One woman who is no stranger to the various pitfalls of dating services is Aileen Edwards, a 61-year-old health worker who cares for dementia sufferers. She has been single for seven years.

In her spare time she enjoys theatre, swimming and the great outdoors. She says she “isn’t looking for a major spark” but is searching for a man with a good sense of humour to share her life with.

Her pursuit to find love has ravaged her finances. The first blow was when she fell victim to a scammer on an online dating site.

He claimed to be a high flier in a major American toy firm, but then managed to convince her to give him £200 for medical treatment, encouraging her to take out credit cards.

“Getting sucked into this made me feel really stupid,” Aileen said. “My daughters said online dating wasn’t good for me anymore, so I started looking for alternatives.”

Aileen then came across Searchmate, a bespoke dating service which featured on the first series of Channel 4's The Undateables. It claims to offer a “safer and more credible alternative” to dating websites. So in May last year Aileen stumped up £1,295 for membership.

It offered her “unlimited personal introductions” to men serious about finding a relationship. Aileen was promised support from Searchmate’s highly experienced team of matchmakers, and a guaranteed minimum of 15 recommendations.

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But in November last year, Aileen felt a growing sense of disappointment as five months had passed and she had yet to meet any men. Searchmate had so far suggested four – two of whom she’d already seen on rival site Plentyoffish.com, a free site, and who had both already declined to date her.

In November she received a letter from a Searchmate adviser saying that her membership was “not progressing as expected”. The site explained that this was down to most of the gentlemen who were active within her area “going on hold”, meaning they could no longer be contacted.

Searchmate offered to upgrade Aileen to its “Platinum” membership, a service via which customers are assigned their very own matchmaker who will proactively look for potential matches outside Searchmate’s client base.

When Telegraph Money spoke to one of Searchmate’s agents, we were told matchmakers would go to “great lengths” to find matches for singles, for example putting up posters in local sailing clubs (if the client listed sailing as a hobby), or even posting advertisements in newspapers.

But Aileen never received any of these services. She said she sent several emails to Searchmate’s agents since November but did not hear back.

In the meantime, she contacted the Citizens Advice Bureau, which provided some information on her consumer rights.

Searchmate has disputed Aileen’s claims and said it had not received any correspondence from her after the letter was sent in November. It said it made a number of attempts to call her since, but that it had not been able to reach her. Because of this it had suspended her account, even though she had not asked for this to happen. Searchmate has now offered Aileen a full refund of £1,295.

Last year, 7.1 million single Britons looked for a partner online, 800,000 more than in 2011, when, according to Leadingdatingsites.co.uk, there were 6.3 million.

But despite the significant increase in the number of daters, total revenue for the UK dating industry is falling, meaning firms are making less money per head. In the two years between 2011 and 2013 alone, revenue dropped by £9m from £168m to £159m.

This is mainly because cheaper competitor sites and smartphone apps, such as Tinder, have boomed in popularity, explaining why some of the UK’s pricier dating services are suffering – and possibly going to greater lengths to keep singles signed up on their books.