Plenty of Fish is For Suckers

There are many dating sites out there and some are better than others. Some of course are better for one person over another depending on how it’s set up and what you’re looking for. Of the ones I’ve tried Plenty of Fish was pretty much a stagnant sea. I had a male friend who liked it though because he called it Plenty of F**ks. He wanted one-night stands and women were happy to comply. I didn’t want that, so it wasn’t that good. In fact, I found communication with potentials lacking so completely that I decided to not just inactivate my account but delete it.

Plenty of Fish=plenty of leeches

That was over two years ago. I removed my profile, but I was still getting notices. I removed it again, went deeper in and tried to remove it all the way to the bone. I deleted the account, which means I shouldn’t exist in POF’s database anymore. That seemed to do it, so I thought. But oddly, when they were hacked a couple of months back I got warnings about changing my password. WTF? I sent them an email saying I had no idea what my password was anymore, and to remove me from their site as I had already done this once. I got another computer generated message, and another, and another.

I sent messages each time that bounced back to me. Yes, this was their customer service email. Some customer service. I sincerely hope no one pays for this crap. This last week I’ve received three emails with my “matches” even though I no longer have an account according to their deletion instructions. I’ve sent them two cease and desist emails and let me tell you, it’s not easy. You have to go to their website and dig around. There is something that actually says “contact us”, but if you click on the header that says “Delete/Hide My Account” you get nothing. Oh sorry, you get more little messages telling you what to do but you don’t get to send them an email. Click again, yet another layer of message.

When you finally find a way in to to send an email, you get no answer as I can attest with the ones I’ve sent. I shouldn’t have to deactivate an account I deleted over two years ago. Here’s what they say about getting rid of the notification messages:

I do not want any more email notifications.

You can stop message notifications (sent out when you get a message) in Mail Settings. Unfortunately you cannot stop the “latest match” emails usually sent out on Mondays – if these are a problem we’ll delete your account upon request.

Oddly enough I’ve asked POF at least four times to delete me permanently. And try to find a place to contact them to do this deletion. It’s a blatant lie. I have received neither an answer nor a deletion from the continual messages. And of course, I can’t delete my account because I no longer know my username or password. I finally had to email for it again and you have to go through many messages of “wait, don’t go” to get to deleting, if it works. My next step will be to see if I can charge them with harassment, and report them to any place or regulatory body I can. If you know of any such bodies on this, and on them storing my information after I expressly deleted it, let me know.

But for your own sakes, do not ever join up with Plenty of Fish. Obviously they treat their clients as suckers and you’ll have better luck getting barnacles off your ship than these leeches off your back. My rating on this dating site: -5. Stay far away.
Addendum: here it is Feb. 22, nearly a year after this post. I did send a letter to the Privacy Commissioner last year and received a letter back saying it didn’t fall in their jurisdiction but to try the provincial Privacy Commissioner. I was going to toss the letter as I thought POF had stopped harassing me and guess what, last week more spam from POF. They will go against the law and keep your information forever because they probably know how hard it is to track down even who to send this to.