The most obvious scammers are the ones that ask you for your email address from the first message. My dating site helps on that as they can monitor which user has just joined and then set about sending his/her email address in bulk or asking every man for it. These scammers get removed from the site almost from day one.
There are some more subtle ones who exchange a few messages in the site first then they ask for the email address. But they will soon start with the scam stories as no scammer has the patience to wait for 6 months of writing messages before they come up with the scam.
As Tom Shea said, the professional daters are more difficult to spot as they will not ask for money, only for you to come and visit them. So how do you know that they really want to meet you in person and not for you to go and spend money on gifts, expensive restaurants, etc. I am still not sure what are the red flags in correspondence. Even the ones that want you to go quickly can be the ones that say they wasted a lot of time wih men with whom they exchanged correspondence with, for weeks or months, and the guy never turned up.
Maybe the professional daters are usually the ones that lure men with their glamour photos, maybe the girls who put photos in jeans at the park or at work at their desk are less likely to be daters.
Also the professional daters last longer in a site like mine, as it will take time until a few men fall in the trap, go to see the girl, realise it is a scam and then go back to report the girl to the site. I guess the site will not remove the girl with only one or two stories from men.
Of course you can learn if the girl is a professinoal dater if on day one of your visit they want to take you to the most expensive restaurant in town, but by then you will have spent all the money on the air tickets and hotel bookings and missed work...
Wifeseeker
I have come across some who do not ask for money, but you never know if they are just playing around. There are a few who send me photos of themselves outside or on a local trip. As I said before, I am not here to impress anyone or buy a person's affection. I know that you are supposed to "impress" the lady by offering her a nice token of affection and a wonderful dates. Some I have been telling of my past background and that should give them a hint that I am more of a tightwad than a big spender. There is no sugar daddy here, so if they want to waste their time with me, that will be their loss.
I just received contact from someone on this site to go to Skype right away.
The problem (or not as the case may be) is that FSU women expect more chilvalry and romantic gestures than Western women. While many Western women will want to pay half of their restaurant bill from the first date, FSU women usually expect you to pay for the first one - and all the subsequent ones :-)
So, the line between a woman looking for a sponsor, a scammer and a genuine girl expecting you to treat her well can get blurred.
Yes, you need to impress beautiful girls in the FSU, otherwise why would they choose you over a local Romeo? I guess you can impress them with things other than money, like real affection, commitment (marriage) and the enormous effort to take them to your country (still money is involved in this)
well I can only tell you about my experience out of the probably 25 women I met in ukraine I can only think of 1 that absolutely did not have access to a wifi connection this far.
As far as the agency having something to gain from a girl if you write you 3 or 400 letters over a 5 month period, She could Sell pencils on the corner to get free meals quicker
Wifeseeker
I guess I will have to impress them through other means. Some have said they have had bad experiences with local men. One of them wrote this to me recently (translated).
"So much of the things in this world to share with my beloved. I want you to know you are in my heart, always and forever."
Tom Shea
If the writing commission is that small, then I wonder why some ladies on this site just send me text messages that only say "How are you?" over and over again? Maybe they don't get any attention from the men here?
Yes, it is absurd to say that girls will get paid to write letter on sites where they do not charge you per letter.
What would you say are the tell tale signs of a professional dater in her correspondence, if she is not in a dating site that sells you all those things like interpreters, apartments, air tickets, etc.? Just the monthly fee.
I only wrote to women with English 7 and above once I fine tuned my plan. I paid no translator fees. As for the agency apartment? I paid what? $5 more power night? So they made $100 for finding me the love of my life? I'd WANT to pay them 10 times that much for finding me the most wonderful woman on earth.
This site does have pay per letter if you do not subscribe for VIP membership. If you write a reply letter without VIP membership, I believe the charge is $8 USD. There are non-VIP memberships that charge you a lower monthly fee. So this site has pay per letter PLUS monthly fee at the same time. The pay per letter charge applies to agency ladies, not the independent ones with private email.
"So much of the things in this world to share with my beloved. I want you to know you are in my heart, always and forever."
Complete and meaningless cliche. I caught a woman copying and pasting this kind of thing from websites.
Women who just say How are you? in their messages make my blood boil. I think: "Just tell me whether you had a burger for lunch today! Anything about you!"
Tom Shea
5 dollar a night at an apartment? I have not seen price quotes from any of the dating sites at rates that low.
Wifeseeker
I guess it can be a cliche. There are so many profiles with photos taken from other sites.
I have a lady here who just keep sending me a virtual kiss every time for several months. No real meaningful conversation from any of her messages. She is quite popular though with thousands of messages received. On her photo with her miniskirt outfit, she has got very long legs that go way up.
Tom Shea
I am only providing what I have experienced in the dating sites and not providing advice. I am just giving out my observations that may be positive or negative.
I guess since I do not have anything positive to provide to the forum, I should just stay quiet.
Actually Tom Shea you didn't say that, so take the quotes off... YOU should re-read what you wrote:
"I paid what? $5 more power night?"
but I DID get what you were trying to say. You have so many mistakes in your misspellings ( some are not close to actual word, ie: 'power' - 'per') I have to re-read some of what you write to understand what you are trying saying. Yes, I know your reason why.
It's called auto complete on my phone, but dc asked where I could find a $5 per night apartment. . The point was it clearly says $5 MORE per night. The misspellings come from a swype keyboard. When you drag your finger from p to e to r, you cross over o, then turn back on the e. So to swype, it adds the w, adding w to complete it.