Dating Direct www.datingdirect.com Review

Overall Rating

* Many UK members
* Ability to see who is currently seeing your profile
* Wide ranging search tools
* Intigrated Instant Messenger Chat

* Unhelpful customer service
* Hard to cancel account in my experience
* Too many 'same old faces' I feel

This is a long, in depth review. Please do read fully as I give you my personal take on this site.

Dating Direct. Said to be the UK's premier dating site. It used to have a clean layout, and affliated it's members with other dating site (Channel 4 dating for example) which brought new members who did not know perhaps were all using Dating Directs 'pool' or searchable members.

As a site goes, I think it is more geered for the females, not so bad but would be nice to be dealt with as a male as nicely by customer services when one has issues. In times past one could sign up for short amounts of time, 2 weeks which was an ideal way to get a feel of the site. This has changed and they encourage you to sign up for ever longer periods of time. Be warned by the refund policy if you do not find love in 6 months. You have to conform to their rules, send so many messages, view so many profile each day etc.

I've met a few women from the site and dated one for over 5 months. So could say it worked for me. However, I find it annoying 'Meetik' another site owned by them, pools it's members in. So you end up with many European women with no profile information sending you winks. It annoys me, and think the site should ban people if they do not make effort to make a profile or add pictures. It is a dating site after all.

I also find that you can leave it 3 months and return to find many of the same faces on there. Many with several thousand visit and winks. Either they are 'fake' or simple something wrong to be there so long and yet never have found anyone lol.

How to get the best deal? Join for a month. Go to ACCOUNT and SUBSCRIPTION at the bottom, in grey is a small link to cancel re-bill. You need to confirm an email, click a further link and finally your rebilling is stopped. Use the site, and when your subscription ends do nothing. Wait about 2 or 3 weeks. You will get emails saying how they 'miss you' then you will get one saying 'get a month free' (but you must sign up for 3 months) but ignore these. Wait for the magic we want you back one, where they give you a month for £5! Re-join and cancel the re-bill. It works everytime for me.

Email preferences: Make sure you turn off the notifications for all but the most important, this way you will avoid offers, and constant emails about a new wink or a new member who has joined. These continue if you do not turn them off even after your subscription has ended.

Overall, I have found it it to OK. Why I rated a 5. Middle of the road. Match.com I have tried, but for my liking seems very US lent. There are free dating sites out there, have a google around - But note if they are free, it encourages the time wasters to join. My advice is simple. Yahoo personals is good, friends reunited dating is good to. Dating Direct seems to cater for either the young picky professional woman who is dipping her toes and having a look but not serious, to the average single woman in her 30's.

There are some gems to be found, but if you send 20 emails expect only 10-12 replies and perhaps 2 women who may be serious and want to talk further. I have found on other sites the reply number to be higher.

Hope this has helped, many seem very negative about the site. Yes it can be slow, yes it is a pain to cancel and customer services is useless - But as long as you play it safe with your money using the mentioned system one your initial sign up expense, I can't complain for £5 a month.