Once - Date better matches Reviews

by Keepyour.99

Once makes no sense. It makes you go through an endless library of people to rate them on a 1-5 star system which takes FOREVER to gauge your ‘quality’ of matches even though you can only judge on looks alone....then you never see the profiles of the people you rated highly!!! You have to pay $10 for 5 ‘coins’ which you use up quickly if you want to: see who swiped right on you or if you want to view more profiles than your daily allotment. You also can’t read reviews of anyone until you write one and good luck getting that far without spending a bunch of money. What a waste of $10. Deleting.

by Red~planet

Once promises to give you 4 potential matches per day if you subscribe to VIP. However, after paying for VIP they continue to only give one match saying that you need to broaden your distance requirements. I already have mine set to the maximum (64 miles from downtown Chicago). What's worse is Once offers me the opportunity to pay more money to purchase additional matches. If I choose this option, it shows me dozens of profiles which meet my match criteria and are very close by, but it requires me to pay crowns (which cost money) if I want the opportunity to match them. That's ridiculous! I already paid for 4 matches per day. Apparently they have profiles within my search criteria that they could match me with, but they choose not to do so, hoping I will pay the additional fee. Very shady! When I requested a refund, they said I had to get it from Apple directly and sent me a link to Apple. When I followed the link and requested the refund through Apple, Apple said I needed to contact the developer directly. It's a total SCAM!!

by Gene Balboa

Do you want a quality match? Sorry, we won’t do that. We will ignore your stated dealbreakers and match you with someone that isn’t compatible. Want to chat with someone else? Sure, if you want to pay for it. Someone wants to chat with you? Only if you want to pay money to unscramble their picture and find out how far away they are from you. Seriously, it costs money to find out if someone’s public profile contains dealbreakers. Once is a major ripoff, and I can’t believe that I sunk money into it. Even with the VIP membership, they failed to deliver extra matches, and never this app matched me with anyone remotely compatible. Pathetic.

by Tsmth

Hey so I tried this out despite the several conflicting reviews on Once. There are clearly many fake reviews meant to raise the average score of Once (they all have the same tone so it’s easy to tell and they use the same adjectives). It seems like the negative reviews have it more correct.

To be clear I am the apparent ‘target’ demographic of Once: white, young, heterosexual lady, and I couldn’t get anything to go down. If you want a dating application subscription service, then eharmony or match are definitely more reputable. It’s laughable that an entirely new dating app with soooo few real users has the audacity to charge so much for every service. In summation: frustrating, you will most likely not meet anyone in your area much less go on an actual date with someone you find attractive, and they will nickel and dime you every step along the way.
Not worth the space on my phone , I’ll just go to a bar.

by Corbers

The idea of Once is great. However, they don’t match the same people up, so if you like someone they have to pay to talk to you, or if someone likes you you have to pay to talk to them. It doesn’t “hold” your likes either so pay within 24 hours or lose the chance.

Also within Once is the old 2000’s Hot or Not hidden behind a “Matching Quality”. I really find it hard to believe all these modelisc females with professional pictures are actually using the site and that’s not what the average person is looking for. And in order for your matching quality to stay “relevant” or 100% you’ve got to continue to rate people everyday. Which makes me think it’s a false or poor algorithm.

Don’t be a sucker and buy the crowns or coins whatever they are. Buy a membership if you’re going to spend any money on Once.

by Deepstructure

Signed up. Spent a long time rating pictures to which it claims makes it’s matching algorithm better. Got it up to about 90% (which takes a lot of swiping), and the first match it’s shows me is a very unattractive overweight person - every example of which during the learning phase I had given one out of five stars. A four-year-old could have told you I wouldn’t be attracted to this person.

Then the second day, Once let me know someone had a crush on me. To be able to match with them and respond to them, I had to use two of the in-app coins. Of course, it had only gifted me one for either doing the swiping or filling out my profile. And prompted me to spend $10 to get a batch of five.

No thanks. Dumping Once. What a waste of time.

by Mp87

Worst Dating appEver everything cost every single change or setting cost you $ change distance, rate her pictures etc... you get it!
(It makes you pay to unlock who liked you and wants to chat and it set a timer to pay or lose it then you realize it was fake with stupid picture& you just lost more money)
Again! You have pay$ to message your match! this app you get it you see Everything is fake and you are so limited. Stunning looking girls just to make you spend money
“””Btw careful: It(not a person)will msg you (a beautiful one) this app you pay and try to talk then they disappear or msg will stop like they were all planned to take your money.
If you buy the VIP you still have to buy coins/crown so don't waste your money and time”””

by Derekbrown2

I loved this idea and was so excited to try out this app when I heard about it. It seemed fun and promising for a week or so but now it seems like I have to pay to do anything. Did you want to find people closer to you? That costs, most people you match with are 40+ miles away. Wanna message somebody? That costs. What if somebody else paid to message you and you want to read their message or look at their profile? Better break out your wallet

All in all this was a great app and really could go somewhere if the developers decide that an active community is more important to them than money. Sadly it doesn’t look like that’s anywhere close to happening so I’m gonna delete it. There’s always another way to meet people and this isn’t worth it

by Alituran1897

Once is programmed to benefit from tension. It dramatizes the boy/girl search by doing one match per day. However instead of supporting your commitment to valuing each other, Once seeks to create anxiety by blurring "possible matches and possible chats". The only way to see these potential suitors is to subscribe to Once which makes it just like all the other apps but the special service you are paying for on Once is the free service everyone else offers. IF you choose to commit to not subscribing, which i did for about a week, you wont get any matches and wont be able to message anyone. So the basic version is just a preview of what you can get with a subscription that is the same exact thing as other apps basic service, this is useless.

by Lpshanet

The developer responded to my issues with the same form letter about how they have strict anti-fraud protections and chase down fake profiles. This is either untrue or their “strict protections” are totally useless. Of the last 20 connections I’ve made, 18 of them are scammers with spoofed locations. 3 of those are using pics of porn stars. The rest are using fake pics taken from Chinese and Singaporean models. I have at least 6 matched that have used duplicate pics to others. Almost everyone on here is fake.

