I discovered that I have been banned both on Hinge and Tinder. This was a complete shock as I have always behaved respectfully on and off these apps, never engaging in sexual conversation or being rude or abusive. My profile information and my photos are "normal". What's more, I haven't been actively using the apps for the last month or so, I've had them installed on my phone but I haven't been swiping as I was dating someone and wanted to see where it went - if it became a relationship I would have deleted the apps, but it fizzled out so I went back on to see who else was out there. I lodged a formal appeal on Hinge but it was rejected with no explanation and they said it was permanent and final. Tinder does not have an appeal process, I contacted their help email but was told that and told 'sorry too bad' essentially. I've now asked both customer service teams to investigate if I was hacked, because my only remaining idea is someone logged on as me and send abusive messages or something (?!??) as there's no other explanation. I don't think it's likely they'll look further into this. Another possibility is that the person I was dating recently reported my account after we 'broke up', but we ended things amicably and from the month or so we've been hanging out it'd be really out of character for her to do this. If I can't regain access to my Hinge and Tinder profiles I'll be quite lost. I'm actually quite devastated by this. We rely so heavily on a few major dating apps, especially in this pandemic. Modern dating is hard enough WITH apps, dating without them seems almost impossible. Thankfully, I still have access to Bumble, probably because it's owned by a different company. Hopefully I can at least keep this account and rely solely on Bumble. But still, I found Hinge the best for dating. I've read posts where people change phone numbers, use VPNs and all sorts of tricks to get back on but it all seems like a lot of work and no guarantee of success because the apps have very smart programming to detect people they've banned. I have only ever used Tinder, Hinge and Bumble. Maybe it's time to try eHarmony, Plenty of Fish and other online dating sites? (edit: just found out POF and OKCupid are owned by Match Group which owns Tinder and Hinge, so they probably won't let me sign up anyway... sigh) Has this happened to anyone else? What did you do about it? Were you able to get back into your accounts or somehow start new ones? What was it like using other dating sites?
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