What had been announced as an improvement and a make-over of the site in an initial mail on May 15, turned out to be a hold-up for Connecting Singles members in English speaking countries.
Both sending and receiving messages are charged with a hefty monthly price tag.
International members are dumped alltogether. Connecting Singles no longer supports customers worldwide. All of Asia, continental Europe, Latin America including the Carribean and Mexico and the African continent (except for South-Africa) are left in the cold. Perhaps I should rather summarize the (English speaking) countries where members still may continue to use Connecting Singles:
- Australia,
- Canada,
- Ireland,
- New Zealand,
- South Africa,
- The United Kingdom,
- The US
Will customers over there be happy? Nope! Connecting Singles (CS) dropped all possible social interaction: gone forever are the forums, blogs, video, music, books and movies sections. We have definitely witnessed a rude awakening in a hostile dating environment.
CS simultaneously announced millions of new users (supposedly in the countries still serviced). This is only possible through a merger with another dating site. CS thereby contributes the good reputation it had so far. The other partner brought in its large user base (and questionable practices).
Anyhow, since forums and blogs have been eliminated, an orchestrated revolt on CS itself will not happen. But it probably won't take long for dissatisfied users to ventilate their anger on social media.
My experience
After being excluded for being European, I managed to subscribe pretending to be British. (You need a VPN, which you can easily set to London UK for example). Providing the area code of a former British girl friend worked out well. I filled out my profile (copied some text and one picture from an exported and safeguarded old CS profile).
An avalanche of profile views and favourite selections followed. Messages also followed, but these can only be read by paying members. 'Free members' only see a truncated title line.
Since all customers are aware of these shortcomings, quite a few messages show a mobile number for Whatsapp at the start of their title. Desperate Housewives revisited ...
The good old CS used to advise against providing contact details soon after starting a chat. Members could even be excluded for asking for an e-mail address in an opening message.
Seeing my old account cancelled and all content gone, being cut off from domestic and worldwide contacts, a paying subscription to CS simply isn't even worth considering. I cancelled as soon as I figured out what CS had deteriorated to.
... as for the make-over
Dear ConnectingSingles UserWe’re just a few days from the launch of the brand new ConnectingSingles site - a significantly enhanced dating experience to help you find love.
In case you missed our previous announcement, here’s a quick recap:
Next week, we’ll be launching the updated version of ConnectingSingles, featuring a fresh look, millions of new members and enhanced user experience.Here's how it will work...As part of the switch over to the new site, most of your profile information and photos will be moved automatically, ready for you to start using the site straight away. Unfortunately, with these updates, some of your saved content, including recipes, blogs and poems, will be lost. We understand that this may be disappointing for some of you, but we believe that the benefits of these updates far outweigh any inconvenience.To ensure you don't lose anything important, we encourage you to log in to your account ASAP and save any content you wish to keep before the transition takes place.This way you’ll have it ready to share with the new members on our new site.
Five important notes with regard to the migration:(1) Users residing outside the UK, USA, Ireland, Australia, Canada, South Africa, or New Zealand will not be transferred to our new ConnectingSingles platform. Please ensure to save any content and share contact details with anyone you want to stay in contact with before the migration, as your account will not be moved.(2) Please be aware that accounts marked (as of a few days ago) as 'cancelled' and thus hidden from other users will not be transferred to the new site. We are exclusively migrating active/public profiles.(3) Please be aware that any changes you make to your profile in the next few days (while we are migrating the data) will not take effect on the new platform. Once we formally launch the new platform, you'll be able to again make changes to your profile.(4) If you're currently a premium paid user on the old site, you will receive an appropriate refund in the next few days. Then if desired you can upgrade on the new platform with our new credit card processor.(5) If you want to fully delete your account, please wait until the migration is complete then log in and request that action from the customer service team. We cannot delete accounts currently on the old site because the data migration is already underway.We understand that change can be daunting, but we want to assure you that these updates are geared towards creating a better, more fulfilling experience for all our members.You still have a few days to login to your current profile and save anything you’d like to keep. If you haven’t already done so - please do this asap.What’s Next?You can continue to log in and use our existing site as normal for now.When the launch happens, if your account was migrated, you will receive an email from our new ConnectingSingles platform (the name and URL is staying the same).The email will contain the simple instructions to login to the new site, so please keep it safe.Thank you for being a part of our online community. We can't wait for you to experience the exciting changes we have in store!See you soon, on our new site!The ConnectingSingles Team
and for the international customer base:
The opening screen has a vastly different look than what we were used to for CS. But when trying the 'sign-up' button (because log-on no longer works: you were dropped, remember), following message shows:
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