Nyminutedating.com review: No authenticity 26

This Company has been writing Fake Reviews for themselves on Yelp.

I spoke to the customer with the above complaint. She had emailed us after already submitting her complaint to complaintsboard.com. I believe we may have resolved some of the issues that we had, and we invited her to attend any future event of her choice at no charge. I basically explained to her that the event she attended was an especially big event with 50 men and 50 women, and the event started late because it took a lot of time to sign everyone in. She expected her dates to be 5 minutes based on the overall literature on our website. While, 90.0% of our events consist of dates which last 5 minutes each, since this event was especially big (it was advertised on our site as a pre-party speed dating event as it was followed by a singles party), each speed date was actually 2 minutes, and this was specified in the event details page of this particular event. Nevertheless, we invited this customer to a regular speed dating event where she would be able to meet up to 15 dates for 5-minutes each. Unfortunately, the customer declined our invitation.

I checked the match card of the friend that she said that she should have matched with. He did not circle her name, and therefore that is the reason why they did not match. He also did not sign the line giving us permission to send his information to anyone. That is the reason he wasn't sent an email with his results. I scanned her friend's match card and emailed it to her as proof. I asked this customer to submit a new comment admitting her mistake in this point, and I am glad that she did so.

We have implemented many changes to our website and events due to the comments here, although we believe we can just as easily and readily help a customer who contacts us directly. Since the previous comments we have done a color code change on our events schedule so that people can easily differentiate between our speed dating events and our singles parties. And in regards to these last comments, we have also been working on a matching system that will allow people to login to our site and pick their matches themselves after the event. This customer's comments have further proved to us how necessary this system would be, and we plan to roll it out for use in the next couple of weeks.

Hah. Well said "Better Event Promoter." Hungover people rushing to work on Monday definitely make sure to send thank you notes the next day for a party they paid to attend.

And, for the record, the bartenders at Slate told me that they had hosted a singles party through a different company there the night before with an even bigger turnout (to be expected when an event takes place Sat vs. Sun night, but if you're going to make grandiose claims...).

Yah, 100 out of 800 came from Groupon using the same math that you used to calculate you got "hundreds" of thank yous. Experienced minds know better.

We are a singles events company. We do speed dating, but we also do singles parties, as well as other types of events. FYI, over 800 people attended our event, under 100 came from the one-deal-a-day website. So regardless, by many standards it was the biggest singles party during the Vday weekend. The one-day-deal was not just for the party; it was also for any speed dating event on our site. Therefore, in the highlights of the offer it include features of the party as well as features of our regular speed dating events. That is what caused the confusion. The members who complained chose a singles party expecting speed dating, when all along speed dating was not a part of the event. It was a clear on our site that it was a party with no speed dating to be expected. However, we understand, based on the message on the one-deal-a-day site, why some members would think it included speed dating. We haven't said that it was an unreasonable assumption. We have said that we will make amends to anyone who misunderstood the message. We are happy to let any of these members attend an upcoming event at no charge. Keep in mind that before this party we had relatively very few remarks about us on this type of site. Each remark has been made by people who bought their tickets on the one-deal-a-day site, so please understand that the literature about our Vday party vs. our speed dating events was not very clear on that site, and members who have contact us directly with their concerns have received tickets to an upcoming speed dating event of their choice at no charge. Thanks for the feedback.

And, by the way, your company is called "Minute Dating", your Groupon shows a picture of people speed dating and talks about 15 five-minute dates, and you had a speed dating event on the same night at the same location. Doesn't it seem obvious why these people thought they were going to speed dating?

Dude, you had the biggest V-Day party (if you did) b/c you cheated by using Groupon. Anyone can do that. Try doing it on your merit.

We have sent a total of three emails to you (none of which consisted of pages of content). We sent one email letting you know that we saw your comment and wished you would contact us directly so we could talk and come up with a solution. The second email we sent was an explanation of the event you signed up for and how and why you misunderstood our event. The third and final email was in response to you asking us to remove any identifiable info about you. As we said, 1) there is no info here that could identify you. 2) Once something is published on complaintsboard.com it cannot be erased. 3) if you feel your username is identifiable, then you should change your user name on complaintsboard.com.

As we have offered to help you, and you have refused, we will no longer we replying to any of your statements.

