Chemistry.com

GETTING STARTED

Like many sites the purport to match their members, chemistry has a personality quiz you have to take before you can join. The quiz was not particularly memorable. When I read the results, I also found that the results of the quiz as interpreted by the site were not particularly insightful either. However, these quizzes are supposedly the basis for matching members. Based on my matching results, I would say the quiz was pretty useless.

After you have completed the quiz, you are guided into creating a profile. If you already have a match profile, it can be imported into Chemistry. Since I didn’t have a Match profile, I found it was somewhat hard to compose the profile. Most of the profile is a free form essay. What do you say about yourself, or what you are looking for? You also have to load up at least one picture which has to be a headshot. After that, you can load several more. Each picture is subject to approval. In my case, I joined the site at first without adding a picture. It took me a while to find a digital picture and edit it so I cropped out some background and friends. Then I had to upload it to the site. After that, they have to approve it.

I ran into some problems with getting my picture approved. I uploaded it but it wasn’t visible on the site for over a week. I finally called Chemistry and they took another 3 days to get the picture visible. I asked them for a 10 day extension to my membership which they willingly provided. My advice would be to load your picture and create your profile before paying any money to join. I had an okay experience with the Chemistry customer service once I called but it seems you have to assert yourself to get things done.

FINALLY, I GOT SOME MATCHES

The site sent me 5 matches a day. I had to view each of the profiles and decide to either close them out or communicate. If you do not close out or pursue the matches, they will not send you anymore until you do. The first set of matches they sent me were pretty mixed. The first guy was a 300 pound crane operator with little education and only a few teeth. I was wondering what I had put in my profile that caused them to send me that match. It seems the matches they send are based on personality rather than education, religion or other preferences. I found my matches to be rather surprising.

After you decide to communicate with someone, you are put through some guided communication. This communication is rather confusing and not particularly insightful. The first step requires you to rate such qualities as how into fashion you are, how important family is and other generic characteristics. The second set of communication is two short questions you choose and the other person has to answer.

I found the guided communication to be annoying and not particularly helpful in getting to know someone. It was also frustrating because it took several exchanges between you and the match to get to the point when we could actually talk.

The final stage of communication in the site is open communication. You can email each other back and forth in the chemistry.com site. The benefit of doing email this way is that you don’t have to give out your full name or contact information. You can stay in this format until you feel more comfortable giving out your private information at which point you can switch to personal email or phone.

Chemistry also urges you to make a first date and they have a system where you can invite someone to meet you for coffee or a short meeting. This works by inviting someone to meet via the system. They can accept your invitation or decline or postpone. Once you have established a time and date, the Chemistry site picks a location, always Starbucks in my experience, between your two locations. The idea of the short coffee date is that you can meet without obligation.

MY EXPERIENCE

I was on the site for a little over three months. For the first couple of months, I checked the site at least every other day to scan for matches and see if I was interested. Usually, of the five matches per day, I might be interested in, at most, one of the people. Also, I wasn’t particularly selective in the sense that if there was something in the profile that seemed interesting, I went ahead and tried the next step. I didn’t screen out too much on physical appearance, location or age.

After a month, I had initiated communication with about 15 men. Going through the guided communication, this group narrowed down to about 5 either because they didn’t respond to me or because I didn’t like their responses to me. Of the 5 I “met” in the first month, I only went out with 2. We didn’t use the coffee dates that the site urged. Instead we met for lunch. Those dates were pleasant and the men I met were nice but there just wasn’t a spark for me so we didn’t go forward.

The second month I only got one date from the site. He was a nice guy and we went on a few dates. However, our schedules didn’t mesh and we didn’t have as much interest in continuing the relationship. At the beginning of the third month, I started dating a nice guy and have been dating him for a few months now.

Overall, I would say Chemistry sent me decent matches. There was a lot of variety. I don’t think their quiz or matching abilities were very good. However, the site does seem to have a lot of people on it looking for dates and relationships and I did meet some interesting people.

FINAL RECOMMENDATION

Overall, I would say my experience with Chemistry was pretty good. I don’t really care for their push on the coffee dates or their weird affiliation with Starbucks. However, I did like the fact that they sent you 5 matches per day. The matches were a mixed bag but there was enough quantity and variety to find someone I was interested in dating. I can definitely recommend the site.