After a layoff of about 2 years, I'm getting ready to jump back in the saddle!
There's a couple of girls on this site that i'd like start writing with, but I'm a bit suspicious of those who don't have a private email account. Is it credible, in 2007, for a university student only to have agency email? I find it hard to believe that in this day and age a university student in 2007 could have no private email account. Or am I wrong? I don't want to discard potentially promising leads, but I also don't want to waste my time writing to hairy boris.
I'm guessing that most DO have private email accounts. Whether or not you will be able to gain access to it is another story.
You see AGENCIES are not neccessarily your friends. They perform two functions here - that are not neccessarily in YOUR best interest. They filter responses for the girls. And they hope to collect money from you far in excess of just providing an address for introduction.
If the girl is "for real", she doesn't want hundreds of inappropriate responses from 60 year old hairy "Bobs" either. She will list some criteria - and good luck making it THROUGH that, if you don't match the specifications she stipulates. Some agencies may cooperate more with you than others - but most legitimate ones will write a courteous letter declining further corespondence on her behalf if you do not meet her criteria. And she will never even know that you tried to contact her.
And even if you ARE a match - a lot of agencies hope to collect from you in the form of letter translations or "three way phone calls". These are legitimate and profitable services. And having identified a sources of revenue (you) even legitimate agencies will tend to want to milk that source for all its worth.