VIDA SelectReviews of vidaselect.com

Response from VIDA SelectJan 16, 2025

Hi Jack - Rosalia from Client Success here. Thank you for taking the time to share your experience. The experience you've described doesn't align with our service standards. We haven't been able to fully identify your specific account based on the information provided, which limits our ability to address your concerns in detail. However, I'd like to provide some context about our service and address the points you've raised. The service you purchased is our internal database membership. This includes one proactive search of our database of current and former clients for prospective matches. After evaluating the candidates, we then facilitate a connection if there is mutual interest. Following this initial search, your profile remains available in our database for potential matching for life or until you opt out! This is a significant benefit as new clients join our service regularly. Regarding the specific issues you mentioned: Video calls: We aim to accommodate our clients' schedules and preferences for video or phone calls for a more personal experience. I apologize that this wasn't your experience. Follow-up communication: Our standard practice involves regular updates. The lack of follow-up you experienced is not in line with our usual procedures. Without access to your account details, I cannot investigate what happened in your specific case. Match locations: We aim to provide matches within the specified geographic preferences. However, if we’re unable to provide matches that meet all of your criteria (and vice versa) in a specific location, we may look further afield specifically at matches who’ve noted they’re willing to travel or relocate. Refund policy: While we do have terms of service that outline our refund policy, we always aim to work with our clients to ensure satisfaction. We would very much like the opportunity to address your concerns more thoroughly and potentially find a resolution. If you're willing, please contact me directly at [email protected] with more details about your account. This will allow us to investigate your experience more deeply and work towards a satisfactory outcome. We appreciate your feedback as it helps us identify areas for improvement in our service. We remain committed to providing a high-quality matchmaking experience for all our clients.

Response from VIDA SelectSep 18, 2024

Hi Be G - Rosalia with Client Success here. I'm disappointed to hear about your dissatisfaction, but I can't fix a problem I don't know about! However, I want you to know that we're committed to finding solutions and improving our service for every client. I'd like to invite you to reach out to me directly at [email protected] so we can speak in more detail about your account and I can see what I can do to improve your experience. Looking forward to hearing from you.

Response from VIDA SelectAug 18, 2023

Hi Leslie, Tara your matchmaker here. Thank you for taking the time to share your viewpoint on your experience. Every piece of feedback is invaluable to us, and we strive to ensure our clients always feel heard and understood. I genuinely regret that the service did not meet your expectations. That said, I am pleased we were able to facilitate a date that you said went well! At the end of the day, our approach is not everyone's cup of tea, and for some, placing trust in the process is a challenge. I completely understand. However, there are some specifics you've mentioned that need clarification, since they've been shared on a public platform. The profile that you found objectionable was not a match our team presented to you for approval. You took a screenshot of this particular profile and shared it with me, expressing your intent to report it to the dating app, before we had completed the vetting process. And while I regret that you saw content you personally found objectionable, humor is subjective, as is what someone might consider obscene. In the case of this particular profile, the line of concern (“Not allowed to say I’m Rich, Hung, and Funny, but I can say I’m not bald, bitter, or broke”) could be taken as light-hearted banter by some, while others might find it distasteful. Both reactions are valid. Learning the nuances of your personal tastes and preferences does take time, and our approach to your search is an evolving one. We continuously refine the search based on the feedback we receive, learning more about our clients' preferences as we progress. This iterative process is a cornerstone of how we've successfully matched thousands of clients. Regarding your profile text, our writing team produced several drafts based on your inputs. I even had a call with you where we created a document together, going through what you wanted to express in your profile and noting specific words and sentences you wanted used. The writers then took your requested material and edited it to accommodate the character counts on the dating platforms. It was indeed unexpected to note that some of your criticisms pertained to this new version of your profile. While the vast majority of our clients leave the service satisfied, on rare occasions our approach simply isn’t the right fit for a particular individual. This is precisely why we offer a flexible pay-as-you-go model, with monthly packages rather than long-term contracts. I know our Client Success Manager reached out to you via email, and I was disappointed to see you didn’t respond to her before posting this review. I encourage you to reach out to her, but if not, then I wish you all the best in your search!