City Girl and I are 2 different customers complaining here. I am not crazy, and only posted 1 paragraph about my experience, only to receive pages upon pages of emails and comments harassing me from this company. My only point made was the services I received were not what I was told they would be, and that a dating company, who should pride itself on anonymity, then posted my name in a public forum as a way to try to embarrass or expose me, they took my name from their own records and posted it here. Extremely unprofessional and then told me they are going to sue me for libel for my 1 paragraph post about my experience, which was nothing but the truth in what I dealt with that evening. If I had been the only person to think it was a speed dating event I would have thought the whole thing silly, but EVERY single person I spoke with that night thought they were doing speed dating not bar dating. This was a miscommunication by the company, and by their own rules they only exchange personal information if there is a match, which they did not follow here. They have made a bigger deal out of this situation than anything I could have ever imagined, and I wonder if teenagers are running the company over there, if you could see the emails they sent to me you would wonder the same. This situation is done for me, they have wasted enough of my time, if they want to sue me, so be it, I only spoke the truth in my opinion about my own experience with them.

The reason I've chosen to post in a public forum is because I think other people deserve to know what your parties/events are really like. I lamented the lack of reviews when I made my decision to purchase the groupon because I felt I was going into it a little blind. There isn't much of anything you can do to "help" -- I don't want to attend another event, and I'm not penny pinching enough to demand a refund. While you did not, in my opinion, live up to your promises, I still did attend the event. It's kind of like ordering a disappointing meal at a restaurant -- if you eat the food, you still have to pay for it, but might consider complaining to the maitre'd. I only hope that you'll take some of my suggestions to heart and work on improving the level of organization. I'll leave it to the readers to weigh whether they trust the truthfulness of my posts.

It's meaningful that you at least care enough to defend yourself so passionately, but many of the things you say support my criticisms. You talk a lot about what Slate has to offer. I agree that Slate is a great venue, but what did NY Minute uniquely add to the experience? You talked about the crowd -- I personally wasn't impressed, but my own feelings aside, what did NY Minute do to uniquely attract high quality singles? As far as I can tell, you ran a groupon add and relied on traffic from your website/online promotions (granted, I'm sure there's a lot of work that goes into targeting singles and getting them to purchase a ticket for your event). I just don't think you can claim credit for the relative quality of the attendees -- you don't exactly have a built in quality filter; it's luck of the draw. Now, and I'm not suggesting you do this, if you personally screened everyone who attended events or if people had to apply to attend rather than directly purchasing off your website, I could understand claiming credit for the "quality" of the attendees. Of course, that's also why I didn't initially comment on the quality of the people at all -- I don't blame you for the bad ones or give you credit for the good ones.

For a company that's been around for 4 years and thrown other large scale events, things like taking into account the fact that its cold and that people will need time to check their coats should be second nature. I understand that people make mistakes, that everything doesn't always go according to plan and that logistics can be difficult to figure out, but you're not a fledgling company just finding its feet. I just expected a lot better.

And to be fair, I did note that I saw people having fun and exchanging numbers. I even saw people making out on the couches downstairs, ordering food, and engaging in friendly pool battles. I just really question what hand NY Minute had in making that happen. As far as I can tell, all you did was direct singles to Slate and collect money. Oh, I guess you provided some soggy egg rolls (though props on making sure there was a vegetarian option), chicken fingers and pigs in a blanket for the first hour or so of the party.

Well I was anonymous and then you find out through your database who I was and not only harassed me via email you also posted my name in a public forum. THAT IS A DATING SITE POSTING THE NAMES OF PEOPLE WHO ATTEND THEIR EVENTS ONLINE! It is not only unethical to do such a thing, but irresponsible and very much identifies me because of my profession, but it is also very DANGEROUS. Remove my name from the posts or else I will make sure to post complaints about how you put the names of woman who attend your events online. You had no right to release my personal information and that is very immature of you to do so NY Minute Dating.

