This is a question that often crops up when potential clients make contact, and we don’t have to delve into it that deeply for an answer. There have been some troubling times in recent years for online dating and dating apps, that never seem to really abate, and without a doubt, there are many people out there who really don’t want to use the services any longer. In their eyes, it is too dangerous, and the risks that it carries are just too great. But for those under 50, many have not been aware of the alternatives on offer, until now.
1. The Development of the Dating Industry
Online dating hit the UK around 1997 when Kiss.com became the first company to launch this kind of service, initially being SinglesNet.com, and were then followed by Match.com around a year later. Both were groundbreaking dating sites and quickly enjoyed lots of success, eventually becoming a part of the same company when Match Group acquired them in 2008, which was really the peak time for online dating and meeting potential partners online.
I guess the biggest problem was always going to be the level of automation involved in online dating, as to maximise profits there has to be just the bare minimum human involvement and contact, so ongoing customer service was going to be quite a rare commodity considering the level of end users, and that lack of human involvement may well be the thing that is most off putting for many people.
It was the same when smartphone dating apps took over as the most fashionable way of meeting in the years since 2012, as again, the sheer volume of users precluded the companies running the service from offering even the most basic of human service to their clients. Automation was very much seen as being the way forward, ‘the Holy Grail’ of providing an online service, and quite frankly, the more automation the better is the philosophy of most online and app providers.
2. Online and Dating App Issues and Their Declining Appeal
Gradually, most users, including many younger ones, have come to the conclusion that almost total automation is not what they want and realised quite quickly that some good old fashioned customer service is actually one of their strongest preferences. Since that heady day in 2013, when more than 7 million UK-based daters were online together on New Years Day, there has been a sharp decline in numbers. Many people realised that they were actually looking for something a little more rounded and customer focused, including many younger daters.
In addition to the lack of customer service and the lack of advice and guidance that is also often looked for, the decline in numbers has been accentuated by the bad publicity in the press of internet-based dating that is never far away from the public eye. A recent article from The Independent talks about the “dehumanisation” that dating apps inflict upon users — labelled: Sad, paranoid and still single: How the dating app destroyed us all.
In the UK, the bad publicity stemmed from breaches of the Data Protection Act by the ‘Big 4’ dating companies for not controlling and protecting client data properly which resulted in warning letters from the Information Commission in early 2013. This was then followed by the filming of ‘Tainted Love’ a special investigation by the BBC’s Panorama into the UK’s biggest dating company Cupid PLC, based in Edinburgh, which highlighted many anomalies including huge numbers of fake profiles that had been created by Cupid’s own staff to target new joiners and get them to pay.
If you add in that online dating related crime is one of the fastest growing crime categories of all in the UK, and that the number of fake identities online is now standing at more than 3 million in the UK alone. In addition to this, more than £300,000,000 having been misappropriated by fraudsters in the last year, it just means that for many trying to meet partners on the internet, whether that is through online sites or smartphone apps, it has become just too risky for most people to try or to continue with, including many younger users.
A Secure Alternative to Online Dating: Personal Matchmaking
Young professionals in particular have begun to flood back in droves to something many singles used in the past – personal matchmaking, and using your own dating expert in the form of an executive matchmaker to help and support you to find love in a safer and less risky way. This is through companies like us at The County Register, but somehow that can sometimes feel a bit like one of the best kept secrets in dating, particularly for the younger generation who have very much grown up with meeting people through online sites or dating apps, but who now want something a little different.
Sometimes people are a little shocked that we have been around for as long as we have. The County Register had been founded by two young mums, Heather Heber Percy and Geraldine Turner way back in 1983, when they met every day on the School Run in rural Shropshire and discussed founding a dating service for lonely country people and the farming community. It became an instant success. Being large enough to offer an excellent choice of partner, but also small enough to care and to do their job of matching clients thoroughly and skilfully, using their own thought process and intuition to match, rather than relying on just an algorithm. That is why we are still around half a lifetime later, and Heather Heber Percy is still guiding the ship, as a matchmaker.
1. A Truly High-Quality Professional Dating Service
We are profoundly different to the ‘DIY’ dating that is provided by online sites and dating apps, and that is largely built around the fact that ours is a service genuinely built on the human aspect of what we do. We only apply a minimum level of automation, which in turn means that all members are treated as an individual and our approach will be slightly different in each case to reflect that individualism.
Industry insiders tell us that our matchmakers, Karen Hyde and Lucy Hart, are the best in the business. Both are still guided and mentored by the great Heather Heber Percy, which enables us to offer a comprehensive and detailed dating service that gets results, successfully matching more than 50 people each week and potentially changing their lives forever.
Right from your very first contact with us, you will be able to see The County Register Difference. Our phones are answered in the UK from 9am until 9pm every day, even at the weekend, and on many bank holidays. Our Membership Advisers, Tracey and Zoe, are both lovely people to deal with and without any obligation whatsoever will give you an overview of our service and a friendly chat about how it could work for you — but only with the aim of putting you in an informed position. There is never any pressure for you to move forward and join until you are sure it is for you.
2. The County Register Client Base
Over the years we have built an extensive database of clients, and we have the largest database of personally interviewed and carefully vetted members in the country. Often, our members are from an affluent background and work in a professional, business or academic role — many are of independent means. We are also happy to offer our membership services to the active retired — people who still have a determination to live life to the full, and even though the may have suffered a bereavement or divorce in the past, they want to continue getting the very most that they can from their lives, and having the right quality of partner is an important consideration for them.
Matchmaking at The County Register: A Safer Way to Date
With crime rates linked to online dating sites and apps on the rise, along with a surge in fake profiles, scams, and romance fraud at record levels, who would want to take the risk of meeting others this way?
We know and understand that it is our role to put safety at the very top of our agenda, and keeping clients as safe as possible always must be our most critical consideration. This is done through the following within The County Register:
- Personally interviewing every potential client, either in their own home or at our own office.
- Utilising our own in-house authentication and verification system to check and verify their address and who resides there.
- Checking for any involvement in crime, particularly fraud and money crime.
- Also ensuring that they are solvent and do not have negative financial indicators such as County Court Judgements or Bankruptcy Orders recorded against them, which might of course show that they are looking to join for the wrong reasons.
If you would like to know more about the truly comprehensive and detailed award-winning matchmaking service that we offer - which we are confident surpasses any other dating service in the UK - then please contact our friendly dating experts today. Or, if you’d prefer, you can make an appointment to visit, meet our team, and allow us to position why we believe The County Register service might be for you. We look forward to hearing from you soon!