Response from VIDA SelectJun 1, 2023

Hi Matthias - Rosalia from Client Success here. I was looking forward to discussing your experience with you after I saw this review go up, and disappointed when you didn't show up for the call we set. As I noted in my email to you at the time, had I known you weren’t happy during your service time, I would have been able to help course-correct. That said, we sent you 11 phone numbers over the two months that you were with us. The majority of them were obtained during Month 2, meaning that the various strategy changes we were implementing already to increase activity were effective. At the onset of our engagement, we allow our clients to choose between us arranging the dates (whenever possible) and getting the match’s phone number. You decided you preferred to receive phone numbers over having dates set up for you, at least in part due to your unpredictable travel schedule. And of course, once we send those over, what happens from there is out of our hands! On average, our clients convert 72% of the phone numbers we obtain for them into dates. So statistically speaking, we would expect you to have around 8 dates! I wish we had known you were having trouble in that area, as your Matchmaker would have offered time with our resident dating coach. Or we could have switched tactics, and started arranging the dates for you instead! You mentioned that the service was slow, and when I took a look over your account, I did find one instance recorded where it took your writer over 24 hours to reply to a message from a match. This is outside of our normal operating procedure and not representative of our service standards, and we did take accountability for that at the time. However, we did end up successfully sending you that match’s phone number! Additionally, after that incident we increased the frequency of messaging on your account overall to be more than sure you wouldn’t see that happen again. With regard to your photos, we agree that they could have been stronger. Your Visual Branding Coordinator did recommend getting started with the photos we had originally to see how they would perform, and in an email on 3/1 you told your Matchmaker “I’m happy with the photo choosing. These would be the photos I would choose, too.” However, after a time of not seeing the results we were looking for, your Matchmaker then requested additional photos from you on more than one occasion, and you never sent any new options to us. I think had you sent us additional images to consider, this likely would have significantly increased the results we were able to produce for you. Your review mentions that some of the women we were communicating with were “fake accounts.” However, I was able to confirm with your Matchmaker that you were also selecting women for us to communicate with. Despite our bringing to your attention red flags about some of these profiles you selected, such as having only one photo included, your instruction to us was to continue to communicate with them anyway. In general, I do think we could have been more proactive about impressing on you the importance of new picture options in order to strengthen your photo lineup, although as mentioned already, your Matchmaker did email you about needing more photos at least twice. I would still love the chance to connect with you over the phone, so please do reach out to me via email so we can talk about what VIDA might be able to do for you to provide you with more value than you’ve found so far. - Rosalia

Response from VIDA SelectFeb 22, 2023

Hi Wade, Rosalia from Client Success here. We exchanged a couple of emails while you were in service, and I reached out to touch base after I saw this posted. I’m disappointed I haven’t heard back from you! When I started looking into your accounts, I did find some unusual team communication and IT issues. That leads me to qualify your experience as an anomaly, like you said, and unfortunately not representative of the high quality of service we pride ourselves on providing. I’ll address your concerns as you laid them out here: Regarding your results, we were in the process of setting up a date with a woman from Bumble and had recently asked another woman for her phone number. She hadn’t responded yet when your service ended. With the woman from Bumble, for example, we were in the middle of some back and forth with her about what time would work for both of you. I’m hopeful when you took over that conversation you two were able to agree on a time! As far as the price point, we are actually one of the more economical higher-end matchmaking services out there. The industry standard is usually a few thousand dollars per blind date, with a contract of at least 6 months. We allow our clients a flexible month-to-month subscription as well as the ability to approve or decline the matches we make for them. With regards to pro photography and dating platform add-ons, part of our job is to make best practice recommendations for what clients can do to increase the likelihood of attracting the kind of matches they’re most interested in. This is all actionable advice you can continue to use, even after you’ve left the service! We recommend only using a 4-6 photo lineup on the various platforms for ALL of our clients, choosing the best options from the shoot and candids submitted. It's unlikely for any client that more than 5 pro photos will be chosen for the final lineup, as we prefer a mix of pro & candid images. And you get to keep and use all of the pictures included in your pro photo package! Regarding the dating platform upgrades, some platforms aren’t even operational without a subscription. For the optional boosts, we have found over the years of tracking client performance that clients with paid subscriptions typically see better results than clients without. So I don’t think this is really a fair critique, but I can certainly see why you might have included it given your other frustrations. Third, your experience. Our processes are based on over 13 years of experience and observing what’s worked and what hasn’t, and what we currently have in place is highly effective for getting our clients out on dates. That said, I unfortunately found some communication breakdown and lack of proactivity on our side. Some of the messaging delays were primarily due to a lack of timely communication from your Matchmaker. For this we sincerely apologize, and we’re addressing what happened internally. Finally, we project 10 days between the start of service when you speak to your Matchmaker and when we are able to take your newly optimized profiles “live”. For our clients who get photo shoots, the setup time can vary given the photographer and client schedules lining up. In your case, things were moving a little slower given we were onboarding you over the holidays. Plus, as I understand, you were waiting on some online clothing purchases to arrive and had your car in the shop. Life! I do see that the edits done to your photos took longer than usual and this was a preventable delay on our side, as well as some unusual issues around your account verifications which I know were frustrating and our IT team has since been able to troubleshoot and correct for moving forward. I agree your experience wasn’t representative of what most of our clients love about us, and I’d still like the chance to talk to you about what we can do for you. Feel free to write me back so we can connect over the phone and discuss this further!

