Cannot Create a Plenty of Fish Profile? What to Check

Check the phone number first. Plenty of Fish requires every account to be registered with a phone number, and it supports only one number per account. If POF will not let you finish, the usual suspects are an SMS code that never arrives, a number already tied to another account, or an email that already has an account. Work through those in order, and the profile will usually save.

The phone number is the one step with no workaround. Every account needs one, and one number belongs to one account.

That rule explains the most confusing failure. The help center says a number can be refused because you created a different account with it. If you signed up a year ago, forgot, and started again, the old account is holding the number. Try logging in to the old account before you try to build a new one. A man who is stuck at sign-up is often a man who already has a page.

The help center names two other reasons a number fails: your carrier is having trouble, or regional restrictions apply to phone numbers. You cannot fix either one from the sign-up screen. Wait and try again later, or move on to the support form below.

A missing or invalid SMS code is the most common complaint, and the help center's advice for it is plain. Confirm you have an internet connection or cellular data. Confirm your phone can receive text messages at all. Then request the code again.

Check the number you typed before you request a third code. One wrong digit sends the code to a stranger, and you will wait for a text that was never headed your way. Look at the country code and the area code. If the phone is in airplane mode or the signal is one bar in a basement, fix that first.

Ask for the code once, wait a minute, and only then ask again. Stacking requests does not speed anything up, and it makes the log of what happened harder for support to read later.

POF's help center lists the registration problems it can help with. Besides the SMS code, it names three more:

• An error that the email already has an account. This points to the same cause as the phone number. You, or an old version of you, already registered with that address.
• Being unable to press Next on any sign-up page. Usually a required field is empty or invalid.
• Registering successfully, then being unable to log in.

For the stuck Next button, scroll back through the page and look for a field you skipped, a date of birth that does not parse, or a field showing an error you did not notice. For the login failure, use the sign-in and password steps rather than registering again, since a second registration will only collide with the first.

If you still see errors after retrying SMS verification, fill out the support form. Send the phone number you used, the type of device you are on, and screenshots of the errors. That is exactly what the help center asks for, and a report with all three gets read faster than one that says "it doesn't work."

Take the screenshot at the moment the error appears, with the whole screen in it. Write one line about what you did right before it showed up. Support can do very little with a message that gives them nothing to look at.

A profile that saves is not yet a profile that works. The help center says your profile needs a main profile image before you can send messages. That image must show your face without anything in the way, and no other people can be in it.

So a man can get through registration, find he cannot write to anyone, and think the site is broken. It is the photo. Add a clear main photo of your face, taken in daylight, with nobody beside you, and the block lifts.

Once it saves, spend ten minutes on it before you start writing to women. a dating coach's complaint about the profiles men send him is not that they are offensive. It is that they are boring: a photo in a bad room, a group shot where nobody can tell which man is you, and answers a thousand other men could have written.

Use a main photo where you look relaxed and are clearly the only person in it. Add a few more that show different days and places. Then write two or three sentences about your actual week, with one detail only you would put in. "I make pasta from scratch on Sundays and I am bad at it" gives a woman something to answer. "Love travel and good food" gives her nothing.

If the profile still reads like a form you filled out to get past a screen, rewrite it before you send a single message. Women read the page before they reply, and the page is the part you can still change.

1. Look for an account you already made with this number or email.
2. Check the number, the signal and the text settings, then request the code once.
3. Read the sign-up page for a field you skipped.
4. After two honest tries, send support the number, the device and screenshots.
5. When it saves, add a clear main photo before you try to write to anyone.