Finding your one true love in this day and age can be a costly affair, especially if you’ve got a matchmaker doing the searching for you.

In this case, it can go truly wrong for some women who are desperate to meet Mr Right.

Take Tereza Burki (pictured below), for example: a divorced London financier who was unlucky in love, she turned to Seventy-Thirty, a Knightsbridge-based elite matchmaking service, for help.

Now she’s suing them for her £12 600 (R226 000) annual fee, accusing them of failing to connect her with the man of her dreams, The Telegraph has revealed:

In a further twist, the agency – which takes its name from the ‘70/30’ work-life balance of its high-flying clientele – is counter-suing the 47-year-old Dutch mother-of-three for defamation, after she allegedly labelled its service a “scam” online.

You might be thinking Burki is sort of getting her just desserts for coughing up a lot of moola for a matchmaking service.

Thing is, she’s not the only who’ll go to those lengths to find a new beau:

Each year, millions of people shell out thousands of pounds to elite matchmaking agencies for access to an exclusive pool of singles who they hope are equally serious about finding love – and have the means to pay for it. It is just about as far as you can get from the likes of Tinder, whose users pay nothing to swipe through a continuum of up-for-it men and women.

In some cases a financial gamble on love pays off. In exchange for their cash, the (generally wealthy) singleton can typically expect to receive a service that takes account of their personality, preferences and lifestyle and matches them with a suitable partner – or at least a range of potentially suitable partners – in a similar socio-economic bracket.

Other times, however, these singletons get fokol for their money:

[Burki’s] claim echoes those of other unhappy female customers, who claim matchmaking agencies have an eligible men drought – and sign up unsuitable suitors at reduced rates simply to make up the numbers or, even more gallingly, put them on the books for free.

It doesn’t paint a pretty picture of these agencies, which make a ton of money off their well-off, yet unsatisfied, clientele.

As for the ‘eligible men’, some of them aren’t exactly boyfriend material, like ex-QVC exec Darlene Daggett (pictured below) alleges:

Last year, ex-QVC exec Darlene Daggett, 63, reached a financial settlement with exclusive Californian dating service Kelleher International, after spending R2 million signing up for “CEO level” membership.

Documents filed by her lawyer in a federal court included the allegation that the ‘highly screened’ matches “included men who were married, mentally unstable, physically ill, pathological liars, serial Lotharios, stalkers, convicted felons, and men unwilling or unable to travel and/or the subject of professional sanctions.”

Oh dear, that’s a questionable pool of suitors to choose from.

So how come women – and the occasional man – still choose to sign up to matchmaking agencies for help instead of looking at other options like Tinder or Facebook?

Or, you know, trying to get to know someone face-to-face?

Graham Jones, an internet psychologist, said:

The person who’s spending lots of money is obviously hoping that’s going to provide them with the person of their dreams, and are assuming the service they get for that is going to be much better than what they would get from a normal dating service or app.

The problem? The dating industry is largely unregulated, and no one knows for sure why all this money is required for some dating services.

Anyway, the best advice is to learn to love yourself before you love somebody else.

Read the full article here.

[source:telegraph]