Once upon a time I was a dues-paying member of eHarmony.com (at a non-promotional rate of $50/month) for one month. They've missed me ever since. Upon receiving another reminder of promotional savings (four days after the previous), I sent them a few questions.

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TO: eHarmony

Your "extended" offer, that I've received about once a month all year long, has yet to cease confusing me. It states three things:

(1) Normally, "a single month of eHarmony is $49.95."
(2) I get "3 Months for the Price of 1."
(3) This promo is "3 months at half-off our regular rate."

But a couple of my calculations don't add up to your math:

(a) 3 months for $49.95 works out to $16.65 per month.
(b) Half of $49.95 is about $24.98.

So, how is this promotion "half-off our regular rate"?

Here's another calculation that doesn't add up for me all that well:

(1) eHarmony has "10,000 people a day joining."
(2) eHarmony also has "10 couples a day" writing to tell you "they are engaged or married."

So, either this is a cruel analogy for our generation to the problems with Social Security, or the odds are really stacked against you. Again we turn to the abacus:

(a) 10 couples per day are hooking up
(b) 1 couple equals 2 people
(c) Thus, 500 people join for every 1 person that gets married.

So, does that mean we've got a 1 in 500 chance for success on eHarmony? Or, do the odds work out a lot better after one loyally pursues the full "12 month program"?

Either way, clearly eHarmony is doing well. Congratulations on your staggering success: 10,000 people x $50/month = $500,000 DAILY in new additional revenue. $500,000/day x 30 compounded days in just one month = $15,000,000. Wow.

Now, the earliest eHarmony message I have with the 10,000 figure is dated February 24th. If I add in the half million dollars a day since then (let's be conservative), we end up near a nice round $142 million. Truly impressive.

[Now that I think about it, that's JUST the revenue from NEW members for only one month—just like me. How many of those folks continue for any time at all with the intended year-long program??]

Some people would have probably stopped somewhere around there and said, "I've made my wad; time to build a nice house." Others might look at that and say, "Clearly we have enough for a nationwide television and radio ad campaign!"

Now I understand those TV commercials I've been seeing! Then again, my math could be wrong.