Response from VIDA SelectApr 15, 2022

Hi Sean, Rosalia from VIDA’s Customer Service Team here. I’m so disappointed that you felt you had a bad experience with us overall, especially since we arranged a date for you with one of your matches! While it only happens rarely, there is the occasional client where the service just isn’t a good fit. And that’s one of the reasons we don’t require long-term contracts like most other matchmaking companies do. I understand your feelings of frustration, but because you’ve posted in a public forum I would like to address a few statements that simply aren’t accurate. For instance, you wrote that “not a single person replied to VIDA’s openers” but that isn’t true. Not only did we generate response, we got you a date! And regarding how the auto-billing works, you say here that “I never indicated I was ok with this” in regards to being billed for your second month. But your Matchmaking Advisor explained how the billing works before your service began. And in the email he sent you introducing you to your matchmaker on 11/30, he put it in writing. As you will see if you find that email, it stated, “Remember that the service will be billed automatically on January 13th and the 13th of each month thereafter, but you can put it on hold at any time or change packages simply by sending Abi a quick email.” And you also gave permission for the auto-renewal in the legal agreement that you signed on 12/18: “The Client authorizes VIDA to charge the card the Client has on file each month until the Client cancels the Client’s use of the services…” Although the signed legal agreement also clearly states that “VIDA does not offer partial or full refunds to the Client for not achieving specific results, nor for any other reason”, we didn’t “refuse” to refund you. We gave you a partial refund of $224. You were also refunded the $25 travel fee after our billing error, and I do apologize for that mistake. As you said, you should not have been charged the travel fee and we’ve since made that right for you. I’m sorry you feel as though we were “lighting your money on fire.” I can assure you that’s not the case. If we did that, we could hardly have stayed in business since 2009! We are in the process of reviewing everything that occurred with your accounts to see what we should have communicated better, as that is not the perception we want any client to leave the service with. I know you wouldn’t let us swipe on your behalf, and I do want to reiterate here what I shared with you via email. We employ proven strategies in our swiping selections, patterns and timing, and we have seen that it does make a difference in results! I’m confident that the results would have been better if you would have left everything entirely in the hands of our team of experts. I was surprised to see that you mentioned the 30 hours of set up time in your review, as I thought we had cleared up that misunderstanding in our email exchange! We used 30 hours during your first month, but that was the total amount of time spent on ALL activities - not just the setup. As far as the delays in communication you mentioned, I’m disappointed you still feel that way. When we talked about this before, I had let you know your Dating Specialist performed twice daily checks during our standard messaging times. And you even acknowledged in an email you sent on 1/21 that you were “glad the writer has been following the procedure” and that “it does look like they were falling within your description.” I’m also not sure why you would write that we didn’t look at your photos for over a week. Your photoshoot was on 12/15, we received the photos on 12/17 and began the photo analysis right away. This involved going through 102 photos and choosing the strongest 13. Your initial selection was approved on 12/22, and the photo ranking process was completed on 12/26. As was explained in the email you received from Stella in the Photography Department, photo analysis typically takes 7 to 10 days, and we completed yours in 9 (even with the holidays!). I’m sorry you’re suspicious of the TrustPilot reviews - this is one of the most reputable review platforms there is. You are correct that January is one of online dating’s biggest months - and that’s exactly why there is a surge of positive reviews for our service right now. On average, it takes 2-3 months of service for a client to meet someone special, and many of our happy clients shared positive reviews when they left the service in March! Your experience was not the typical one, and I speak for the whole team when I say we do care about you and we want to see you happy. I’ve reached out to you via email to see if we can set up a time to connect and talk about a resolution here that’s fair to both sides. Hope to hear from you soon!

