SpeedDate Review

Speed Dating for the web

SpeedDate is a website that specializes in, you guessed it, speed dates. What that means, translated online, is that you get 5 minutes chats with members. This gives you a chance to see if you hit it off, and you can take it from there.

A pretty neat idea, but does the site delivers? We tried to find out in this review, so read on.

The website looks promising, but…

We found that registration to SpeedDate is quick and easy. You first enter your own details (age, height, location etc) then your requirements for a date. As you point out what you look for, you have the option each time to say how important this is for you, by clicking either one of two boxes, either “nice to have” or “must have”.

In “what are you looking for”, SpeedDate gives you a lot of options, from Casual Encounters to FriendShips to Marriage (see pic). We liked this as new users will not feel boxed in any particular need, and they have the freedom to find people with the same goals.

SpeedDate quite impressed us with the quality of its interface. Little help screens pop up here and there to tell you what to do next and where to go. Navigation is simple and the site looks clean and sleek.

Search is very much focused on pictures, as that’s mostly what you see as results, a big page full of profile pictures of various members. This can feel a bit shallow, but at least you cut to the chase and can choose someone you feel attracted to. From there, you can visit their profile, or invite them to a SpeedDate. When the person is online, you can go on a SpeedDate with them instantly, which means a little window opens and you can start chatting with them for 5 minutes.

Again, this is pretty sleek, and you get “Icrebreakers“ suggested to you in the chat window. (see pic) You also get another little window in the bottom right corner of your screen with options for more people to chat with.

So far, so good, unfortunately the good part stops here.

The site is an empty shell

While browsing profiles, our alarm bells started ringing. We quickly realized that many profiles are completely empty of personal information. As professional reviewers of dating sites, we recognize this as a bad sign. Usually, it means that most of the profiles have been automatically set up, in other words, that they are fake.

The people who show up to chat with you either do not reply at all (which again, suggests they are not real), or try to lead you to another (paid) site to see sexy webcams.

You also get quite a lot of people who suddenly 'like' you… but you can't see who it is until you pay (see pic). You get people offering to chat with you…but you have to pay first. How many of these “interested” people are real is anyone’s guess, but based on our experience with such practices, it didn’t look good to us.

Beware of unauthorized billings!

In addition, many of our readers have reported to us abusive billing practices, such as:

• -SpeedDate billing their account month after month even after cancellation, and in spite of many emails of protest
• -SpeedDate offering to charge $3.95 to “verify” their account, then billing $161.70 for a 6 month membership without their consent
• -SpeedDate billing $191.40 for an entire year even though users had chosen a monthly cancellable subscription at $39.95 per month

Conclusion

We suggest you to be careful and NOT give your credit card details to SpeedDate. We recommend you check our top Editor Ranked websites, such as Match, Chemistry or eHarmony, which are more reputable sites with real users and real perks.

Stats on SpeedDate

SpeedDate.com was created by two Stanford graduates (Dan Abelon and Simon Tisminezky) in late 2007.

The dating site took the concept of speed dating that was popularized offline in the 90s and put it online via 5 minute long chat sessions.

The company has patented its SpeedDate.com™ system which allows people to chat with many others in a short space of time on instant messaging and video. The idea being that you can get a feel for the other person quickly (within 5 minutes) and decide whether its worth continuing to talk further with them or not.