... in response to Newbie-International Friends Agency, posted by Briguy on Jun 24, 2001They are probably legit, why not? Most of the address sellers are. Go for it! You will soon learn that buying a few addresses will be the LEAST of your expenses, ha ha! And even if the lady has been listed for what seems like a long time, she still might be interested, if not, what are you out? An $8.00 to $10.00 address fee and a stamp?
Now , Jes mentioned South of the Border.... I KNOW they are legit, because I bought some address from them and got some responses, including the one I plan to marry (yes, she feels the same, thanks for asking). Anyway, SOTB has 3 sites (they all link to each other). Two of them are just different formats of the same thing, the 3rd is the same thing, but all in Spanish. As far as dating the profiles, they usually don't put a date on each indivual profile, but one of their search options is "show all ladies listed in a particular MONTH and YEAR", so if you find one (or several) you like, note her code number and then work backwards through that option until you find her and you will know how long she has been listed.
Hint: the "centerfold" girls all get tons of mail when they are first listed and your letter may get lost in the shuffle. Instead of holding out for a "10", why not write to a "7" or "8" picture who has been listed for quite some time? You could (no, let's change "could" to "WILL") stumble across a "10+" personality.---Not to imply in anyway that a "10 looker" can't also be "10 personality", (after all, these are LATINAS we are talking about) just that your competition won't be as stiff for the 7 & 8 pictures (of course IMHO a 7 triguena looks better than a 9 1/2 blanca, but, hey, we each have our own tastes).
Hint #2: Colombian mail service is worse than terrible! I recomend a letter for the first contact (send two letters to each one you are interested in, one of them might get there) but a favorible reply should be followed up with a phone call. ASK her in the first letter if she would like you to call and for her to suggest a proper time---you DON'T want to get her in trouble at work or embarrass her in front of her family (particularly if they don't know and/or object that she has signed up with an agency).
If you aren't confident enough with your Spanish, or perhaps the lady isn't comfortable with phone calls until she knows you a little better, see if she has access to email (not that many of them do, at least not at home or in their office, but once you've started the releationship, she can maybe use an internet cafe, and if I remember right (not sure, but I think this is so, ask them when you order the addresses) SOTB will receive email for her and she can come to their local "branch office" in her city and pick it up and reply to it. Some of the agencies charge extra for this (in fact, if you look at the Russian board, it seems to be the major source of income for some agencies and a major source of "scam" complaints about some of the ladies) some don't. I don't think want to put words in their mouth, but I think SOTB does it for free, at least for the first couple or few emails.
SOTB also has a section called something like "ladies who listed with us who are now married" which I can also vouch is legit. One of the ladies I wrote to wrote back "sorry, I'm already engaged" and she showed up in that section shortly thereafter, and another (also now shown in the "got married" section) also wrote that she too was engaged and offered to fix me up with her sister----well, we tried, but it turned out that her sister wasn't going to be "the one", but that's neither the agency's nor the sister's fault, just the way it worked out.
Anyway, I think that you can see from these examples that they are a legit agency, selling real address of real women who really will answer you. Well, I don't want to sound like a shill for that agancy, just that I have first hand experience with them, There may be other agencies just as good and/or provide the same (or maybe even better) service.
Now welcome to the "brotherhood", and good luck to you.
