Netizen Claims Lunch Actually Charges Ridiculous Pricing, Here’s What They Have To Say.

For most of us in Singapore, we are probably familiar with Lunch Actually, a dating agency which specializes in matchmaking Singaporeans with one another. What the company promises its customer is that you will be matched with the partner of your choice, where a consultant will talk to you about your requirements and personally screen through their database of users and recommend you the “perfect one”.

Launched in Singapore in 2004 by husband and wife team Jamie Lee and Violet Lim, the Lunch Actually Group has since expanded to Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Hong Kong and Jakarta. In 2014, the company claims to have grown by more than 50% and hit a new revenue target of S$5 million. To date, the Lunch Actually Group has over 400,000 members in its combined database and has arranged more than 40,000 dates.

Lunch Actually Team

While the company has been growing steadily over the past few years, there were controversial news that come along with it, notably the high price point it is charging. Recently launched news site The Middle Ground also wrote an article on how Lunch Actually is just Lunch, Actually. The author, Ryan Ong remarked that the service is expensive, but helpful, and recounted his experience with Lunch Actually. Ryan also revealed the price point of the service, “The mid-range package, which is around $2,500 (ouch), gets you on five pre-arranged dates.”

As if the review wasn’t bad enough, a forum thread on HardwareZone recently surfaced, warning users to not join the dating agency. Since it was brought to our attention 3 days ago, the thread has garnered over 300 plus comments, and viewed tens of thousands times.

According to the thread, there are a few thing which users should caution themselves about Lunch Actually:

• Lunch Actually refuse to tell you their price when you call them to enquire.
• Once you go down for their initial consultation they will hard sell you. If you say it is too expensive than they will hard sell you their esynrochology services.
• During the 1 hour coaching session, you will not have the opportunity to ask any questions because she will be busy trying to hardsell and pester you to upgrade your package to the most expensive of $3900 so she can hit her quota and earn more commission.
• The courage warmup session is basically useless and nonsense.
• The coach bring you to Plaza Singapore to approach the opposite gender on the streets to talk to them. Anyone with a bit of common sense knows this is useless and a total waste of time.
• You are basically paying $550 for a 1 date with Lunch Actually!

Here’s the full forum thread:

Of course, while there might be some dissatisfied customers, as with any other businesses, Lunch Actually could be successful with some, which is evident from the success stories listed on its site.

Though charging S$550 for a date sounds really, really expensive.

After reaching out to Lunch Actually and meeting up with cofounders Jamie Lee and Violet Lim, we heard the other side of the story and how the team refuted the claims.

Lunch Actually’s Side Of The Story

So here’s what the forum commenter claims and here’s what Lunch Actually has to say:

1. Lunch Actually is the most expensive dating agency in Singapore.

Lunch Actually: What most customers do not know is that running a dating agency is not cheap. There are a lot of manpower cost involved – from meeting customers, understanding their requirements, manually going through the database to find the best match, and calling up the two parties to arrange a mutually convenient time and date to meet. If customers find that we are the most expensive, that’s because it involves a very high manpower cost on our side to matchmake them.

To be fair to customers, we offer 3 types of product offerings now: Lunch Actually, eSynchrony, and LunchClick. Lunch Actually is the most expensive one because of the reasons I mentioned. If thats out of their budget, they can choose eSynchrony, which cost lesser, but customers have to do some of the work themselves by looking through the database and deciding who may be the right match. If that is still out of the budget, customers can definitely go for LunchClick, which is free to use and we don’t have to do any work.

2. Lunch Actually refuses to tell you their price when you call them to enquire. 

If you say the price package is dependant on the type of partner you look for, does it mean that if I look for a old & ugly partner it will be very cheap, if I look for a partner that is young & pretty than it will be very expensive?

Lunch Actually: Again, that’s because we offer various kind of services, such as Lunch Actually, eSynchrony, and LunchClick, and we have to cater to their individual needs. We also offer different number of date packages.

