial remunerations they receive from a dating site. 

The primary issue is that reviews of dating sites and apps have become a part of their deceptive marketing strategies in multiple ways.

Many people writing user reviews about dating products work for the company that owns the dating site or an app. They get paid by the dating company to promote their service by writing good service reviews on specific independent review platforms. As you would expect, such reviewers don't have to register on the dating site they review.

Suppose a reviewer is a review site owner with a site that lists the top 5 or 10 dating service recommendations. In such cases, they select their promoted listing based on their relationship with a dating company, or simply put, which company is the best paying. More specifically, they receive financial remunerations through commissions for promoting a service when bringing new members to their site. 

As sad as it sounds, the glowing recommendation of a dating site is not necessarily based on experience but on their marketing efforts and the size of financial remunerations that the reviewer gets.

Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations states that businesses cannot conduct misleading actions which are likely to cause a consumer to make a different decision, which may include faking reviews or preventing people from leaving genuine negative reviews. Paid user reviews are illegal in most countries. And the penalties for violating consumer protection regulations are steep. However, it is difficult to prove and keep track of such activities, so the real violators rarely have to take responsibility for such crimes.

Some red flags could help you recognize a fake user review online:

• Short and vague review. Mentioning no precise details.
• Very generic review titles like "Good dating site" or "Great."
• Poor grammar and style. Often written by non-native English speakers.
• Tends to review little-known dating sites and mention their competitors. 

Additionally, check review publish dates. If a lot of the reviews were posted at the same time, the chances are that the dating company pushed some positive feedback through incentivization, especially if you see too many five-star reviews in one place.

If you follow the tips and still feel unsure about how valid the reviews are, well, then do some research about the dating site yourself. Check the company behind and their Terms and Conditions. Go through multiple online sources before you commit to becoming a full member and paying for the service.

Trustpilot provides a platform for people to review and share their experiences on a broad scope of products and services, helping others make better decisions.

Of course, no platform is fully protected from people manually entering fake reviews, but Trustpilot is one of the few combating a big part of it.

Trustpilot officially announced that it removed more than 2.7 million fake reviews from its site in 2021. Their customized fraud detection software automatically detects some suspicious reviews and removes fakes. Also, people can report fake reviews on the site manually. 

So when looking for information online, count on independent dating site reviews from established sources, like Trustpilot or our dating-pilot blog, which focuses only on dating providers and scam patterns in the online dating industry.