Will resetting your Tinder account soon cost money? I.e. will they introduce resetting as an official Tinder Gold feature? The signs are pointing towards this. Why do I think we will soon see a Tinder blog post about their “new” feature?

Indications that Tinder Account Resets May Soon be an Official, Paid Gold Feature

Tinder (probably) needs more incentives for people to subscribe to Gold

Perhaps Tinder Gold subscription numbers are not looking too well, because it sure seems the Tinder folks are scrambling to add more worth to their top subscription tier.

As things are, the “Likes me” feature is hardly worth the extra cost, in my opinion, and it could be that the majority agree when it comes to actually throwing their money at the app.

Case in point: They recently announced “Picks”, a new gold feature that aims to present you with a selection of profiles the algorithm thinks will fit your taste. And of course, how could it be any different, you’ll also have the privilege of paying for extra “Picks” as a consumable item like boosts and super likes. I don’t see myself doing this, or advocating for it.

Will the next super innovative Gold feature they announce be called “Phoenix”, “Tabula Rasa”, or “Rebirth”? Get one free per month, or purchase more for a buck a pop? We will see. But in whatever shape, I do believe it’s coming, because:

They have done this before, and we’re in the phase of taking away the free option.

Up until recently, regularly resetting your Tinder account was a popular practice and a relatively simple procedure. All you needed to do was reinstall the app, unlink it from your Facebook account, and sign up again with a new FB. This small hassle was well worth the effort to get the noob boost and another shot at a better score, for example after improving your profile.

However, whereas they didn’t seem to care before, they have made resetting much harder since version 9.0.0. Perhaps they were under the impression they made it impossible, but really, it’s just (a lot) more inconvenient now, which may actually be enough of an incentive to use their (hypothetical) official mechanic.

This situation is reminiscent of what happened before they introduced Tinder Gold, a.k.a. the “Likes me” feature. Remember those companion apps that somewhat reliably let you know who already liked you? Yeah, those stopped working when Tinder changed the app’s API in an update before Tinder Gold.

The M.O. appears to be –

1. Recognize a popular user desire for a function that isn’t part of the app.
2. Evaluate potential profit margin.
3. Break free methods of using that function.
4. Introduce paid option and act like it was your idea.
5. Profit.

As unpalatable as it may be to those of us who were happy with the free option, it certainly isn’t a bad business strategy. Though it does remind this user of game developers/publishers taking a popular mod and selling it as a DLC.

Currently we seem to be in phase 3. Does my hunch cover the previous phase as well? Why yes, thank you for asking:

Tinder have been collecting reset data for months

Whether they actually developed a method of recognizing and reporting a reset (same android/apple ID on a new vs. a recently deleted account for example) for their spreadsheets remains a topic of discussion and we may never know. Luckily it’s purely academical, as we do know they had access to such data in an other albeit less encompassing way.

For months now, Tinder has given us the option of selecting “I want a fresh start” as a reason for deleting our accounts. The prompt has been there forever, but this option is new.

This just screams “Let’s see how many users are a) resetting and b) have no quarrels or suspicions about openly declaring that to us.” There you go, we have a baseline for estimated usage of a paid option.

Annoyance, or Improvement? What Would a Paid Tinder Account Reset Actually Mean for the Users?

As is usually the case, it depends. Whether or not they introduce a paid reset option, we’re already living with the annoyance of the much more inconvenient albeit still free new reset procedure.

It also remains to be seen if the official option would actually reset your ELO score too, or only wipe your matches and let you swipe on everyone again. Only in the former case would it be equal to the free (though limited) option.

If they do introduce full fledged official resets they will have the advantages of-

• being much easier and low effort. Just push a button and start fresh.
• having a much higher chance of success. I.e. the reset should always work, and you wouldn’t have to worry about whether you did it all right, or if the rules have changed again, etc.
• being unlimited. Unlimited as in not limited by the amounts of phone numbers you have access to before you would need to start paying for new SIM cards for “Free” resets. Granted, this is only an advantage since they cracked down on free resets.

Keeping that in mind, there will be some groups of users for whom resets as a Gold feature might prove beneficial, while there will be some who will lament the change.

Namely, if you already maintain a Gold subscription, or if you’d rather pay than go through the hassle of resetting, you should look forward to seeing such a feature announcement. If you’re a free, or plus user, and resent the idea of paying (more) for Tinder, you won’t be happy about these changes of course, and I understand. I’ll keep the free reset guide up to date for you as long as there is a reliable procedure.

Final Thoughts

There is a possibility the “crack down on free resets” is in actuality just a crack down on spam bots, as their operators would be the most frequent resetters out there and the only ones Tinder could conceivably care about.

Though they didn’t seem to care too much about that in the past, and the changes to the reset requirements mainly affect Gold/Plus subscribers (payment method). Any customer is a good customer, right?

Whatever the reason may be, the fact remains that Tinder have made it much more inconvenient for legitimate users to reset an account and whether or not that was their intention, they have created a need for an official reset feature.

So no matter if you’ve stumbled into yet another money sink, or you’ve been as calculating as I suspect, bravo Tinder.

PS: If I just gave you the idea, you may contact me for my bank details.

What do you think? Will we soon see “Tabula Rasa” as a new Gold feature? Would you welcome this? Would it convince you to get a Gold subscription if you didn’t already have one? Or would it be the final straw for you to delete Tinder forever, on principle? Let us know what you think in the comments, or on the Swipehelper subreddit 🙂