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RSVP Dating Agency and Singles Club history
The doors of RSVP were first opened way back in 1992 by Patrick MacDonald, who had the vision to see there was huge demand for a traditional dating agency with the know-how to hand-pick matches but also to organise high quality singles events. Through an enviable word-of-mouth reputation, RSVP soon became very well-known and by 2006 had over 14,000 lifetime members on its books.
RSVP was acquired at this time by Anne and Roland Stringer who had 15 very successful years at the helm, they paved the way to RSVP becoming one of the leading personal matchmaking agencies in the UK. By the end of their time at the helm in 2021, RSVP had amassed a staggering 27,000 lifetime members.
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RSVP Dating Agency and Singles Club today
In 2022 RSVP was celebrating their 30th year and the evolution of the RSVP Dating Agency and Singles Club is clear for all to see. Having grown into one of the largest and most successful traditional dating company's in the UK, covering the whole country.
In 2021, two of the UK's most prestigious traditional personal matchmaking agencies came together, when RSVP, was brought into the ownership of the Dating Options Group to become the largest dating group of their kind in the UK to be regulated by the industry body, the Dating Agency Association.
Under this umbrella RSVP now offers the UK's widest reaching and safest alternative to online dating with access to a database of more than 60,000 in all and one that is growing all the time too.
RSVP continues to go from strength to strength. Thirty years of positive testimonials; weddings, engagements, blended families, new families, holidays and more; all highlight the value of RSVP and being one of our members!
As we progress onwards, our skilled support team of personal matchmakers and events specialists will continue to work alongside our members to enable them to find true and lasting love and companionship. But also to help them have fun along the way too, through our well planned and prestigious singles events.
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RSVP Personal Matchmaking and Headhunting
RSVP's experience in matchmaking has been built over 30 successful years. Both the RSVP Emerald and RSVP Platinum membership bring you the benefits of your own Dating PA. Together with our Membership Advisors, they provide a complete personal matchmaking service for members. Plus invitations to our exciting range of events.
Emerald Membership
With our prestigious Emerald Membership, we will even headhunt matches for you if your criteria are unusual or more difficult to find and provide you with guaranteed introductions from our extensive database and search externally for you also. All at a fraction of the cost charged by many agencies, particularly those that are London based. With invitations to our outstanding range of singles events also at a discounted member rate.
Platinum Membership
Our Platinum Membership provides support from your very own executive matchmaker – your Dating PA and a guarantee of regular recommendations from her, through our comprehensive internal database. Plus regular invitations to our range of smart singles events around the UK, with a membership discount for Platinum members too.
Gold Membership
Our Gold Membership also offers hand-selected one-to-one recommendations of compatible members, through our team of matchmakers. We look for the elements in a match that determine long term relationship success and guarantee a minimum number of these recommendations throughout the lifetime of your membership. With invitations to our exciting range of national singles events also included at a substantially discounted price.
Bronze Membership
Our Bronze Membership quite simply offers outstanding value for money and is one of the most competitively priced dating memberships in the whole of the industry. For those on a budget it offers a professionally written profile with photographs and a guaranteed number of recommendations during the lifetime of your membership and access to our national programme of events at a discounted rate.
How we match you
We utilise three different factors in matching:
- Facts
- Personalities
- Instinct
Very few agencies can offer all three. It's because RSVP takes such care during the initial interview process that our team of expert matchmakers can draw on these factors within their matchmaking, utilising Duo our bespoke, personal matchmaking system created by our own in house engineers.
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RSVP Team
One of the principal advantages of RSVP is that there's always someone to talk to and we really do have a top notch team of really friendly people. Whether that's to advise you before you join or during your membership, you'll find our specially trained friendly Membership Advisors and Matchmakers are at the end of a telephone six days a week, to talk you through options and how best we can help you, a rarity in terms of service delivery these days. You never need feel alone with RSVP.
We work from our office in Oakham, in the beautiful county of Rutland and you are welcome to visit us any time by appointment and meet us and turn the stones over – we know that there is often a lot of 'smoke and mirrors' in dating, so please come and reassure yourself that we are real people, providing a very genuine service and are always endeavouring to provide the very best customer experience that we can for our members – who we really care about.
We are a team of 6 but are supported by our Head Office colleagues too, for IT, HR, training, systems and membership checks, photography and finance/accounting. We have 41 staff in all and you can be reassured that we are a solid company with a annual substantial turnover.
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Getting In Touch
Though we're happy to take enquiries through our website or by email, many of our members - and prospective members - still prefer the personal touch and like to call us, which we never mind and our phones are answered in the UK by a friendly member of our team 6 days a week.
Having conversations on the phone or by Zoom or Microsoft Teams allows us to learn more about you and for you to develop relationships with the Matchmakers - the better we know you, the more effective our matching!
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Singles Events Hosts also part of the RSVP family
We try to host as many of our events ourselves as we can but the line between RSVP and its members has often been blurred. So over the years many RSVP members have become close friends and we rely on their goodwill and expertise to help us organise such a wonderful collection of singles events every month.
As an example Carol - now happily paired off by the way – has successfully hosted many of our singles events in Birmingham and is always there as a buddy for new members. She knows how it feels to be coming along to your first RSVP event and has some special advice for new members:
"Now, I know it's not easy going along to your first RSVP singles event, but when you get there, you’ll find that everyone is friendly and welcoming; after all, we've all been there! And, we are all there for the same thing - to make new friends and meet that special someone. Every singles event is hosted; if you are really nervous about going in on your own, call the host and ask them to meet you outside."
Get to meet our team and member hosts at some of our superb singles events every month on offer to all RSVP members.
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RSVP: Aiming to be a good corporate citizen
We're only too well aware that all organisations - just like individuals - make an impact on the world around them. We constantly strive to minimise the adverse and maximise the beneficial impact we have on the world.
We're strong supporters of charities and endeavour to give our chosen causes a hand whenever we can. We've critically assessed our environmental impacts and concluded that these fall in four main areas:
We've critically assessed our environmental impacts and concluded that these fall in four main areas:
Travel
Our Dating Consultants travel to meet new members and, wherever they can, they travel by train. We implore prospective members not to stand us up, because that's the ultimate waste of scarce resources; we'll always happily rearrange an appointment if it turns out to be inconvenient.
Paper
We produce a beautiful quarterly calendar and, necessarily, a fair bit of marketing material but we always aim to minimise wastage.
Post
Historically, RSVP has been a good customer of Royal Mail but we know that each item creates extra journeys and uses paper. Accordingly, by default, we send our members their matches by email, which makes our service both faster and more environmentally-friendly.
Power
We've carefully chosen our servers and computers for their low power consumption and we use low-power LED monitors throughout. We operate a dial-in network so our staff can work from home if they need to - or from anywhere in the world they happen to be. Our Head Office uses low-energy lighting throughout with motion-sensitive switching, plus internal cabling which includes green power-over-ethernet switching - it turns off power to computer and telephone devices when they don't need it.
In time, we're sure there's more we can do, but we also look for your support in our pursuit of these aims.