I was contaced by a girl from this site. Amruss I did not join this site. We talked for a couple of weeks. She did not ask for money. She said that she could not pay for mail forwarding anymore. I paid for it from here with my credit card not any money was sent to her personally. after a month she will not give out her real address it is a post office box. I sent her Flowers through Amruss and Oh thank you. BLah Blah Blah! I said I would come to meet her. Oh no I won't be here then. i tried to send her flowers from another site. I couldn't. Can you come in 5 years after I soak you of mail forwarding for all that time? Bottom Line I only spent $120 on mail forwarding and have been on Anastasia site The biggest scam going. I am giving up on this crap 90% of all this Russian bride stuff is crap! I'm going back to my local bar where all I loose is a couple of buck on a drink! If anyone knows a real no BS site pease let me know? I have met 1 girl that is for real so wish me luck.
Fabio,
Approx 90% is probably, more or less, accurate, one needs to sort out the crap from the good but you mention Anastasia, did it not occur to you to utilise the usefulness of a search engine before wasting your USD120.00 + flowers?
Martin I guess you have never made a mistake in your life have you. You must have never been a beginner at anything also hind site is 20/20 is it not. It is so easy to say after the fact. This scenerio it was not some Anastaisia site and I got my money back on the flowers it was a reputable site I ordered from. They do address verivication. I recomend them flamigo I got it off of Elana's site. Why do you say something constructive and help people. Otherwise you are jusy boosting your ego. I know my brother is exactly like that. I am here thru a search engine.
Fbio,
I often refer to myself having made mistakes or 'learning experiences'.
Yes, I was a beginner back in 1998 when there were no forums, no blacklists etc. etc. etc. The information is on the web waiting for you, it wasn't on the web back in the 1990's.
yes but even the scammers have got their own "scam lists", so that makes it harder to find out who is honest and who isn't. I think there are real people who want to meet someone and there are scammers who don't all mixed up. If you complain on this site though, they will check the lady out at her agency for you and if there is something not right, they will cancel her account.
Pardon me if I sound like a broken record (a skipping CD maybe?) but I cannot stress enough the importance of actually having a face-to-face MEETING to seperate the fake from the real.
THAT IS WHY I am a firm advocate of Romance Socials. Sure, a Romance Social is a little more expensive than letter writing at first - but you get to be FACE to FACE with the girls. And you KNOW whether they are real or not.
Might they be lying to you and not all they claim to be still? Of course. You can never be entirely sure of that with ANYONE ANYTIME. But your chances are SO MUCH BETTER at actually making a real connection with a real girl (who really looks like she is supposed to etc. - you know that because she is RIGHT THERE).
I feel sorry for all who write - and then get scammed. I'm not looking for a prolific writer necessarily (I'm not looking for Emily Dickenson) and I want to see for myself, what her facial expressions are and how she speaks (I prefer a credible English speaker). These things are readily dterminable through a Romance Social.
I will be going again in the arly part of this year.
(And if the cost is what bothers you - rest assured that by the time you find a lady by writing letters, go and see her, and arrange to bring her back - you will have spent as much or much more anyway.)
Social goers make a list of dates based on the information collected by means of a short interview during the social. Then they go out with a bunch of women one at a time (hopefully) while all of these women know they're being scrutinized (call it a date) by a man who dates 8-10 women not just one during his stay. Every woman wants to feel special and be romanced and I see no romance in a romance social. Social rather remind me singles bars where men predominantly go to find fuck buddies. In fact, I believe romance socials are the best way to enjoy your time in FSU if your purpose is not marriage or you are unsure what your purpose is. You can indeed meet many women in a short time frame. To do so, however, you don't even have to sign up at a romance social. All you have to do is pick a number of women from various web sites and ask the agents to make appointments for you. That way at least you have control over whom you're gonna meet instead of just showing up and being served any girls (including pro-daters) that the social organizer was able to gather. The cost will likely be much less, as well.
Most girls at socials do not speak English, hence there are intepreters available. Many dates are arranged with an interpreter being present because the girl does not speak English.
I am not trying to spoil anyone's dream or poke into anyone's eye. I am just stating plain facts.
<they're being scrutinized (call it a date) by a man who dates 8-10 women not just one during his stay. Every woman wants to feel special and be romanced and I see no romance in a romance social. Social rather remind me singles bars where men predominantly go to find fuck buddies. In fact, I believe romance socials are the best way to enjoy your time in FSU if your purpose is not marriage or you are unsure what your purpose is.>
Trav:
On what do you base this drivel. You are supposed to be college educated so your "facts" should not be coming out of the air. FACTS are not the same as baseless opinion. Have you had any experience on a Romance Social. NO! Whereas I HAVE! I dated TWO women. The most any guy dated who was with me on my Social was FOUR! Most of the people dated TWO or THREE.
And "fuck buddies"??? Again - where do you get your information - from your (dirty little) imagination. Honestly I know of ONE GUY - a psysician who's wife had passed away (believe it or not) who looked for women just for sex. FOURTEEN OTHER GUYS THERE were all serious about finding the right woman for marriage. We usually all met for breakfast at the hotel we were staying at and had serious discussions on what we were looking for and what we had gone through already in our personal lives.
Frankly Trav - it gets sickening having to explain to you over and over again how the real world is - not how your dirty little mind imagines it to be. If letter writing worked for you - then GOOD FOR YOU! And MORE POWER TO YOU.
But there are ALL SORTS OF PROBLEMS WITH WRITING LETTERS. And those of us that I KNOW who go on Socials are doing it honestlty and legitimately despite what your dirty little presumptuous mind wants to think.
