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From: cate3@parcvax.Xerox.COM (Henry P. Cate III)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: dating services
Message-ID: <112@parcvax.Xerox.COM>
Date: Wed, 8-Oct-86 16:28:56 EDT
Article-I.D.: parcvax.112
Posted: Wed Oct  8 16:28:56 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 11-Oct-86 01:09:54 EDT
References: <331@petrus.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: Xerox PARC
Lines: 33
Summary: Personal experience


[does the line eater need a date?]

     About two years ago a "dating serivce" made me a pitch.
The idea sounded interesting and I figured "What the heck."  It
was educational, but there were some problems.  
     The game this company played was a simple test which would
get an approximate personality profile.  There were a total of
four catagories, each with a scale from 1 to 10.  For example
say someone really enjoys sports, was working on a PhD, a bit
shy, and attends church four times a week.  They would go
through their files and try to match him/her up with others of
roughly similar personalities.  Now a person could spend time
with someone where the chances were better they would get
along.  Or so the theory said.
     The two problems I had with this one experience were the 
pressure and the promise.  This saleman was very very pushy, 
and indignant when I suggested I needed time to think about
joining.  The big package was something like six hundred
dollars for three years and six new names each month.  The
smaller package deal was four hundred dollars for two years.
The math behind the promise lead me to figure they must be
signing up two or three hundred people a month.  (Assuming
random distribution within the four catagories and overlapping
by only one step leads to roughly twenty groups of six gals and
six guys.)  And from the sounds of what this saleman had said
earlier they weren't doing that well.
     After all this I decided not to use the services of this
particular company, and never got around to trying again.
     Have a good day.

     Henry III
     cate3.pa@xerox.com