This is why you fundamentally cannot fix dating apps without changing the incentives around dating apps. The only incentives that modern apps have today is to, as you said, string users along, just frustrated enough that they can't leave, but not frustrated enough to quit outright.

There are ways to fix it, but you have to fundamentally restructure how the app works. Instead of subscriptions, the app has to be paid upon success. Did the matches lead to marriage? Great, they get paid. Otherwise nope. Until incentives are aligned there is literally no financial incentive for them to do otherwise.

There is one app I'm aware of that works this way, but I won't link it so I don't end up sounding like a shill account. But as a user I really hope they succeed, because the current generation of dating apps aren't in anyone's interest except the people who run them.