Most online dating and Christian dating service sites offer some type of free trial period, varying in length
from seven to thirty days. A free trial can be an excellent method to get a feel
for the service and the members of the community, before joining on a paid
basis.
Be aware that not all free trials are created equal and that unscrupulous site
owners actually pay people to send emails to free trial members to make their
site appear more impressive that it is. This attempt to bait you in is the most
common online dating site scam
A recent posting at
rip-off
report.com lists
the experience of a young lady that was solicited by one dating site to contact
new members during their free trial period.
If you begin to receive emails within a few days of signing up for a free trial
and the only way to respond is to join as a paid member, be suspicious. These
may well have been generated by the companies’ computers or paid employees.
Check them out by using the members handle or I.D. number to search in the
members’ area to learn if this is a real member or not. If you do find a listing
for that member, try to determine if their profile is still active. Legitimate
sites will have an indicator of the last time that member was online.
Even, emails from different members could be part of an online dating site scam.
Check out each one by
doing a profile search as suggested above and compare each email for
similarities in writing style.
If the style and word usage are the same, they were generated by a machine and
not a person.
Yes I know that those emails are very enticing and that you want to respond
quickly before they get away, but before you grab your credit card do some
detective work!
• Use your favorite search engine type in the name of the service that you are
planning on joining and add the word scam or rip off to your query. For the best
result do one search with the word scam and another using rip off.
• Check out sites like rip-off report.com
which lists user complaints and an
opportunity for the site owner to respond. (Keep an open mind, when reading
these reports. Remember, some folks just love to complain.)
• Check out the site at Alexa.com. Alexa ranks websites by popularity and the
number of sites linking to them. If a site is claiming thousands of members, but
has an Alexa ranking above three million and very few other sites linking to it,
it is probably a scam or a very new site.
• If you’re new to online dating join a totally free online dating service. A
free dating service will give you the chance to become familiar with online
dating, learn what a real email response looks like and save you from being
misled by phony emails.
• As always ignore emails asking for money and be suspicious of those professing
their love by the second contact
Face it if your are fifty year old man or woman and during the free trial period
you are contacted by three different twenty-five year olds, what are the odds of
that being legitimate? Online dating is a great way to meet new people and by
avoiding online dating site scams it can be an enjoyable experience.
