I realize that I'm most likely preaching to the choir here, but I felt this worth mentioning anyway.
"Marmeladies.com" is a new dating site that has the unique distinction of having all the characteristics of a site like AnastasiaDate.com, but with a clever twist! They state in their "about" section that they have no problem with the members exchanging personal contact information with their ladies and as a matter of fact, they encourage it!
How generous of them!
The site is very slick and appealing and it even works fairly well. The majority of the better looking women on this site have had some professional photo shoots done and some equally professional Photoshop work performed.
One of the offshoots of my RW experience is that I have developed the strange hobby of evaluating new agency sites. Sure many of them are simply mirror sites that I don't bother with, but Marmeladies is a new animal of sorts and I felt a review necessary.
There is no cost to join, so I did. I also don't mind wasting a few bucks to see what shakes out, so I did that also.
Sure enough, a day after my registration and photos were posted, the letters began to pour in. 90% of the respondents would of course be considered "hot", the other 10%, not as hot, but not bad either. Depending on how many credits you purchase, the average cost to open or send a letter is about $5 to $7. I opened about 10 letters and responded to all of them. Some of the ladies had a child, some lived in the Ukraine and some in Russia. Age ranged from 18 up to about 35.
Most of the content in these letters was typical;, "how is your day?", "how are your close ones?", i would like to learn more about you", etc. A couple from some of the younger girls were a little suggestive, but nothing outrageous. Spinner bait I suppose. I answered all in the typical fashion as well, "how are you?", "you are very pretty!", "why do you like older men?", etc. All seemed ready, willing and able to start an online relationship that would guarantee a nice flow of letters.
After sending one response to each of the letters I received, I waited for the replies. Most of the replies took a couple of days with some taking about a week. This time when I responded, I asked them all to reply to my personal email address that I had included in the letter instead of through the agency. What a surprise to learn that not ONE of them was willing to write me at my personal email address. The excuses were many, "I have been cheated online before...", "I do not know English well enough...", even though this particular woman indicates that she is "Upper-Intermediate" in her grasp of the English language, "I think we should write more letters and learn about each other more first..." blah, blah, blah.
Do you think it could be that these "ladies" are being paid to write these letters?
The only way that they could be more convincing that they are paying these woman to write letters would have been to have actually posted it on their site. "WE PAY THESE WOMAN TO WRITE LETTERS TO YOU STUPID!" Now that would be a refreshing change!
Whoever does own this site has gone to a great deal of trouble requiring that the woman listed there remove themselves from every other site that they were previously listed on. When I first joined, I started Google-ing the profile statements of the hottest women they had listed. Sure enough, most were listed on at least 2 or 4 other sites that are known scam agencies.
I continued to monitor the profiles for these woman on the other sites, and low and behold, they started to disappear one by one until their profiles could only be found only on Marmeladies. Now what do you suppose the owners of Marmeladies offered these women in return for their exclusivity? Hmmm, could it be financially motivated? Naw, that would be too obvious!
The "coup de grace" for Marmeladies came in the form of a letter I received from a young woman who apparently had a change of heart and/or a moral epiphany of sorts. In her letter to me, she revealed that when she joined this agency she was led to believe that her correspondence with men was strictly "virtual" in nature and as such, no harm-no foul. Soon she discovered that her experience there was not virtual at all, but real. The letters she was receiving were from real people, with real problems, real desires and real hearts. Kudos to her for making the right decision and for having the decency to send letters to the men she had already begun correspondence with. Her profile vanished from Marmeladies the very next day.
To those of you that believe you can find love on sites such as this, I hope this serves as a bit of a wake up call. I would not have thought it possible, but in the 6 months I have been doing this, the foreign bride/dating industry has become even more deceptive, porn like and sideshowesque than it was when I first started to visit these sites.
Since it's officially a preoccupation of mine now, I look forward to finding and reviewing more new sites as they appear.
I'm not looking specifically for scam sites, so if I ever find a legitimate site, I'll post a review about them as well.
Caveat emptor dudes...caveat emptor!