Response from VIDA SelectJan 20, 2022

Nick, as your matchmaker, I understand you’re upset that none of your matches turned into dates for you. I’m disappointed too! But I was so surprised and sad to see you called us a “scam operation” in your updated review, especially after we worked so hard to make things right for you. After you declined our offer to give you a full refund, we genuinely wanted to turn your experience around. I put together a team with some of our most seasoned team members, including one of our veteran writers! We made your profiles and photo lineup as strong as they could possibly be while still representing you in an authentic way, and provided complimentary service for several months. Which, as you can imagine, was not an inexpensive undertaking on our part. Do you truly believe that’s how a “scam operation” would have approached this unfortunate situation? I know you feel it’s your duty to share your experience with others, and I respect that. That’s precisely what online reviews are for. VIDA has helped so many people make meaningful connections - 99% of our clients get dates, and 78% of them leave our service because they want to focus on getting to know one (or several) of their matches better. I’m sorry we were not able to do that for you, too. We tried everything we could think of to make it work, including multiple bios and 7 different photo lineups. But there is no matchmaking service out there with a 100% success rate, because it’s simply not possible. No matchmaker can guarantee chemistry or change someone’s mind if the interest is not mutual. And in our case, we allow our clients to reject as many of their matches as they want based on their photos—while nearly everyone else in the industry exclusively sets up blind dates. If blind dates were our protocol too, we would have easily gotten you out on dates with compatible matches. I know you felt you weren’t being overly selective, but you set the bar quite high in a city that’s notoriously difficult for single men to date in, and then you rejected a LOT of compatible matches based on their photos. Which is totally fine, but what really surprised and confused me was that you indicated to our founder that you rejected them because they were “twice your size.” I looked back at the photos of each and every one of them, and that couldn't be further from the truth. You wrote that the process was “not great for you mentally,” and I understand how hard dating apps can be on self-esteem for some individuals. In that you’re very much not alone! Many of our clients say this is one of the reasons they sign up for our service, so that we can shoulder that burden for them. One recent client told me he was so relieved to have my help because doing it on his own “is like death by a thousand cuts!” I love what I do here at VIDA and I’m really, really sorry I was unable to make better results happen for you. Your experience wasn’t the typical one, but I hope if nothing else you can see that I was personally committed to doing everything I could. My team and I put in significantly more hours than you purchased trying to make this work for you because we care! :-) If there’s ever anything I can do to help you, you know how to get in touch. Ín the meantime, I wish you the best of luck in your search. -Vivi

Response from VIDA SelectJan 20, 2022

Hi Shantel, Rosalia from the Customer Success Team here. I’m disappointed that you cancelled the phone call we had scheduled on 1/15! I understand just getting “emails and no call" made you frustrated during the profile writing process, and we addressed that concern by scheduling a call with me and one with your new matchmaker as well. It’s unfortunate that you ultimately didn’t take us up on either of those opportunities to connect. I do hope you see that in all emails the team has exchanged with you, we’ve worked hard to acknowledge your concerns and make you feel heard, while still trying to move the process forward. Modern dating can be an emotional journey for many, and I understand it’s not always easy to hand over the reins of your search to someone else! In the rare case a client isn’t happy with their profiles, we are always happy to make edits as necessary until you feel they represent you accurately. We did this in your case as well, even providing a brand new photo lineup and offering a fresh start on your profiles, both at no cost to you! You had mentioned there was a specific example of a profile style on our blog that really resonated with you, and that you wanted us to emulate. It was really disappointing that you didn’t respond to our repeated requests to clarify which specific profile example it was, as you’ll find countless examples on our blog that span a variety of effective styles! A solid reference of what you like would be very helpful. We are looking forward to advancing to the searching, screening and messaging phase of our process ASAP so we can start getting you on dates with some amazing men! Since you told me you won’t be ready to unpause your account until March 30th, I guess that will have to wait for now. We’ll be here for you then or whenever you’re ready to pick everything back up where we left off! -Rosalia