How AI and video could transform the online dating industry

How AI and video could transform the online dating industry

A MUM who failed to find a partner after signing up for online dating has been awarded an eye-watering payout.

Tereza Burki, from Chelsea in London, was awarded $22,087 after a High Court judge in the United Kingdom said she had been swindled by the Seventy Thirty company.

According to Metro, the 47-year-old was searching for the “man of her dreams” when she signed up to the agency in 2014.

She was also looking for someone to have more children with, and someone who was wealthy and owned “multiple residences”.

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Judge Richard Parkes QC said the company’s former managing director, Lemarc Thomas, had fooled Ms Burki because the company promoted itself as having 7000 active members, while in reality there were just 100.

“A membership of 100 active men cannot by any stretch of the imagination be described as a substantial number,” he said.

“The representations made by Mr Thomas were therefore false and misleading.

“Gertrude Stein quipped that whoever said money can’t buy happiness didn’t know where to shop.

“This case is about a woman looking for romantic happiness who says she was tricked into shopping in the wrong place, paying a large sum to a dating agency which, she says, made promises but failed to produce the goods.”

The mum-of-three said she was worried she was getting too old to have more kids, and “felt very let down and disappointed by the fact that Mr Thomas’s claims for the service turned out to be untrue.”

Ms Burki was also awarded an extra $876 due to the “disappointment and sadness” she experienced, bringing her total payout to $22,964.17.

However, she was also ordered to pay the company $8764 in libel damages thanks to a scathing Google review in which she branded the business a “scam” — although the judge argued he didn’t believe the firm was “fundamentally dishonest”.

The agency was founded in 2001 by Susie Ambrose as “the first exclusive luxury matchmaking company”.

It claims to have paired up more than 6000 singles, with 63 babies born in that time as a result.

The company argued Ms Burki had unrealistic expectations when signing up.

“Ms Burki entered into membership with the wrong assumption about the number of potential gentlemen we would introduce her to,” Metro quoted the company as saying.

”She assumed it would be like internet dating, but we are a niche, exclusive agency, not a mainstream, mass-market online dating service.

“We are not going to have thousands of members because there simply aren’t thousands of single, wealthy, high-calibre prospects out there.”

alexis.carey@news.com.au