Chemistry.com Review
Chemistry.com is an online dating site specializing in
compatibility matching based on a personality test developed by
biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher. Incorporating 30 years
of research on the science of interpersonal attraction, Dr. Fisher
was able to develop a system that's impressively accurate at
predicting which singles are most likely to have Chemistry. A
sister company of Match.com, Chemistry incorportates a lot of the
user-friendly features found on Match, but with a more hands-on
approach to computerized matchmaking.
How Chemistry.com Works
As a member of Chemistry.com you will regularly receive match
suggestions. Each match suggestion will provide background
information about the person as well as an assessment of how your
personalities fit together.
Personality
Analysis
If you are a paying subscriber you will also receive notices
when someone has read your profile or is interested in you. If you
are interested in someone you can click the "I'm interested"
button, and Chemistry.com will contact your potential match. You
will then be prompted to begin the 'getting to know you' process by
filling out additional information about your relationship
essentials. If you are interested in someone who has expressed
interest in you, you will be requested to answer the same
questions. Chemistry.com will then offer a comparison of your
answers with your match's answers, so you can judge your
compatibility.
An example
of the characteristics comparison
If you and your potential match like what you see in your
compared relationship essentials, you will be asked to send your
potential partner several short questions.
Chemistry.com lets you send 6 short questions to potential
matches and even recommends questions that may be useful for your
personality type.
Recommended
Questions
Only after you both accept the answers to these questions will
you be able to send direct emails to each other. The goal of this
directed process is to ensure that you are still interested in each
other and so that you'll have a comfortable first date.
When using Chemistry.com, each step of the process can be rather
time consuming as you are constantly required to wait for a
response from your potential match(es) who may not answer
immediately. Nevertheless, the process is quite interesting and
does help you learn about your potential partner and yourself. The
waiting process also gives you time to explore other options and to
make sure that you are not just over-eager but truly interested in
pursuing each match. Chemistry .com provides at least 5 match
suggestions daily so you will never be left without potential
partners to review and contact.
If you begin a relationship or want to take a break from the
world of online dating, you can hide your profile at any time.
Doing so will prevent you from receiving any match suggestions and
will archive all current match suggestions so that you will not be
able to pursue these matches. If you want to hide your profile,
first make sure that you are not interested in any current
suggestions.
Registration
Before sitting down to complete Chemistry.com's member profile,
make sure that you have at least 45 minutes to focus on the task.
But don't be concerned by the length of the registration process -
the questions are extremely interesting and contain a mix of
text-based multiple choice questions and questions that are based
on various graphics and images.
The Chemistry.com registration begins with analytical questions
that are broken down into the following sections:
Step1: Provide a 'snapshot' of yourself (2
pages)
Step2: Self-perception analysis (3 pages)
Step3: Communication Dynamics assessment (4 pages),
which asks questions that don't seem entirely related to
communication, such as what you like to do on a Saturday
night.
Step4: Personal Traits and Preferences section (8
pages)
Step5: Aspects of Identity questions (2 pages)
When the analytical assessment is complete, you will be asked to
answer basic questions about yourself and what you're looking for
in a partner. These questions focus on your appearance, ethnicity,
occupation and other simple questions. You will also be asked to
upload a photo, though you can opt to email it in if you can't
figure out how to upload it directly to your profile. Once your
registration is complete you receive your personality assessment
and will begin receiving match suggestions immediately.
Example
of Personality Assessment
Customer Support
Chemistry.com is one of the few dating sites that offers phone
support as well as email support. A representative will answer your
call between the hours of 9am and 8pm CST from Monday through
Friday. I placed 2 separate phone calls to Chemistry.com. The first
was at 9:05 EST on a Monday morning. After being on hold for 10
minutes I was accidentally disconnected. I tried again at 1:36pm
EST on the same day. This time, I received an immediate response
from a representative who was knowledgeable though slightly abrupt.
She was able to answer my questions quickly and efficiently.
I emailed them at 6:20am on a Sunday morning:
Customer Support Form
I received an automatic response 4 minutes later:
Customer Support Email Response
Although the reponse I received from Chemistry.com's support was
helpful, it was disappointing that a dating service so focused on
the needs of every individual member would provide an automated
response that made me read through several paragraphs of irrelevant
instructions to find the answer to my question.
Compare Chemistry.com's customer
support to other dating sites >>
Summary
I was impressed to see that Chemistry.com's personality
assessment was extremely accurate, and I found it useful that they
provided match suggestions with an explanation of how my
personality could potentially mesh with the personality of a
suggested match. It was rather frustrating that I had to go through
so many steps before I actually got to communicate with other
members on a personal level. Still, Chemistry.com provided
significantly more match suggestions than PerfectMatch and
eHarmony, and most of them were highly relevant.
Positive Features
- Accurate personality assessment
- Useful personality comparison provided with each suggested
match
- Inexpensive pricing as compared with other compatibility
matching services
- Provides matches on a regular basis
- Customer support by phone
Negative Features
- No ability to search for your own match
- The advice section is difficult to find and offers limited
advice
- Email support provides automated responses