While Craigslist simply offers the ability to post, there are internet services that offer matching services. For a (in general) small fee you can get an account and are prompted through questions that create your profile. Since everyone has a profile, it is possible to search for housemates that match your criteria. You can also look at profiles before contacting a potential housemate. Knowing something about the person can help make the plunge about contacting a potential housemate.
For these sites to be useful they have to have enough postings and web traffic to offer good choices. If you have a space to rent you want people to see your ad; if you are looking you want the posting to be current.
Roommates.com
This website offers free registration to post either “room offered” or “room wanted.” With pages and pages of testimonials, the company clearly seeks to establish itself as credible and helpful. J. Bennet reviewing the service at Reviewstream, comments “Perhaps the best feature of roommates.com is that the service personally matches you with other site users based on your criteria. Often looking through Craigslist is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.” That s a fair comment.
The registration for roommates.com is easy and free. It asks for the basics such as your sex, age, occupation, smoking habits and what you are looking for. It also asks for preferences and interests that will be helpful to you in finding a match. Clearly Roomates.com has experience in this area. The form asks whether you are willing to: share a bedroom, share a bathroom, and/or to live with children. One question asks about cleanliness level. Another question is whether you will have children present. A final question asks you to choose one of 50 icons that describe your personality. You can include a picture of yourself if you want.
At that point you have access to all the profiles of people on the site, but only limited access. To communicate through the email servers, and to see complete profiles, Roommates offers three plans. A three-day trail costs $5.99, thirty days is $19.99 and 60 days is $29.99.
Once you have registered and logged into the system, you have access to the entire profile of others.
The log in process directs you to an email system within the roommates.com domain. You can communicate with potential housemates without revealing your personal email address or telephone number. This feature is an excellent first step in finding a good housemate.
Roomster.com
While I personally have no experience with roomster.comâ a Google search on roomster.com finds complaints about them at the Complaintsboard, ripoff.com, and the Better Business Bureau. There is an automatic credit card charge that is buried in the fine print of the agreement. This is a good description of the various complaints: “They offered me a 4 day pass for 5.95. However, they neglect to inform you that you are really signing up for a monthly service and they begin charging 29.95 immediately without notice. I attempted to cancel the service as soon as I noticed the unauthorized charge. The phone is a recording and the recording advises you to contact them via email only. When you email the company you get an auto response that denies the request for credit. I checked with the BBB and they have a total of 45/45 complaints unanswered for payment overcharging. This company is blatantly ripping people off and refuses to answer the consumer complaints.” Found here.
To be fair, I found one positive comment. This person said she had used them for three years and were very satisfied with the service.
Have you had good experiences with matching services? Bad experiences?
