Love and Friends - www.loveandfriends.com

Found Love and Friends to be one of the best internet dating agencies in terms of suitable guys in my age group. Went out on a few dates and although that elusive chemistry wasn't there I have met some genuinely decent guys who I will be friends with. Found the speedy search tool useful particularly when short of time and the tagging tool was useful for speedy searches. I recommended a couple of friends to the site and one got married to a guy she met on the site two years ago........

The site was easy to use and offered a varied and high quality selection of potential partners. It felt quite professional.

I initially joined Love and Friends as it was marketed as a site for 'thinking people'. I continue to use it quite happily, and find it easy to navigate and especially like the format of how the profiles of members are set out.

There have been occasions when I needed help from the Administration on several issues, and was delightfully surprised at their quick response in helping and solving the issues in question and their eagerness to help.

This is a site which limits your possibilities to write to people if you are a free member, but at the same time they have quite an original way which has got to do with tagging member profiles, and which gives you the opportunity to make contact with its members even if you do not upgrade to a paying member.

I happily recommend this great site to anyone who is thinking about it.

LoveandFriends.com has been going since at least 2001. That makes them one of the original dating sites and they are still going strong.

I've always found that they have a good calibre of members. This is partly due to the length of the profile, which is very detailed, though not all compulsory fortunately!

As its a medium/smaller owner managed site, its a lot more friendlier than the big sites, and the customer service is more attentive.

What I really like about Loveandfriends website is that you can really genuinely date for free. It also gets a much better quality of member than the 100% Free sites e.g. PlentyOfFish.com

All the other quality / regular (i.e. not 100% Free) sites I've been on like Match.com, datingDirect.com etc tend to promise 'Free to Join', 'Free to Send Messages' or what have you ...but that's no good at all if you can't receive messages also.

L&F do nag you a bit to upgrade and some features are only for full members - but you can actually send **and** recieve a limited number of messages per day as a free member - so you can really date for free.

I've met lots of interesting people through it - though I am atill searching - maybe this is down to me and not the website ;-)

I was first introduced to the Loveandfriends website by Mary Balfour who runs the personal introduction agency Drawing Down the Moon some years ago.

It was my first experience of online dating and to begin with I was a little daunted by this whole brave new world of meeting people on the web.

The site and the staff who run it I found to be friendly and reassuringly plain speaking. I liked the fact also that it does not take itself too seriously, which de-stressed the whole situation and made it more enjoyable. It was nice to be part of a something that was run by a small team of 'real' people who own and run the site - as opposed to some big multinational company with a callcenter.

I am most happy to recommend Loveandfriends as thanks to you (and Mary) I have found my wife. I asked her to marry me about 3 months weeks after we met - and we have been very happy since.

I thought the whole L&F style is excellent. Great that you can join without paying up front to start with. Also the questions for the profile and compatibility tests are well designed.

The whole look of the site is witty, intelligent and appealing. It is definitely not aimed more at the Jeremy Paxman than the Jeremy Kyle end of the market!

I met quite a few people and all of them were nice, interesting people even when there was no spark (and there was a spark on quiet a few occasions!!!!!).

I have and will still recommend L&F to friends.

This has to be one of the few forums (if only one) where four letter words are rarely controlled. Not to mention clever dicks that seem to relish smutty comments all over the place. Which is fine if your into that, but please, don't call yourself the 'thinking man's site'.

The few decent people on there are outnumbered.

Really not great. I think some of the other dating websites offer better value. There is really a limited membership so the choice is not as good as some of the other dating websites offering a similar service and targeted at similar people. Customer service and responsiveness to complaints is not good either.

My complaint is not so much with the site but with their subscription policy and small print. If you do join this site, please make very sure and triple check that you have cancelled your membership and that this has been processed. Even if you have not used the site for several years, they will continue to happily take your money for a service you haven't received from them. When you complain, you get a 'read the small print' response.