NY Minute Dating was certainly the reason people met on Sunday, and exchanged phone numbers, and will go on future dates. We promised our customers the biggest singles party of Valentine's weekend. On Sunday, Feb 13th from 7-11pm we delivered on our promise, with about 800 people in attendance! Our event took place at one of the best, most exclusive venues in New York City. We reserved the venue exclusively for our singles event, and it was not open to any other groups, and both levels at the gigantic venue were used by our singles members. In the lower level of the venue there were pool tables (with billiard games taking place between singles), ping pong tables, and a lot of other cool stuff. This venue has over 16 pool tables, they have private rooms with ping pong tables, and more. The downstairs is full of cool entertaining things for people to do, and the upstairs had a DJ playing throughout our party with people dancing on the dance floor. Moreover (and most paramount) the reason people attend NY Minute Dating events is because of the quality of singles that we attract to our events. That is the main reason people use NY Minute Dating, and will continue to use us. Our clients are young single professionals of the NY/NJ/LI metro area. I can literally show you hundreds of emails from people telling me how great the singles at our events are compared to those who attend the type of events you mention above. This is not an opinion of mine that I am sharing; this is a fact. People write to me every day to tell me this!

Now, when an event has as many people as our singles party did, there will be people who are satisfied and people who are not. From the feedback we have received from our customers (both loyal customers and new ones) the large majority of people had a great time at our event. Notwithstanding, we also gladly accept feedback from the people that were not completely satisfied; In fact we encourage it. All such statements could only help us improve our services in the future. We only ask people to write to us directly through our website so that we can find the best solution to their issue. There's really no reason for us to have this unnecessary back and forth on this website. By writing your comments on this page and keeping your identity anonymous, you are not giving us an opportunity to fix your issue. It's a fact: we are 100% committed to making our customers happy. All anyone has to do is write to us via our website and we will help you. This has always been the case, and will continue to be the case. That is precisely why we have been in business for 4 years, and precisely why we were able to pull off the biggest singles party of Valentine's weekend for the third year in a row! If we cannot find a solution, and you feel the need to post comments here, then you have every right to do so. But at least give us the opportunity to help you.

You must understand, we have stated twice on this page that we will find a solution to any problem anyone may have with our service (which I assure you is a very rare occurrence). And, yet, so far you have not reached out to us directly, and instead continue to write on here anonymously, which isn't helpful in our mission to help you. It's even likely for someone like a competitor to take advantage of a site like this to bad mouth us. So far you have written a few paragraphs to us about how to run our events, as well as have wished us out of business in another line. So...rather than continuing on this course, where we don't even know who you are, I simply request that you allow me to help you. Otherwise, even if you are a real customer, I cannot help you unless you help me help you.

Now, based on your previous comments to my replies, I admit that I somewhat expect another long paragraph about how we did not provide you with the service you expected, how I am downplaying our shortcomings, and minimizing our faults, etc...But at this point, all I want to do is help you. That is it. So please let me help you. If you are not interested in my help, then all I can do is apologize for your not enjoying yourself at our event. Our only intention was to have an event where people could meet for love or friendship, and I assure you that lots of people did meet for these reasons. And I am certain that some time in the future (as has happened before) we will receive Thank-You emails from people who entered into relationships with someone they met at our event. And only that, ultimately, really determines the success of our events.

Now, I will certainly take any worthwhile suggestions you have made into consideration, and want to thank you for giving us your feedback. And to make the record straight, you are right about us taking extra time to begin the event. We estimated that it took about 30-40 extra minutes to sign in the speed daters for the 5PM-7PM speed dating event. The reason is that it was chilly outside and everyone brought coats and we had to wait for people to go through coat check, which added an extra layer of time, and when 120 people have to sign in and get situated, it takes time. We signed people in pretty fast. If you do the math, it took us less than 10 seconds per person. Also, it was Sunday, and the subway runs local, and people had to find available parking, so there were still people walking in at 5:00-5:30PM (despite our 2 email reminders asking people to arrive at 4:30PM). Keep in mind, this was not a regular speed dating event with 15 couples. This was a pretty big speed dating event with over 60 men and 60 women separated into two different sections of 30 couples per section. To be fair to our speed daters, we did extend the event by 30 minutes, so no time was really lost. The 5PM-7PM speed dating event was a bonus event to allow some members the opportunity to meet lots of other singles by name before the 7PM-11PM Valentine's Singles Party. It is not run the same way we run our usual speed dating events. NY Minute Dating is famous for it's 5-minute per-person speed dating events. The large pre-party speed dating event was just so people could break the ice with some people before the party started. The dates were much shorter (they started at 2 minutes, and as it ended we shortened it to 1 minute each), but the singles then had all night to get to know each other! Lots of people thought it was fun. We sent out everyone's matches earlier today and over 80% of the people who participated in the speed dating got at least 1 match! That doesn't even include all the people who got to meet at the party and exchanged phone numbers!