Try writing about something you know something about Trav - if you can actually think of anything relevant.
And as far as women who don't speak English is concerned - I don't pursue them at Socials. Not at all. That's very easy to do. Problem solved. And they cannot CLAIM to speak English by hiding behind a translator when you are meeting them FACE TO FACE.
jetmba, is there a particular reason you cannot withhold your hostility and aggression towards me for a single moment?
If I wanted experience in socials, I could buy my way to a social four years ago. I investigated this option, I saw the pictures, watched the promotional video tape, and talked to the organizers on the phone. Frankly, it felt very unappealing to me for the reasons that I stated above.
Let's assume for a moment that all social goers are honestly looking for a woman. At the end of the day, this is as good an assumption as the assumption that all letter writers are marriage minded as well. How can a successful marriage start with an interview of one's future bride among a number of possible candidates? How can it not be a wild stretch of imagination to call romance the process of dating several women (any number greater than one qualifies) all of whom know that the man dates all of them during his stay as part of his interview process? How can one contend that any woman with some self respect would subdue herself through this process?
It does not make any sense at all to say that going to a social is a way to romance a woman. If you and others believe that there is no need to romance a woman rather it is an interview process aimed at selecting the best suitable candidate, then your criteria are very different than mine. Therefore, this method of meeting a possible bride may indeed work for you and others who intend to pursue this venue.
Trav:
Is there some reason that you hide in the shadows lately, only coming out to make ridiculous and unfounded attacks on Romance Socials which I advocate? Is it a personal vendetta since obviously other member of this forum do not want to get caught up in a hostile action and therefore (with few exceptions) nobody else comments once you start an attack.
You make up declarations such as that men date 8 to 10 women and then you declare these as facts. You know nothing of what you speak. Big deal that you once watched video.
Do YOU honestly think that women who men write to think that THEY are being written to exclusively? Do you think that these Eastern European women are so dumb as to believe that a man buys membership in a site only to write to one single girl who caught his eye?
Do you find it more romantic to choose a girl based on a "fact sheet" and a couple of photographs on a Lonely Hearts type web page, then actually meeting a girl face to face., looking in her eyes, as she looks in yours for some sort of magic from which to base a legitimate relationship on.
It is possible to write to a girl for MONTHS and then to meet and realize that there is no real chemistry between you. We read about it all the time in this forum. Then the guy goes home, dejected, often times swearing off of Russian women and the entire expensive process he had just gone through. By meeting a girl FACE TO FACE you get to SEE if that real person to person chemistry is there. It is MUCH more romantic than basing a relationship off of a cold internet "fact sheet".
There are only TWO reasons why a man might choose an endless Lonely Hearts type letter writing campaign over a genuine face to face meeting at a social.
a.) Cost - A Romance Social is certainly initially more expensive than plunking down $19.95 for a monthsly membership in a dating site (or less for a few individual addresses) versus $3,500 to $4,000 for the Social. The cheap "upfront" cost certainly appeals to many men, who don't seem to realize it will eventually and easily cost thousands to actually meet a Russian lady that they are writing to and bring her over here should they make a connection through months of relatively cheap letter writing.
b.) Fear - Many American (western) men have been shot down in face-to-face meeting with beautiful women in their home countries and facing that prospect again in a foreign country scares the hell out of them. They prefer to hide behind the anonymity of letter writing, until their "love" developed this way, overcomes their fear to actully go MEET the girl face to face and they make the trip.
They may cost a little more at first, but Socials are BY FAR the best option.
Admit it Trav, you attack Socials because you don't like ME (and I assure you that the feeling is mutual) based on past scuffles we have had. This is why you are constantly on the attack about something you have absolutely NO first hand knowledge of - save watching some old promotional video.
jetmba,
You give the impression, perhaps you are under the impression, in your post that there are only two possible methods that a guy may meet an FSU lady, he either writes, as you put it, 'endless' letters or he attends a romance social.
There are several methods that a guy may meet a lady, one of these can be letter writing but not 'endless' letter writing, perhaps just for a few weeks or longer before he jumps on an aeroplane and another method could be to travel to FSU independantly to meet ladies in their natural environment, a romance social not being their natural environment.
You talk excessively of the cost of a romance social and 'criticize' 'cheapskate' letter writers but, be honest, you are spending the cost of a romance social to meet as many ladies in as short a space of time as possible and you daren't travel independantly, for perhaps half the cost of a romance social, because you're afraid that you'll return home empty handed.
Martin: I have been to Eastern Europe six times within the past three years in my search. Five of those trips were NOT for Socials. One trip, to Latvia was solely an independent trip (didn't know anybody in the country and nothing was prearranged) to meet women "in their natural environment". It was not much less expensive than the Romance Social had been and it was a MAJOR dissapointment. I spent the majority of the trip looking, very little serious meeting - and by the time I did my two weeks had run out and I had to return to the US right away.
Writing to a lad for a few weeks or longer and then getting on an airplane to meet the lady and dicovering NO CHEMISTRY (since you picked her from a cold internet "fact sheet") is exactly what I refered to when I talked about the things we read about in the forum all the time. The guy leaves dejected and swears off the entire process - declaring ALL be a sham.
Guys: There are some circumstances in my personal life that will determine whether or not I go on my Romance Social during February, April or even perhaps August. (Those are the most likely months right now.) I will let you know what happened when I do, DESPITE Trav and his games.
Trav and Martin will never know what they missed. Though they will TELL you they do!