I hate doing stupid stuff!

I had joined Match.com a few months ago in an effort to maybe meet someone to date. I did meet 1 interesting person, she pointed out another site which it turns out seems much better than Match - it's called OKCupid.com - it seems to have a lot more features, a larger pool of interesting people, and on top of all that, it's completely free.

The girl I met on Match lives in Tempe, and though we emailed back and forth for a while, she suddenly stopped replying about a month ago. So in the end, Match.com turned out to be completely useless to me, so I decided to cancel my subscription - this is where the dumb stuff comes in.

I was under the impression that if I canceled my membership, then the paid privileges would go away, and I figured since I'd paid for them, I might as well use them up until the renewal date, then cancel before renewing. That's a kind of ridiculous thing to think, so when i decided weeks ago that I didn't want to continue my membership I should have just canceled right then.

I forgot the exact date when the auto-renewal would happen, but I knew it was coming up. Last week I tried to log in and cancel my membership, but that particular moment the site was down for maintenance or wouldn't load. I figured it was no big deal, I'd just do it later. then I left for L.A. for the weekend, and when I got back I logged in to cancel my Match membership only to find that the renewal date was the 17th. I'd already been charged the renewal rate and my membership had been continued through May.

Well, needless to say I felt like an idiot for letting it lapse. When I clicked cancel, it told me my account would be resigned after the membership period had expired (in May), not that it would end now and my money refunded. This made me feel even more stupid, because it meant I could have canceled weeks ago when i was going to, and I wouldn't have had to worry about this (and I still could have used the site through the end of the membership). So I sent a message to customer service asking them to refund the renewal amount and I canceled my account.

I got a reply saying that they had a no refund policy, so I called them on the phone and asked to speak to a manager. I explained that my auto-renewal had hit, but that I had intended to cancel, and could they please cancel my membership and give me a refund. The manager said that when I joined the site I had agreed to the no refund policy, and that they wouldn't do it. I asked if they would make an exception, and I also cited that I logged in to cancel last week and was unable to do so. Still no. I asked if there was anyone with the authority to give a refund, and she said she could put me through to her supervisor but I'd get the same answer.

What the hell, I thought, go ahead and put me through. After a short time on hold the woman came back and said she'd talked to the supervisor and they wouldn't do a refund, but they did change the membership to 1 month instead of 3, which only costs 30ish bucks instead of 50. I decided that was better than nothing.

I'd like to think I'm a smart guy, but every once in a while I do something really stupid (like sign up for Match.com in the first place, not to mention let the subscription lapse). It's frustrating!