Jason W.

I used to be pretty negative about POF, but they made some improvements recently. No one can know that you visited their profile unless you message them, if you choose this free feature. And your profile doesnt show up in other users searches if you so choose. POF does let people youve contacted see when youre online (if theyre really looking for it), but so does every other site and POF is less blatant about it. I hope they keep these things because they are the reason it works for me.

There are good reasons why so many are using POF instead of some other free site like OkCupid. Its honest and open. For example, when you do a search you get all the profiles (those that want to be seen) that fit your search criteria, in order of their last login. With a lot of other sites, what you get is unclear and depends on some mysterious algorithm. Thats a barrier. POF really has no barriers to communication other than the ones the users choose. I believe thats how POF managed to get chicks to use the site: plenty of options, and open communication. And of course the men will go where the chicks are at.

The lack of a chat box is actually a blessing because you dont want to be trading endless messages online. If they are really interested and serious about meeting someone, theyll give up their contact info; and if they arent, lets not waste any more time on it. Chat-based services are like magnets for attention whores (Im looking at you, Badoo).

I take off one star because of the 14 year maximum age differential (if youre 45, for example, you cant message people 30 and under). I understand why they did it, because women get tons of messages and get overwhelmed and quickly leave. But it would have been better to highlight the message settings that already existed, which allow users to limit the age range of people who can message them (among other things).

Most negative reviews of POF really come down to people who are not having success for reasons related to themselves or their profiles. Online dating is bound to suck for most guys, unless you are in the top 5% of most desirable men. As for women complaining about poor quality men theyve found, well thats the price when a site gives you maximum choices, you then have to weed out the bad ones. But a lot of women think they shouldnt have to put any time or work into this.

- You have to pay to send a message to "popular" (i. E., attractive) members
- You can only message six to ten new people per day for free
- You can't hide the fact you visited someone's profile without paying for that feature (POF lets you do so for free)
- Search results come up in random order and no way to tell which profiles you've already seen, so you wind up clicking on the same profiles over and over
- Search results only display those profiles for which your age falls within their search criteria; change your age, and you get a whole different set of results (POF only allows an age differential of 14 years maximum, but at least they're honest and open about it)
- You can set up a profile using the website without a phone number for verification. The next time you try to log in, they demand SMS verification. If you don't have a cell phone, you can't verify, your profile and pics stay up indefinitely and you can't do anything about it.
- Any e-mail or skype address you give them or even type into the chat gets harvested and sold to spammers. I assume the same thing happens with cell phone numbers.

In summary, this service is run by people with zero ethics (Russians, apparently) and they are now in pillage mode of doing anything to make a buck off it. Best to move on to better and more honest dating sites/apps - POF, Tinder, Match, whatever, anything else would be better.