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At the end of 2023, Tinder revealed a new subscription option in the US for $499 a month. Here our consumer expert looks at the cost of dating
The cost of looking for love on dating apps. At the end of 2023, the popular dating app Tinder launched a new subscription service costing a whopping $499 (£395) per month, or $6,000 per year (£4,750).
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Not many singletons would be willing to fork out that much to find love so here I explore the cost of dating for us normal folk. There are many benefits to my being single, but from a practical standpoint, my independence is costing me. According to research from Hargreaves Lansdown, you can expect to spend an average of £1,851 on monthly bills if you are alone compared to £991 for a couple. Now, I’m not recommending that you couple up to save on the energy bills! If you have decided that you would like to find your other half, be warned, the cost of dating can be very expensive. So I am taking a look a one particularly pricey aspect of looking for love: dating apps and websites. In this article, I cover. Subscribers to The Times can read Hannah Skelley’s experience of looking for love online: I always avoided dating apps. Then I tried six of them in a week. Do you have to pay for online dating? Many online dating sites start off free to use. But they come with severe restrictions on almost every aspect of the service. If you want more choice and value from the site or app then you will have to pay. If you are new to a dating app, you can expect to be confronted with an array of chargeable services at a variety of different prices. But which will you need? The options can include: the ability to send and receive direct messages greater visibility to potential dates a wider range of search or filter options (height, age, interests, for example) additional features, such as allowing sharing of photos or private albums. There are a number of ways dating apps can catch you out financially. 1. Micro charging. The cost of dating apps often start relatively low, sometimes from as little as £10 a month. But ‘micro charging’ – the dark art of selling services at low prices that add up to big spends over time – is an incredibly effective sales tactic. It also makes you less likely to delete these services even if you aren’t getting the most from them now. Afterall, they might prove useful in the future and what if that perfect person messages you suddenly out of the blue? My dating app charges me a basic rate of £7.99 a month and I’ve had it for five years. That’s around £500-worth of vague disappointment. 2. Under the radar charging. Dating app premiums are usually debited from bank accounts, credit cards, e-payment systems like PayPal or even your phone bills through ‘continuous payment authorities’ (CPAs). This is a form of automatic payment authorisation that only requires you to agree on the phone or tick a box online to set up. 3. Pressure to go premium. Dating apps are pretty relentless in trying to get you to upgrade. One of the apps that I looked into for this article flashed up its premium services to me every three or four profiles that I looked at. Others have introduced adverts that you have to endure unless you want to keep logging out and back in again to avoid them. Yes, the ad-free premium option that you can expect with your TV streaming services has made it’s merry way into your love life too! 4. Lack of transparency. Many dating services are not transparent and up-front about their charges. Sometimes you only get a detailed price breakdown when you sign up and commit to a contract of anything up to two years. How much do the main dating apps charge? Nothing is ever simple, is it? Dating apps have evolved from fees or a few different scales of membership to charges varying depending on how long you sign up for. Many offer free trials which become chargeable at the end of the set period. Remember that if you do try one out, add the expiry date in to your diary a week or so before it ends so you don’t forget to cancel. Let’s take the figures quoted one of the more popular dating services as an example: eHarmony. £18.95 a month for six months £9.95 a month for 12 months £7.95 a month for 24 months. These prices are not available for you to see on the website without you signing up for a free trial first. If you sign up to a longer duration contract you are committed and so will need to look in to what it will cost you in exit fees if you want to leave early. Another popular dating site is Bumble. It has a limited free option but also offers a few optional premium features to “enhance your Bumble experiences”, such as: Prices start at £7.99 per week and go up to £71.94, if you pay for 6 months in advance. It is actually very difficult to find the clear pricing structure on the website in order to make a meaningful comparison with other sites. If you opt for more specialist services, then prices rise considerably. By specialist, I mean sites catering for professionals, or “elites” (whatever that means) or older people for example. Prices in these sectors start from around £20 to £25 per month, but rise considerably the more specialist you go. Even if you’ve signed up to a contract, it doesn’t mean it’s fair.
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