Tips & tricks: Is the Total Connect Plan worth it?

The Total Connect plan is “eHarmony Grande”. One way to look at it, it’s the best way to give eHarmony all your money. You get the “basic” eHarrmony service plus three goodies:

Premium Personality Profile
Secure Call
RelyID

(The three goodies are reviewed below.)

Here are the costs of the Total Connect plan versus the Basic plan:

Total Connect order screen

Months	12	6	3
Basic	$239.40	$179.70	$119.85
Basic monthly	$19.95	$29.95	$39.95
Typical Promo Code			$59.85
Promo code monthly			$19.95
PPP	$19.99	$19.99	$19.99
RelyID	$5.95	$5.95	$5.95
Secure Call	$71.40	$35.70	$17.85
Total Connect	$287.40	$203.70	$134.85
TC monthly	$23.95	$33.95	$44.95
Difference	$48.00	$24.00	$15.00
Difference monthly	$4.00	$4.00	$5.00

Basic+PPP+RelyID+SC	$336.74	$241.34	$163.64
per month	$28.062	$40.223	$54.547
Savings	$97.34	$61.64	$43.79
Savings	14.65%	15.6%	17.59%

Basic+SC	$310.80	$215.40	$137.70
per month	$25.90	$35.90	$45.90
Savings	$23.40	$11.70	$2.85
Savings	7.53%	5.43%	2.07%

The question is, is it worth it?

Analysis

According to the calculations, Total Connect is the way to go only if you are willing to pay for several months of Secure Call in advance. You basically get RelyID and PPP free.

Consequently, the best deal, if any, is: Getting Total Connect only for three months, then paying Basic for the rest of the year, if ever. You get a year of RelyID ($5.95), a PPP ($19.99) and three months of Secure Call ($17.85) for only $15.00 extra. THEN you contact eHarmony Customer Service to double the 3 months plan, as usual.

Customer Service always doubles plans for new members who call them early, but does not always do it for returning members. If you fail to double your plan, Total Connect is a really awful deal compared to using a promotional code and buying the rest separately.

Therefore, get them to commit to the doubling first — 3 months becoming 6 — then get your Total Connect.

Then enjoy your six months of eHarmony Grande. Tell us here how it goes!

Related reviews

Of course, all this depends on whether these add-ons are worth the bother and the expense. Here are our reviews:

By the way, what has the Premium Personality Profile got to do with communicating with matches?

Update: Is the “$39.95/month for 3 months” Total Connect Plan offer worth it?

Absolutely not! Buying the items separate, $59.85 (available year round) + $19.99 + $5.95 + $17.85, costs $16.21 less than this offer. This is a COLD deal.

Comments 4

SincerelyEthical wrote:
Although the extra goodies are somewhat useful, I would much rather eHarmony focus on improving the effectiveness of our time… Come on eHarmony, give us what we Really want… Tell us more about or matches upfront… Until then, that’s far, far, farrrrr too much money to spend for the service.
Posted 26 Sep 2009 at 10:09 pm ¶
Pyke wrote:
SincerelyEthical, if eHarmony offered a more expensive “We’ll only match you with active members and they surely will be able to reply if they wanted” version, are you interested?
Posted 27 Sep 2009 at 7:55 pm ¶
SingleGuyInNC wrote:
Interesting idea/observation, Pyke.

This is sort of like the “e-mail read” thing on Match.com that they charge an extra $3 a month for to find out if your message was actually read when there are other ways (albeit not definitive) to figure out if they are “live”.

I guess the thing to think about is, so what if they read your e-mail/get your communication? It just means that you now know it didn’t go into a black hole but you still have to move on to the next match to try and find one that does answer. We would all like to know so you could leave the non-subscribers open or in another pile in case they change their mind and focus on others but if you treat it like has been suggested – “checking your bank account balance” then it’s less of an issue…

If you think you are wasting valuable time each day on eHarmony, try the others services. Once you get your eH “system” setup, it only takes like 5 minutes a day to deal with, compared to significantly more for others…well, if you are a male and constantly having to send out messages to initiate contact with anyone…
Posted 27 Sep 2009 at 8:24 pm ¶
SincerelyEthical wrote:
Hello Pyke, I would say that would be a definite improvement, but there’s no reason for the price to be any higher. I mean, it’s a machine sending out matches… why does it have to be more money? If anything, it should be Cheaper because it would lead to far less angry customer service calls, thus saving eHarmony money. If I were selling packs of bubble gum, and said to you, “You can buy this pack of gum for $1 but it might not have any flavor, or you can buy this other pack of gum for $3 which I guarantee does have flavor, you would likely rather spend $3 than waste $1. However, let’s say you found out that you could get a flavorful pack of gum elsewhere for $0.50, what would you do?
Posted 27 Sep 2009 at 11:38 pm ¶

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