I've tried a bunch of those sites. Most will allow you a free account to set up a profile and browse other people profiles. Problem is when you find someone interesting you won't be able to send a mail. At best they have a 'wink' feature that you can use to let the other person know you are interested. If you want to do any kind of direct contact you usually have to upgrade your account to a paying one in the range of $30 to $50 a month, depending on the feature package you want. Want to email, pay. Want advanced search based on location or other criteria, pay more.
But wait. That ain't the worst. Now that you've shelled your money and have all those nifty features, you're now exposed to 2 types of people you don't want. Fraudsters and dishonest people. Fraudsters are mostly annoying. You can usually see them coming and filter them out.
But dishonest people, that's another story. You joined with a sincere desire to find someone, built an honest profile describing you as best as you can along with a couple of pictures. The least you can expect is honesty in return. Well, lots of people on those sites are not.
I won't go into relating all the adventures I had with those sites. But I'll say that I used about 10 of them over the years and met a total of 6 women out of them. 1 of them was genuine and we simply were not a match. Fair enough. 4 of them (with profiles without pictures, darn don't make that mistake) were outright liars about a lot of things, particularly about physical appearance. And the last one, well, believe it or not, the pictures she posted, that showed an average looking rather tall and thin women, were not even hers. She was 5 feet and must have weighted near 300 pounds. Even the faces bore no resemblances. The sad part for her is that, even for a fat woman, she was rather cute. Much cuter than the picture of the woman she posted. But being lied like that was not something I could accept.
This was bad enough. But here is the worst. On some of these sites, you will get tricked into buying by someone contacting you and suddenly disappearing once you've paid. I wonder what's the revenue percentage these sites get with such schemes...
Now, I'm not saying all dating sites are bad or fraudulent. I'm just relating a few of the experiences I had with them. So be careful and be aware that your millage can vary a lot.
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