I realize that you feel strongly about your opinion, as do I. So unless you will contact us so we can make things better between us, there's no reason to reply anymore. It''s clear that we both feel really passionate about our own opinions, that we could each write miles and miles of responses to each other on this matter. But I have about 7 speed dating events this week, and another huge singles party in 2 weeks, and we are making important updates to our website, and more, and I am certain you have better things to do as well. The only thing to do now would be to contact me directly on our website so we could come up with a reasonable solution. Thanks!

Ah, one more thing, lest I be accused of a less than full disclosure. I have some experience organizing events from my college sorority days. Funny, I'm pretty sure that as college students we organized equally large scale events, didn't charge a cover AND managed to pull off fun get-to-know-you games.

Let me also add that I did meet several people at the party and I saw many others exchanging numbers. None of that can be attributed to NY Minute Dating, however. If you put a bunch of single people in a room together with alcohol, it's inevitable that some of them will start chatting. The point is, we paid for a service and all you provided was a venue.

How can you "assure" me that your event was well organized? I was there! It started an hour late! Not everyone met everyone and, as mentioned, none of the promised "ice-breakers, " "give aways, " or "games" were provided as promised in your own promotional information. I doubt seriously that you've received any thank you e-mails. The negative chatter in the girl's bathroom was more than enough to assure me that others felt as shocked and disappointed as I did. A simple apology for and recognition of the errors that were made would have been a better approach than challenging the veracity of my posting.

And, with respect to your not-so-subtle suggestion ... it doesn't take a genius to understand how an event should run. Actually, my only experience with singles events (apart from the free ones bars occasionally run around valentines day, as I alluded to in my initial posting) are with NY minute dating -- I, like many people at the event, purchased a groupon. My frustration with the complete lack of professionalism was only tempered by the fact that I did not pay full price; still, that doesn't excuse the fact that many of the conversations I had during speed dating began with an exchange about how frustrated the male was about the lack of organization and his total confusion about where he was supposed to go and whether or not he was in the right seat.

How you can claim with a straight face that the event was well-organized is a total mystery to me.

City Girl, I appreciate your comments. It seems like you have attended more than one singles event in the past, and are very well-versed in how events run. I assure you that our event was well-organized, and while I am deeply saddened that you and 3Danimator did not enjoy your experience, I wish you could see the hundreds of Thank you emails that we have received from Sunday's attendees.

The singles party was hugely disappointing. It was disorganized and was not run as advertised. There were no ice breakers, games or "give aways" as promised by NY Minute Dating in their promotional materials. While 3D was mistaken about the nature of the groupon/event, his comments about the party are completely valid. The event was, more or less, a clever way to charge a (hefty) cover. I've gotten better service and had more fun at events run for free by local bars. At the very least, I expected drink specials, singles games, and some semblance of professionalism.

As a side note, I also attended the speed dating event that proceeded the party. The speed dating was laughable. Based on the number of people I heard complaining throughout the event and into the party after, I would expect a lot of well-deserved negative reviews to surface in the next few days. For a speed dating event where you expect 100+ people and know that there is another party following immediately after, it's inexcusable to start an hour late. It's also inexcusable that there was no organization as to the flow/order the men were supposed to rotate and that the limited number of people working at/running the event were consistently rude to attendees (many of whom I saw complaining directly to the organizers).

Shame on you NY Minute Dating.

It's not hard to run this type of event if you make even the smallest effort. Things you could have easily done to help your event run more smoothly: 1) arrive early to set up. "Set up" should include numbering the seats, leaving a pen and match sheet in each spot, and pre-determining how people will rotate around the room. 2) ask guests to arrive 30 min before the event is scheduled to start. Seat women as they arrive and have men wait elsewhere to minimize the awkward pre-event clumping (it sort of defeats the purpose of speed dating if everyone has already met during the hour they spent at the bar waiting for the event to start). 3) start on time! 4) have enough people working at the event to handle the number of people you expect 5) a "singles party" that you have to pay for should never just be single people in a bar; plan ice breakers! offer the games you promised to help get people to mingle -- lock and key parties are always fun (and so easy! and low cost, if you're really just worried about the bottom line). 6) you're brining a lot of business to the bar. you should negotiate drink specials.

