CLICK2HOUSTON — Oct 7 — A Houston-area woman said she was told to date clients at a dating agency. Paul paid nearly $4,000, but said he only got dates with staff members. The Houston-area Better Business Bureau has received 200 complaints on Houston Dating Services in the past year. Paul has moved onto another local service –one he's happy with, so far.
The full article was originally published at Click2Houston, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: This is a real world dating agency. Often they have a hard time finding enough members in certain age ranges. Sending in agency employees for dating members is bad form. They need to turn down clients or comp them at least if they can't support their desired age range.
This hit my desk today too Mark. While the story may have happened, what a horrible article with no credibility. They not only don’t mention the ex-employees name, they don’t even mention a brand name. That is terrible journalism and probably only posted on their site because it wasn’t a strong enough story to run on TV. It seems unbelievable to me based on the operators I know running offices in Houston.
Horrifyingly bad form, if true.
However, I think you need to go a step further: Online sites have either horribly low or horribly unbalanced numbers of members in most age ranges for most locales. They ought to either discount memberships in those areas, or warn potential subscribers.
My name is Robert Perkins. I have been in business here in Houston since 1981. I am the owner of the Houston office of Great Expectations and have been, since its inception. We were most certainly not the dating service being denegrated by KPRC Channel 2, as Great Expectations is not a matchmaking service and does not “fix up members.” However, with that being said, I am extremely upset by the comments made in this story by Dan Parsons, head of the BBB in Houston, about dating services in general being one step away from prostitution. Also, by not mentioning the name of the alleged dating service and saying that there are hundreds of complaints on the company, I believe Dan intentionally leads the reader or listener of this story to think that all dating services in Houston have a terrible track record with customers and have no respect or consideration for their membership. We all know that this is simply not true and accurate.
It is the policy of the BBB in Houston Texas not to allow ANY dating service into their membership, regardless of how they operate. I have fought with Dan over this snub for 20+ years to no avail. I somewhat understood his stance twenty four years ago when video-dating services were new and somewhat contraversial, but today the dating service industry is as mainstream as fast food chains like McDonalds.
Our dispute with Dan and the BBB even came to the attention of the Wall Street Journal in an article written in 1997. Over the years it seems that no matter how hard we at GE try to work with the BBB in solving consumer complaints, in my eyes, Dan goes out of his way to make negative, biased comments about GE and all other dating services in Houston whenever he is given the opportunity by the media.
As I mentioned before, I have been in business in Houston for 24 years, and during that time, Dan Parsons has had what I can only describe as an archaic idea of what a dating service is. In this interview Dan alleges that dating services are one step down from prostitution!!
The story also quotes Dan as saying there have been over 200 complaints on Houston dating services during the last year. The last time I checked our status at the BBB a few weeeks ago, Great Expectations, Together and Its Just Lunch, the major off-line dating services in Houston, had nowhere near this number of complaints. I think the number may have been around 30 during the past year, between the three services. Where did the rest of these supposed complaints come from??
Personally, I do not believe the accuracy of any of this report by Channel 2 KPRC. I believe the Channel 2 news reporter, Amy Davis, who did this story, took too much information on “faith” and did not thoroughly check the facts of the annomyous informant in the report; information provided by the former employee and the comments made by Dan Parsons of the Houston BBB.
Since no particular service was mentioned in this report, I believe the story leads people to infer that many or all Houston dating services have no morals, lots of complaints, and do unthinkable acts to stay in business. As much as I do not love my competitors here in Houston, I simply do not believe the accuracy of this story. As written, this story hurts the image of all dating services!
I would love to know how I can challenge KPRC and the BBB in Houston to reveal the source of their claims, including the name of the dating service supposedly involved and the name of the inside informant, and also challenge Dan Parsons’ claim of 200+ complaints. If KPRC and Dan were certain of their claims, why not name the service accused? None of our businesses are ever complaint-free, but the way this story is written it makes all dating services look amoral and dishonest. I believe that Dan Parson is making his own judgements, criticizing all dating services and their owners because he does not “morally” approve of the services we offer. To the best of my knowledge, Houston is the only center in the Great Expectations family being denied membership to the local BBB just because it is a “dating service”. Why does the Houston BBB get to decide what types of businesses can or can not be members? I have always insisted to Dan that the public would be better served if we were allowed to be a member of the BBB.
Unfortunately in the end, I believe that to see the comments made by Dan Parsons as anything other than expressions of a personal agenda against dating services in general would be as erroneous as his claims against the dating service industry.
Robert Perkins
Houston, Texas