Ask Isabella: How finding ‘the one’ can be a costly affair

There’s thousands of companies offering the lovelorn the chance to find their perfect match. But can you buy true love or is it written in the stars? Isabella Magee investigates.

WITH hundreds of companies offering you a chance to find the one, can you buy true love or is it written in the stars?

The generational shift to digital communications doesn’t exclude dating, and as we become “more selective” with our ideal partner’s image, dating sites are tweaking services, but at a cost.

Queensland University of Technology Marketing Expert Professor Gary Mortimer said dating services have become “a marketed commodity,” as they’re much like other services, catering to our “too busy” lifestyles.

“People are often way too busy to be standing around in a bar hoping to meet somebody … so these services save kissing a lot of frogs to find your prince,’’ he said.

“We've seen online dating services become a marketed commodity, they use marketing strategies and tactics, same as any other brand or product or service does.

“As a result, an online dating service is very much like any other service; getting your car washed, getting your dry cleaning done, it's just a platform to facilitate meeting potentially another partner.”

Professor Mortimer said, like any “marketing business… you pay for what you get,” however these services still gain from you, even if you opt for the free version.

“Like any service, you pay for what you get – a free service is going to offer very low levels of service or low level features so you may not be able to see your matches or you may be limited to so many contacts each day,

“If you choose not to pay, basically they gain from having a larger pool of potential candidates, it's very much a marketing business; online dating sites, or apps are designed to actually make money for the organisation.”

Cannon Hill resident Sammy Borland-Smith, 27, has been using dating apps for years, and said she uses free ones, as she’s “never felt the need” to pay for their services.

“I’ve never felt the need to pay for an app or upgrade, I’ve found the free experience on the traditional dating apps just fine,” Ms Borland-Smith told The Sunday-Mail.

“I understand the benefits of paying for a dating app – that people may want to expand their location-based potential matches and extend or rematch with a missed connection – but it’s not something I’m interested in.

“There’s no guarantee that spending money on a dating app will get you any closer to finding a connection, it’s the age-old saying, right? Money doesn’t buy happiness, so why would it in the dating world?”.

Sammy Borland-Smith has tried many dating apps. Picture: AAP Image/Richard Gosling

With varying costs, online dating services often base prices for love-finding on claims like “success rates.”

“Different online service providers will charge different prices, they will often validate those prices based on claims like success rates,” Professor Mortimer said.

“They may say something like, ‘you're more inclined to get a match if you upgrade your profile’ or, ‘you're more inclined to meet that other person if you undertake this particular survey’.”

Asking peers who’ve used the services, whether they’ve paid for them or not, and doing a price comparison of the sites, is a good way to gauge which option is right for you. “Like any business that offers a service, you can either have a very transactional, very limited simple experience, or you can have a very extensive experience,” Professor Mortimer said.

“My motto is always talk to a friend or friends who have who have used sites to make their partners online because everyone has a good and a bad story to tell.”