Be careful of Match.com

[KenB]

I have been a member and I must say many of the women on this site are actually put up there by agencies so you get  a letter and the usual request for payment for you to 'help' with their letters. Recently all of the sudden I was not able to get many profiles at all of women from the FSU and Ukraines. When I wrote to them in their help dept. all I got was a form letter that had nothing to do with my question. When I wrote to them again informing them of the same thing and that I got a worthless form letter they sent me the same worthless form letter. When I wrote to them again on how unhelpful they've been and that I will cancel my membership they just sent me a generic cancellation form letter several days later. (At least they addressed one of my concerns this time). Ironically my membership was not to expired until 5/3/02 but I noticed tonight that they have billed my credit card for yet another month. Be careful with these companies for they will try to bill your card repeatedly if you're not careful and read the fine print.

[CornellGuy]

... in response to Be careful of Match.com, posted by KenB on May 2, 2002

I wrote Match.com a week ago when I noticed the ads of women from Russia and Ukraine were being erased; they told me that they have pulled the FSU ads because of complaints about many of the ads being a scam to get $$ from Western men.  
    Personally, I don't have an objection to using the large dating sites like Match.com or Absolute Agency.  It's understandable that such well-known sites draw a variety of people using them, including con artists and "agencies".  But I also met some great women on these sites; beautiful, educated, intelligent women from Russia and Ukraine who had a decent command of English and were using the Internet for the first time as a novel way to meet men.  The girl I'm meeting next month in Moscow posted her Match.com ad in February, having never used the Internet before or even met a Westerner!  So I say: just exercize appropriate common sense in using ANY Internet site to meet women, be they from the neighborhood or the FSU.  You never know who you might meet; with some patience, I met some great women I would have never met if I hadn't been patient in using the Net.

Good Luck!

[wsbill]

... in response to Re: Be careful of Match.com, posted by CornellGuy on May 3, 2002

Why pay... It's in russian, big deal.

[Zink]

... in response to Re: Free e-mail address at dating.ru, posted by wsbill on May 3, 2002

If you're not scared of trying to read Russian only ads look at:

http://www.nabka.ru/html/sform.php
http://love.mail.ru/
http://mheart.ru/

They are free. I had some others but I must have erased them. There are a lot of ladies available on these sites. But no guarantees that they'll speak English.

[Oscar]

... in response to Re: Be careful of Match.com, posted by CornellGuy on May 3, 2002

Yes, there are a LOT of scammers and agencies that put their girls on these internet sites and then expect payment etc..  But I wrote to women exclusively from "Absolute Agency" and "American Singles"..  Other than running my ad, these are the only girls I wrote to and yes, there were many scammers I had to wade through to get to the good stuff, but there IS good stuff there if you look hard.  I would NOT, NOT, NOT recommend these types of sites for a man who has never been to the FSU and has no experience with these women as it would be very easy to get scammed on them.  I think the INS should use me as a watchdog because at this point, I can smell a scammer a mile away!  It's interesting how your senses become sharpened to this after a while!
I was just more willing to pay $19.95 per month for these sites with all the women I wanted to write to, as opposed to buying addresses for $10 per pop with the girls that might possibly being scammers as well.. LOL!

I had many women write to me and after writing for 2 weeks or so, tell me that they were writing to me through their agency and that they had a debt of $100 (sometimes more!) because of our writing for a couple of weeks and that unless I sent her this money, they would not let her write to me anymore! LOL!  Which of course is ridiculous!  I would just laugh and move on to the next girl...  Before my trip, I had gotten down to about 18 women I wanted to meet in Ukraine who were legit, but I probably narrowed that down from 100 or so in the beginning!  

These types of agencies are NOT for the inexperienced!  I cannot emphasize this enough!  If you ARE experienced and can spot scammers quickly, they are a good, inexpensive resourse to be able to find some nice girls..

My 2 cents,
Oscar

[MarkInTx]

... in response to Re: Re: Be careful of Match.com, posted by Oscar on May 3, 2002

Seems heavily populated by FSU women.

You get a free profile and trial there, too...

[wsbill]

... in response to Be careful of Match.com, posted by KenB on May 2, 2002

I would call contact your cc company and refuse to pay.

Plus, I'd order a new card on top of that and watch like a hawk your credit card purchase.