It's ridiculous that as a CONSUMER I should even have to make these suggestions. I just hope more people don't have the disappointing experience I had and that you either learn from your mistakes and work hard to improve your reputation or get what's coming to you and get driven out of business by your (far better organized and more professional) competitors.

If you do not remove my name and personal information from your post I will sue you.

I know Heidi who posted the review. I have sent her a message through here, have called her, and have sent her an email the regular way. I have gotten no response.

I just don't get it. This customer went on a rampage, writing reviews everywhere without first contacting us. We had someone at a table at the entrance of the venue yesterday. She could have asked one of our staff why there was no speed dating. She could have emailed us through our website at https://www.nyminutedating.com/contact.aspx or she could have called us at [protected] x1.

3Danimator is mistaken. Yesterday was NY Minute Dating's annual singles party. Over 1, 000 people pre-registered. The NY Minute Dating website made it very clear that this was not a speed dating event; that it was a singles party. The event was everything people expected and more. We had 800 people attend the event, we had a DJ, free appetizers, etc. Since we are a company that mainly focuses on speed dating, I can understand how 3Danimator got things mixed up. But when our website says "singles party from 7-11pm with over 1, 000 singles expected" how can someone confuse that with a regular speed dating?

We recently had a promotion on a certain one-deal-a-day website which featured our party and speed dating events. This customer got her ticket for the reduced price of $15 for two tickets to our event. Regular price was $35. While we appreciate all the clients gotten to us by the one-deal-a-day website, their description may have been somewhat confusing to some customers, and some of these members unfortunately expected speed dating to be part of the event. About 25 people that bought tickets through the one-deal-a-day website actually attended our event. The rest of the attendees were regular NY Minute Dating customers and they all knew that there was no speed dating included in our Vday singles party.

We would be more than happy to let 3Danimator attend any speed dating event of her choice at no charge so that she could have the experience. She needs to simply contact us and we will make things better for her, as we have done with anyone else who has expressed a similar concern. We deeply regret that she got things confused and felt a need to come online to start writing bad reviews about our event without expressing her concern to us first. I think these complaint sites are great, but they should be used if the company is unwilling to make things better for the customer. In our case, this user hasn't made any attempt to contact us directly yet.

I went to one of their speed dating events, and it wasn't even a speed dating! it was a club to meet single people, so all we paid for was a cover charge for a club and had to work our way through the room. If I wanted to meet people in a bar, I would go to a bar, but I am not 24 years old and I dont drink often. What a waste of time and money, everyone there had no idea what was going on, everyone came for a Speed date and ended up at a party so the company could rack up #s on how many people came to their event. You couldn't even talk to anyone over the loud music and grinding dancers. Never again will I go to any event this company has.

I went to the same event as Mike-d. It was a Latino event, where I got to meet lots of women. The matches didn't come in 24 hours, but 48 hours instead, but I can understand as it was the weekend. They did a good job in my opinion and I got a bunch of matches.

This is a very disorganized serivice I have been awaiting 2 days for my results and they keep giving me the run-around. While I was in the event, they were late, had little or no control over it, and i feel they did not fulfill their obligation to give some kind of results from it all. I would not recommend this company to anyone, they just want your money, they are not interested in running a business.

I have been to many of these company's events and I have been extremely pleased with how they conduct their events. I have been to many other speed dating events by other companies and at NY Minute Dating's events I found that the people that attended were very high quality and very attractive. Also, I have found that more people attend NY Minute Dating's events than those by other companies. It's true that they do not have a phone number on their site, but when you register for an event you get an automatic email with their phone number. The reason they do not provide a phone number is because they have an email form and they always answer their emails within minutes. That’s just their preference. At the end of the day, the important thing is that they get back you on time. Their events are a lot of fun, and I know several people that have met their boyfriends and girlfriends through their events.

I have had a similar experience when they did not respond to my request regarding matches. They have no point of contact or phone numbers on their website, if you lend up into any issues it takes for ever or if you are lucky you would get a response.

Beware

I have been to over 5 of this company's speed dating events, and they send my matches on time and provide excellent customer service. I recommend these events to my friends all the time, and everyone I have recommended have become loyal customers of NY Minute Dating. But I guess when you run large events like this company does, there's always going to be at least one person who is going to complain. Several of my friends have gotten into relationships with people they have met at this company's events, so the $35 fee per event is actually quite small compared to all the services you get from this company.