Oh man, do I ever regret my experiences with Great Expectations. MadTV made a lot of fun of GE, and with good reason. GE is expensive, cheesy, and screams to be made fun of. I have also found them to be sneaky, underhanded, and manipulative. Here are my experiences.
I was looking through the web for Christian dating sites, and many came up. But each time I'd click the link it would take me to a site called Great Expectations. Ok, I thought, maybe I'll give them a try. I called and set up an appointment with one of their representatives.
The appointment was for one night after work, and I went to their offices alone. There I met a man who applied a lot of high-pressure sales techniques to me. He made it sound like their services was exactly what I needed, and if I followed through on their system, it was nearly guaranteed to work. He showed me their video library and some of their female clients. I was hooked until he told me the price. Nearly $3000! I was just about to walk out, and he realized he'd spooked me, and like the consummate salesman he was, he made concessions and deals until I was signed up for a three-year membership that I could sell at any time (if I wanted to) for about $2k. I hate to admit that I was so desperate I signed up. Then the fun really started.
They required that I use their photographer for their service. I was to bring three outfits, wear no makeup or any other accoutrements that would otherwise make me look like something other than myself, and do my photo shoot and dating video. I showed to their studio, which was nothing more than another room in their office. The girl shot my pictures and did my video, and of course I had to pay sitting fees for the shoot. I did buy a photo package, but only because I hadn't provided my parents with a portrait for years.
I didn't wait long at all to start using their service. Between their online service and their office, I found that they didn't have a lot of clients I was interested in. There were some older members that I didn't waste my time with. There were a lot of other-racial clients that I wasn't interested in, and only a few that I was interested in. I selected all of those, and was promptly turned down by most of those. I came back a few weeks later to make a few more choices. I could only make a limited number of choices at a time, five or six if I remember correctly, and it didn't take me long to exhaust all the people I was interested in, and a few that I was only passingly interested in. Needless to say, I got a big, fat goose-egg for my troubles. After two or three months, I didn't try anymore.
I got a lot of emails from both the Fort Worth and the Dallas offices telling me about gatherings at bars and shows that I really didn't have a lot of interest in attending, but I never went to any of them. It took me several years to pay off their outrageous fees, and I wish I had never come across them. I eventually found that GE buys a lot of domains and redirects them to their main site. It makes it look like there are a lot of singles sites out there designed for the city you're in, but in reality they're all pointers back to the mother ship. I continue to see half a dozen lawn signs each week floating around street medians, and I continue to get their emails, although I'm sure my membership lapsed long ago.
Long story short, avoid these shysters at all costs. They'll cost you an arm and a leg and give you next to nothing in return.
No comments:
Post a Comment