Yesterday, BBC’s Watchdog aired coverage of Match.com’s subscription cancellation policy, which is apparently causing difficulty for numerous customers looking to leave the online dating service.

Immediately after the show money.co.uk’s Head of Search covered the subject on his personal blog, knowing friends who have had similar problems in suspending their Match.com accounts.

After providing the cancellation telephone number for his readers, he went on to ask for any feedback from people who have found themselves in a similar situation. Two comments followed – one which vehemently backed up the sentiment of the blog post, and one from ‘Ruth’ which claimed complete satisfaction with Match.com’s service.

Closer inspection, however, puts Ruth’s intentions into the firing line. Via Wordpress’ admin system we can see the IP address which the commenter posted from:

And from there, the general information yielded from a IP lookup is very telling:

In conclusion, it appears that some proportion of Match.com’s users are experiencing the same difficulty in cancelling as highlighted by Watchdog and this post. It is entirely possible that Match.com are aware of this, and could be posing as ‘satisfied customers’ in a questionable attempt at public relations.

Of course, not everyone believes the allegations of Match.com being deceptive in their business practices. However, with the evidence stacking up against them we’re sure that by now the doubters are in the minority.

An update...

A spokesperson from Match.com has been in touch with the following:

“We’ve looked into this and you’re right – Ruth is one of our junior employees. She’s passionate about match, not least because she met her partner on the site, and she wrote the comment off her own back as she wanted to stick up for the company.

"We would stress this was not something we knew about or asked her to do and we’ve reminded her and all other staff that they should never leave comments in social media without making a clear disclosure about their connection to the company.

"This was not a PR-driven action, it was one person who had their heart in the right place and wanted to defend the company.”