I have yet to get a non-form reply or any interest in looking at specifics. Just the same form letter over and over. Beware matching with scammers!

by Hot Sauce11

Every bad review on here pretty much has it right. Can’t do anything without spending money and I refuse to do so on apps like this. My biggest thing is that it said it would give me a match a day, my rating is supposedly in the top 9.6% of users but every “match” it gives me is someone I rated at 1-3 stars. This is taking into account I have a 99% match quality which makes me feel it doesn’t actually do anything. My maximum distance is maxed out 62 miles which I can’t even change but it’s “matching” me with people 86 miles away. I don’t even want matches 10 miles away. Long ways to go if this ever plans on competing with other established ones. You’re better off with Hinge

by Monk8058

Pay the monthly fee... you still get no real privileges. You have to by coins to send chat requests to others... If they like your profile... spend MORE coins to see their profile, AFTER Once has already matched you to the other person, sight and profile unseen.

Once is designed to slowly drain your wallet for little return.

Also this will sound “odd” as a complaint, but in the area where you can rate others photos, there are far to many attractive pictures. I mean model quality. Those profiles would seem to be fake. At least some of them.

by TheRevrnd

On the Heart tab, Once seems to have dialed in what I like to see, what attracts me to someone physically. So I know your programing works. Which is really frustrating when it is clearly not applied to the people you select to show me. What shows up on my heart screen has zero reflection on what is shown in my browse screen each day for my 1 pick. Additionally, I keep getting people WAY out of the mileage range I’m looking for.
I live at the beach, on the edge of Orange & Los Angeles counties. It’s extremely highly populated here. Yet you can’t seem to get anyone local to me. Unreal.

by Gavin Beard

So my first problem I ran into is that I can’t even login with my number I had to make a FB account just to login I tried 3 times and waited over 10 minutes with my number. Anyway this app you get to Once it is interesting but confusing bc I’m not sure I understand how you’re suppose to match with people it just seems as if it’s just a app to let the pretty people know they are pretty and the ugly people know they are ugly. Idk also weird how you have instagram type models on here then really bad looking girls no middle ground or anything it’s on or the other. App seems decent if it wasn’t soo confusing

by Upsetfan222222

For starters, I really do like the concept. I also have noticed that some of the matches selected were definitely hand picked for me based on similarity of interests. However, there are a few major problems with Once. First off, you can't set the maximum distance for your matches. This means that on some days your match is straight up wasted. Second, the section where you rate profiles by attractiveness is total garbage. The majority of profiles that you see are stock profiles of very attractive white women. As a result, there's no way that any useful information can come out of this section. Moreover, it shows with my matches, since I have found very few of them to be my type or even the slightest bit attractive. All in all, it's a great concept, but the implementation needs work.

by Goldbergrr

Literally the biggest thing that needs to change about Once is really too important to ignore: the primary decision-making factor is a person's picture(s). For recommended matches, you can see a paragraph that the person has written, if they even wrote one, and maybe some small details. But for rating potential matches? That's it. No info, no hobbies, no location, nothing. It makes my constant reaction to the people I'm supposed to rate a giant shrug because I don't have a freaking clue about any person I'm looking at. I just have to decide based on their picture - and that feels arbitrary and awful. Not to mention that even though I've put that I'm bi, I only get sent male matches and I can only rate men. Some women have found me on their own but I can't seem to find them myself. It's super weird. Uh, fix that please. So, I really like the idea they're going for, but as it is I find myself frequently confused and uncertain and frustrated. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

by US_Atlas

They sucker you into signing up for VIP as if it’ll let you chat with non-matched people (or respond to chats). Instead, you have to buy “crowns”. Not only that, the “free”
VIP trial signs you up for a monthly (the most expensive) subscription through Apple, so you have to know where to go to cancel.

Guys, it’s a good app. Start off with a tutorial at the beginning, explaining all your services and what it gets you, and the costs. I classify this as being sneaky, and hence dishonest.

by Blewms

It would be nice to introduce a larger scale for maximum distance. I currently have 0 potential matches even at the maximum distance. The subscription would be a lot more tasteful if it gave those users with VIP some extra distance range. Another thing that would be pretty cool is if users with VIP had discounted costs for crowns, or even got 1-2 crowns a week as a way for those users to up their ante on Once .

All in all, Once is great! But I don’t think the people paying for such a heavy cost on a subscription are getting what they deserve. I do not currently recommend to any other users to buy the subscription.

by Vavava Wawawa

The good thing is I got someone to write me back on my second day. The bad part is the rating system brings down my confidence to know someone will rate you on average a 2.5 before dropping to a 2 star. I believe the ratings should only be for finding who you like, you shouldn’t be able to see what people rate you ever. People have different taste I get it, but the only rating scale that should stay is how closely you look to your profile. This should be know so that no one is able to catfish anyone. Thirdly, when I request another match the same day, some of the people I rated as pass were on my match list for the next day as opposed to the one I rated 5stars. Overall it’s good. I might rate higher depending on if I find a match or not.

by JoeyMcCombs

The idea that you can find someone by using an algorithm by carefully having the user rate girls that he sees. I did notice that when I kept on doing 5 stars it meant that I would literally date anyone who showed up in my life but that was not true so I learned from Once that I need to be more selective and truthful with myself. I expect my matches to get better as I continue to help the algorithm grow with my preferences! No doubt I will be recommending this to friends