One of the things we do is also to manage customers expectation, and demand and supply. There are times when we turn down customers because we really cant help them find what they are looking for ( for example, a 30 – 40 year old woman looking for someone young and eligible). If a lot of work is required on our end, that affects the pricing.

3. Lunch Actually package comes with free image workshop and coaching workshop. 

During the personalised shopping trip, basically the image consultant meet you at somerset mrt station and than bring you to a few shops like Ben Sherman etc and tell you what type of clothes suits you.

Lunch Actually opening hours is Monday to Saturday 10am to 7pm. Obviously on weekdays you need to work and you can’t book a appointment to go down. Their saturdays are always fully booked and you need to book in advance.

Lunch Actually: This is very subjective – there are customers who enjoyed our workshops. There was once a customer who went through our image consulting workshop. The next day when he was at work, he told us that for the first time, his boss actually spoke to him about his outfit. So we did not just help him in relationship, but also on his career. So it could be the case of the wrong mindset from customers.

For the appointments, we understand this, which was why we have always provided phone appointments as well as Skype call appointments as additional options for our customers.

4. Lunch Actually Consultants are trained to give a lot of excuses.

If you say you have to wait very long for matches, they say it is because they are trying to find good matches for you.

After the 1st date, you have up to 7 days which you can terminate your membership and get a refund. But it is definetly not a 100% refund! There will be a deduction of $550 for admin fees. If you have gone for the image workshop and/or coaching workshop there will be further deduction.

Lunch Actually: Every consultants go through a rigorous training process. If there are any hard selling, we will definitely investigate. One of the things that most customers do not know is that, as a SDN (Social Development Network) accredited dating agency since the last 12 years, we are also accountable to the Government. If anything goes wrong, we need to answer to SDN – and if we are not honest in our business, we wouldn’t be the longest dating agency in service. We have to answer to every complains and we are also regularly auditted by SDN too.

For the refund policy, we have a very clear refund policy on our website, and if you compare it to other dating agencies, we have the most customer friendly refund policy. There are firms that will not even refund you. And our refund policy is such that, if there are any manpower involved in it, we would have to deduct an administration fee.

Here’s What You Didn’t Know About Lunch Actually

Other than chatting about the forum thread, Jamie, who passionately defended the work that his team is doing, shared that there were times when they were disheartened by various claims on the Internet about Lunch Actually.

“There were people who said that we hired models or girls to go out on dates with guys. How does that even make (business) sense? If we did that, over the past 12 years, one of the alleged hired girls would have come out and said that she was one of the hired girls, and we would have been out of business just like that!”

“A lot of people also think that match making is a money making business and that we are printing money. That is not the case – though we make a decent living, the dating business again has high manpower cost. There were a lot of companies that came in and tried to undercut us, but they soon realise that the costing structure doesn’t make sense and they went out of business.”

“On match making, it is also in our best interest to find the best suitable match for our customers. There were also people that shared that we purposely matchmake them with lousy quality matches. That doesn’t make sense as well. If we do that, our customers are not happy, they complain, and then we are not happy too. That’s why we matchmake customers to our best possible ability, so that if it is successful, we move on to serve other customers.”

Lunch Actually Team. Image Credit: LinkedIn

“The biggest problem we face is how do we change customer’s mindset – sometimes they know that they are a 6/7 (on a scale of 10) but they want to be matched to a 9/10. What they do not know is that, why would the 9/10 want to be matched with a 6/7? So we have to balance this and take care of the interest of all our customers.”

To be fair to Lunch Actually, they have been in the business for over a decade and has successfully matchmake some. While there are some complaints here and there, which is unavoidable for any business, there hasn’t been any huge complaints. As a forum user puts it, finding a good date and a life partner may be easy for some but tough for others. The user also stated that he is not a customer or related to the company in any commercial relationship, but he suspects that the forum posting is the work of a competitor of Lunch Actually. 

Ultimately, it comes down to management of expectation, something that the Lunch Actually team is managing everyday.