HaBitza

Why am I writing this

I’ve debated writing about this huge “quirk” I found on Jdate and have finally decided to do it since they don’t write about it anywhere that I’ve noticed (AKA, anywhere that would have been helpful to me) so I figure someone’s gotta do it.

Please note: In case you aren’t going to read this whole piece, I am not saying that Jdate is a bad site to use. It’s fine, if only because it’s such a big database of Jewish singles. But it’s important to know about this problem that I only figured out after years of using the site.

The beginning of the tale

For years I was half-heartedly using jdate. I’d almost never pay membership because it didn’t seem like a serious place to meet someone. Why? It seemed like Israelis (and I’m in Israel so this matters) just weren’t filling out their profiles. I couldn’t understand why they’d contact someone who obviously had put effort into her site and was obviously looking for a serious relationship when they didn’t seem serious at all.

For years (did I mention that yet?) I’d see this phenomenon and I understood it to mean that these guys just weren’t looking for something serious. I even wrote about it here.

jdate.com and jdate.co.il not compatible (oh yeah and, btw, I didn’t even know there is a jdate.co.il)

A couple months ago, after years of thinking this about Israeli men (read my current opinion of Israeli men), I got a message from an Israeli dude and I just couldn’t help it. I wrote back and thanked him for contacting me but told him I thought it was strange he didn’t fill out his profile and I asked him if he could tell me about himself.

He wrote back and said that he had filled out his profile.

Hmmmm….

I immediately wrote a letter to JDate support asking them why it was that I couldn’t see this guy’s profile content. They answered that if I’m logged into the English language site, viewing profiles of guys from the Hebrew site, because the site doesn’t have a “translation service,” I can’t see what they wrote. If I wanted to, I could log in through the Hebrew site in order to view these guys’ profiles.

This is what you see of Hebrew profiles when logged into jdate.com. Even their pictures aren't serious!

And here are the same profiles when logged into the jdate.co.il site. Of course it’s hard to tell the difference since I had to cover up all the text…

OMG

Over the course of the next couple weeks, it sunk in what they were saying. Basically Ms. Jdate Support was telling me that all these years (did I mention, years?) I was using their service (paying on and off) and getting only a fraction of the service. Nowhere on the site (not even when visiting a profile from the .co.il website) is there a message explaining that you are not seeing the whole profile and that you should login through .co.il if you want to see what the person wrote.

The top of jdate.com once you're logged in. Any sign that there is a jdate in other languages?

Finally I wrote back the following:

I am feeling so incredulous about what you wrote me in this email that I still am unsure how to reply to it.

I have been on your site for years and for years I always wondered why Israeli guys seem not to take the online dating seriously since almost none of them (except the English speakers) actually filled out the open-ended questions on the site.

If you look at my account I’m sure you’ll see that I’ve paid for a month here and there over the years but definitely never for more than a month at a time. This is because, especially during the years that I’ve lived in Israel (and I’m back here again), I found there was almost no one serious on the site (because they supposedly put so little effort into their profiles).

…

This would not seem like such a big deal to me if you were a small site. But you are a huge site – possibly the biggest dating site for Jews – and you charge a pretty penny for anyone who wants to be active on the site.

I never would have thought of this but a close friend, when I told her about this, actually thought I should ask for a refund for all the times I’ve paid you to use the site. This seemed like an extreme reaction but it made me realize what a big deal this “little” glitch in your site is.

Of course this all comes down to the fact that you should have an up-to-date site.

…

But if for some reason you are hesitating going that route…, the minimum is that when someone is logged into the .com site and they click on a .co.il profile, there should be a prominent message that explains that you need to be logged in with .co.il to fully see the profile. And visa versa.

Unfortunately, on my dating blog I’ve written about Israeli jdate guys not filling out their profile (here is the post) and I will have to relate to this at some point since I was mistaken, but I need to figure out how to do this. I figured I first should mention all of this to you.

I’d truly appreciate an answer. I’m sorry my email is a little harsh but every time I think about this, recalling all the times I have said to people, “I don’t understand why Israeli guys don’t fill out their profiles?” I can’t believe that it was a technical issue and nowhere on the site, ever, did I see this written out.

And all of this is not to mention the missed opportunity over the years (years!). I am looking for a serious relationship and have used the site without realizing all the potential there.

Thanks,

Deena

They quickly replied, thanking me for my thoughts and ideas and telling me they forwarded my email on to the “appropriate department.”

I know. It’s touching how badly they felt and how apologetic they were. I’m being sarcastic, in case you couldn’t tell. I didn’t copy their emails into this blog post since I don’t have their permission but I wrote the main points from each of their two emails.

Does jdate provide a good service beyond being the place to find the highest number of Jewish singles online?

When I think about how unapologetic they were, it actually gets me a bit upset. And to think I still use their site. Actually, now that I know how to use it properly, I use it more than ever. Grrr…

I wonder, is jdate like those kosher restaurants we only eat at because they’re kosher? And if ever anyone would finally open up a decent kosher restaurant, then the jdate-type restaurant would go out of business?

Or, maybe the unappetizing kosher restaurant could find the guts to stand behind their site (I mean restaurant) and, of course, redo the whole damn thing. It might be good if you didn’t feel like you were in 1995 when you stopped by for a corn beef sandwich. Just saying.

Of course I have no idea why everyone doesn’t just move to OKCupid. Have I mentioned that it’s free?

P.S. The same problem exists in the opposite direction. Basically you could end up needing both the .com and .co.il websites open at the same time in order to be able to read profiles from everyone.