... in response to How can you ever really, posted by Ryan on Apr 19, 2002If someone goes on gut feelings, they're usually going to be making a mistake because men are generally very paranoid of being cheated and will interpret anything out of the ordinary as a scam. I think it's pretty simple really. If you're not being asked for money, then I wouldn't start assuming scam.
Kenman's unreasonable concern has cost him $700 because he cancelled everything and assumed he was scammed. If I have the story straight (as supplied by people other than Kenman), he wanted an English speaking woman, but was (I assume) paying for email forwarding service through the agency with translation. He probably had the options to either do this, or to purchase the lady's contact information and communicate directly with her (what I would recommend). He was offered that contact information free of charge after the blow up. Instead of verifying that his concerns were real, he went with his "gut feeling" and chose to take a $700 hit in the pocket book to "protect" himself from this (probably imagined) scam.
There was never any sick relative who needed money for a life saving operation, or any other stories fabricated to get him to send money. He was simply dealing with a BUSINESS which does what any business must to survive- Make a profit from their work. And they most likely screwed up in translation. Instead of communicating directly with her and trying to get an idea of whether this is REALLY a scam (for free), he seems to be choosing to back off and lose $700 based on his "gut feeling."
Men need to be concerned not only with the possibility of being scammed, but also with over-reacting to poor communication. In this case, I believe it was a mistake with a $700 price tag, and the loss of a relationship with a potentially good woman. For gut feelings, I recommend kaopectate. For dealing with international romance communication issues, I recommend having a clear and level head and thinking things through logically and questioning not only the lady/agency intentions, but your own deep seated worries.
I think Kenman effectively scammed himself out of $700. Paranoia at work. I believe Europete falls into another category of men who commonly yell scam. Those who have wildly out of line expectations. Then there's plenty of guys who really were scammed like yourself with the lady you visited. In your case, the lady was requesting money and you were sending it. In these other cases, the only money changing hands was the ordinary charges incurred by the use of an agency. They were simply doing business, maybe making mistakes, but I don't see much to convince myself there was a scam.
