having paid a heafty price, I should now be free of Friends 1st. My bitter experience of this so called christian dating company has reminded me that not all is as it seems.
The founder came from a Roman Catholic background, is now a member of the Church of Enland, but is married to a Roman Catholic and in one of her videos suggested in a positive way when considering dating profiles that a Roman Catholic may not be what we expect. I beg to differ. I Roman Catholic would be exactly what I expect. Someone who adds doctrines to the gospel and so believes a falsehood. I do not see one spark of testimony in what she says so I have to conclude that she has fooled herself into thinking that she is a christian
I found that when, I made it clear that I was leaving and would not discuss the matter that the true face of Friends 1st emerged. She held me to the contract. I wanted to see if she would. For all their public face efforts to serve members, the reality was that I was no more than just a contract. Someone she wanted to bleed as much money out of as she could.
As their lunch events sell out to women, I think that the company probably suffers from a lack of men It seems to me that they get as many men to attend the lunch as they can to balance numbers. It you think about it, then it is a massive blind date. I did not got the lunch I said I would because by then I had decided that the sort of women in it were not the sort of people I was looking for and as the company is headed by a Roman Catholic ( which in reality she still is even though she is in the church of England), I could not continue in fellowship with this company.
All their services are about one thing, making money. They do not really care about people. If they did they would realise that people make sacrifices to be in membership, and they are profiteering out of other peoples private grief
I am too long in the tooth to be fooled by some of the things they say in their magazine called, "Cloud Nine". There was a short article about one of their staff who left to go and work for her cousin in a cafe. She had decided that administration was not for her, but she would miss the members. Somehow I do not think that she would miss the members. She evidently hated the job and left at the first opportunity. Then someone else came along who was given the job, but then decided that she did not want it. One has to wonder why. What sort of atmosphere makes a new start decide that she is not going to go on. I did that once myself in my 20s, so I know what I am talking about. Something struck that woman about the office that made her realise that working there for her would be a bad idea.
A lot of the articles in the web site go like this.
Friends 1st is wonderful, I met someone and we have been going out for two months
OR
Friends 1st is wonderful because they gave me so many profiles to keep me busy contacting people
OR
I paid £75 for a blind date and it was wonderful because we had so much to talk about.
None of the above are success stories. they are just common experiences in life. None of the above guarantees a life partner.
Evidently they have had people who met and married, but they never give details as to how many. They also claim to be the largest off line christian dating agency but that does not tell me how many off line ones there are, nor does it tell me the true size of Friends 1st.
My suspicion is that it is much smaller than they imply. Most of the population of the UK do not go to church, so straight away the pond for fishing in is small. Also there are so many web sites that I think most people would go to first as they are either free, or paid for by monthly subscription and one can stop when one wants, unlike Friends 1st where one is locked into a contract for a year and at the end of that year, they do not notify the member of their upcoming departure but go on taking money from then and I wonder how many members found to their cost that they stayed over by a month or two and it is their responsibility to give Friends 1st 3O days notice.
For me, it has been a bitter experience.
I say to anyone, do not get involved in this company and do not trust them.
they will keep making you offers to persuade you to give them more and more money and that is in my view the sole object of Friends 1st. All thoughts of being a ministry to help people meet their needs are a by and by. Money talks.
I also thought that some of the advice they give was appallingly bad. They encourage people to travel all over country as they would do to see family at Christmas. That is not comparing like with like. Christmas only comes once a year. it is far better to be sensible and stick to a managable area and budget for it than run all over the country.
The only thing that I found exciting about Friends 1st was leaving it
HOORRRRRAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!
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