Maybe accessing the free version of LocalHookup is easier for others – we won’t discard that possibility

Filling out the registration form is fast and simple. The site asks very little of you beyond your choice for username, password, valid email and date of birth. You can complete the registration form in 30 seconds or less.

However, once you submit your data, you are redirected to a page that offers you FOUR payment options. One is a 3-day trial for $2.97. Hidden in very faint and small print is the disclaimer that this “trial” automatically renews at the rate of $ per month. You are also presented with one-month, three-month and six-month memberships at a cost of $, $ and $ , respectively.

Hidden, like a cowardly mouse in the upper right-hand corner of the page, is a hypertext link that reads, “No thanks, remind me later.” If you think that by clicking on that you will be taken to the “free” version, guess again.

All five of our testers were never redirected to the free version. Instead, they were sent to a page advising them to check their email for a validation link. The funny part was that they had already validated their registration by clicking on the verification links sent to them. They were caught in this endless loop where the only option was to leave or to go back to the upgrade page and pay for a membership plan.

Maybe our testers were outliers. However, having been covering the online dating industry for years, all we can tell you is that our impression was that LocalHookup makes accessing the free version as difficult as possible (in our case, impossible) in order to wear new users down and have them pay for a membership.

- There’s More -

While in real life we would avoid LocalHookup merely for the experience that we had at registration, in order to provide our readers with an in-depth look, we had to get past the site’s front door. Of the five testers that paid for the 3-day trial membership, all of them were charged for a full month at the price of $. Two of them received subsequent charges of $.

Again, it is not LocalHookup defrauding its users, they spell it out in the fine print and TOS. The “trial” membership needs to be canceled at least 48 hours before it expires. Since it only lasts 72 hours, unless you cancel it immediately after purchasing it, you are on the hook for the full $. Also, if you do not cancel a supplemental service that by default you are signed up for at registration, you are billed another $ three weeks later on top of the $. This secondary product is some sort of sex cam service that you deactivate by unchecking a very small checkbox at the bottom of the registration screen.

Yes, we were pissed off and we assume you would be too. However, we must say it again, they do disclose all of this, so they are within the law.

- Features and User Experience -

Honestly, what sort of features and user experience do you think we got out of LocalHookup? It was an absolute joke. It is basically a cesspool of fake profiles intermingled with “promotional offers” that try to lure you into other services that require you to pay additional money. The user experience was so grotesque that we had to bail on our testing after only one day. Keep in mind, we usually test other sites for a minimum of three days. Yes, LocalHookup was that bad in our eyes.