{"id":8079,"date":"2018-08-25T21:30:44","date_gmt":"2018-08-25T19:30:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=8079"},"modified":"2018-08-25T21:33:18","modified_gmt":"2018-08-25T19:33:18","slug":"disappointment-and-sadness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/8079\/","title":{"rendered":"Disappointment and Sadness"},"content":{"rendered":"

From The Telegraph<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

A premium dating agency has been ordered to refund a client almost \u00a313,000 after it failed to find the woman the \u201cman of my dreams\u201d.<\/p>\n

Tereza Burki, 47, paid Seventy Thirty Ltd \u00a312,600 after she was assured they only dealt in \u201ccreme de la creme\u201d matches, the High Court heard.<\/p>\n

But Judge Richard Parkes QC today ordered the agency to repay her fee, ruling that she had been \u201cdeceived\u201d by Seventy Thirty’s then managing director.<\/p>\n

Upholding Ms Burki’s claim, he ruled the agency’s then managing director, Lemarc Thomas, was guilty of \u201cdeceit\u201d after misleading her about the number of suitors on the site.<\/p>\n

The divorced mum-of-three was also awarded \u00a3500 for the \u201cdisappointment and sadness\u201d she suffered.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I think this says less about the delusions ageing, single women subject themselves to than a British justice system which appears, at least to me, to increasingly view grown women as being rather dim and having no agency. Now it could be the judge simply thought charging gullible fools \u00a312k was not on and made an example of them, in which case I hope he feels equally strongly about fifth-rate universities charging thousands for useless degrees (listen to James Delingpole’s latest podcast<\/a> for more on that). But I suspect he’s decided this is a special case because she’s a woman; the \u00a3500 for “disappointment and sadness” certainly points in that direction. Would he have ruled the same way had a man sued any of the dozens of dating sites which use bots with half-naked avatars to send messages to men which they need to pay to read? And isn’t the bulk of marketing aimed at men men based around claims the product will help them get laid? Can I sue because I discovered some years ago, much to my disappointment, that “the Lynx effect” is a figment of a marketing guru’s imagination?\u00a0A reader on Twitter sends me this link<\/a>\u00a0with some details of her complaint:<\/p>\n

What she wanted in a partner was a \u2018sophisticated gentleman\u2019, ideally employed in the finance industry. It was important to her that her partner should lead a \u2018wealthy lifestyle\u2019, and that he should be \u2018open to travelling internationally\u2019. For that reason, it would also have been appealing to her that he should have \u2018multiple residences\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why is she more deserving of sympathy than a man of similar age who blows all his money on a motorbike in order to impress hot young barmaids?<\/p>\n

Ms Burki was shown profiles of men who were said to meet her criteria and be actively seeking a romantic partner like her. For example, one who she found attractive\u00a0\u201cwas pictured perched on the bonnet of an expensive car in front of what appeared to be a substantial house\u201d\u00a0<\/em>and she was told that his profile fitted her criteria.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, here’s a picture from OKCupid’s<\/a> front page:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Does anyone in their right mind think these are representative of lesbians you might meet on a dating site, and that any of those featured on the marketing blurb are from real profiles? I’ve played around on dating sites, and sometimes I wondered if I was looking at a selection of extras from The Lord of the Rings<\/em>. It seems either judges are as prone to white knighting as the most craven beta, or caveat emptor no longer applies to grown women.<\/p>\n

That said, the link does include an instance of an Australian man getting his (substantially smaller) membership fee refunded in 2004 for similar reasons:<\/p>\n

The judgment consists of twelve terse paragraphs, each one sentence long, and including one: \u201cThe majority of the women in Mudgee and Dubbo did not meet the criteria required by the applicant\u201d<\/em>, which, read alone, no doubt casts the female population of Dubbo and Mudgee in an unfair light, and concluding with a finding that the conduct of the agency was misleading and deceptive and ordering repayment of Mr Galletti\u2019s AUD 770 membership fee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If getting people to part with their cash by implying they can score out of their league are grounds for being sued, the advertising industry’s going to get hit pretty hard, isn’t it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From The Telegraph: A premium dating agency has been ordered to refund a client almost \u00a313,000 after it failed to find the woman the \u201cman of my dreams\u201d. Tereza Burki, 47, paid Seventy Thirty Ltd \u00a312,600 after she was assured … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8079"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8083,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8079\/revisions\/8083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}