JDate experiences

I am on Jdate too, but there doen't seem to be many single Jewish guys in Anchorage! In general I like it. I used to live in NYC, so it was more useful there.

You should try wwwjgreat.com it's totally free.

OK- I've shut up about this a while.

I'm currently in a relationship with a lady I met through Jdate. I was on Jdate for a little over a year and dated very prolifically for about 5-6 months, and then eased back and dated rarely afterwards.

I paid for those 5-6 months and then hid my email in my profile, so people could still contact me after my membership ended.

I met a lot of really cool and interesting fun women- I met some duds, and met some absolute weirdos.

One thing that I found in common among Jdaters I've met with one or two exceptions- they pretty much all were interested in dating other jews exclusively.

Years ago, when they first started, I seem to remember meeting one or two decent guys through JDate, but nothing happened. I've connected with some old friends there, though, and met, either in person or just in email/on the phone or both, some other guys from my home town whom I either knew about through my family or with whom I knew a lot of other people in common.

I recently rejoined, and after the first flurry of messages, most of which were from guys who weren't really appropriate for me (or a couple from guys who seemed really unappealing), it's completely died. Almost no one is even looking at my profile. Combined with the fact that the match suggestions they make on the home page hardly ever seem to change, I'm not at all convinced they actually have much influx of fresh blood in my age range.

OTOH, my father met his current partner on there, and moved halfway across the country to live with her after knowing each other all of a few months - at the age of 78. That was a couple of years ago, and he still seems very happy. I don't know if either of them met anyone else there or not.

Wendy

I was a member of JDate for almost 2 years and for the most part had a pretty good experience in that I went on a lot of dates (I live in LA County). I also belonged to AISH's "Speed Dating" site when you could still put your profile on-line and hook up there rather than attending their events.

That said, most of the guys I was "matched" with were not at all my type and/or not in my geographical area (I live at the border of OC and most JDaters were in West LA or the Valley).

Since I own my own house, moving is not an option at this time and frankly, I don't want to drive to East Jesus just to have coffee with a guy who lives with his parents in Sherman Oaks. Most of them were just as unwilling to drive to LB.

Also, many of the guys that made contact didn't seem to bother reading my profile which I put a LOT of time and effort into. I'd find out later that they didn't like dogs (I have two), that they were shorter than me (I'm 5'8 in my barefeet), that they were much older than me (the geriatrics really seemed to like me), or that they didn't really like "curvy" girls after all - they just said that b/c they wanted to see if they could hook up ... etc.

I did meet two really great guys however... one went back to his ex-girlfriend when she found out he was dating again and the other wanted to focus on his career - which he worked long hours at (and he lived in WeHo) - and he wasn't ready to settle down and have "adult" responsibilities like a mortgage and kids.

Anyway, I've been tempted to re-join JDate b/c I would really like to find a nice Jewish guy to share my life with but after reading the accounts here I'm not sure it's such a good idea.

It's really difficult dating in general, but when you narrow the field by wanting to date within a specific religious/ethnic group, it seems even harder. The older I get, the harder it gets.

So... what's a nice Jewish girl to do? Date nice Irish Catholic boys w/ black hair and horn-rimmed glass I guess - they sort of look Jewish right? HAHAHA. Hey, I've always been a sucker for a man in glasses ... regardless of their heritage.

Cheers,
Cheryl ~

I was a member of jdate from 1998 -when they were beshert.com- to 2002. I left them in a huff because, mainly, they have an adversarial relationship with their members regarding members' $ and privacy/information.

1. $. The point of jdate is to meet someone and have a successful relationship. They have a feature to 'suspend' your membership if you meet someone so you can date them exclusively. What jdate barely discloses in one obscure place in the site is that you can suspend your profile but they'll keep charging you. If you buy a month's membership and you suspend for two weeks and date your match for two weeks, then your monthly fee is used up! You don't get to pick it up with two more weeks. Not a great incentive to really form a relationship with someone. (I guess that is why they are J'date 'and not 'Beshert' anymore.)

2. Jdate, several times in their history, changed their members data features without informing members in advance. For example, one day the site changed to disclose to everyone everyone whose profile you looked at and everyone who looked at your profile... They also changed our names on the site suddenly in a similar way. This is disrespectful.

3. Jdate sends a lot of spam to members promoting their very expensive and not very interesting parties and cruises.

These things indicate to me that Jdate sees their customers as dollar signs to be harvested and not people that they want to serve with respect. I don't want people like that to have my credit card or personal information. I take every chance I get to denigrate Jdate.

Finally, my sense of the NY area women on Jdate is that most of them seemed JAPpy. I didn't have much luck on that site being more of a creative, nonprofit type.

I hope more hip and respectful alternatives emerge.