For the many new readers to Planet-Love the following is one man’s opinion and quick lesson in trying to avoid getting scammed.
First, don’t fall in love with a woman's photo. Photos can be misleading and of course the photo you fall for may not be the woman (or man) writing you.
It should also be the goal of each man to communicate with the woman directly and not have to go thru any agency to communicate with a woman.
It should be your goal to obtain the flat address and phone number of each lady who interest you. Many times we have to play some of the micky-mouse games with various agencies long enough to get the woman’s address or phone number. In your first e-mail or letter to a lady you need to give her your home address and phone number as well as e-mail address. If you are having to go thru an agency with these letter’s it is usually best of you try to disguise the e-mail address in the body of the letter. If you put in Joe@nospam.com the ‘censors’ pick up on this right away and it will be deleted from the letter you are sending her. I have seen many times when a guy would put in joe at yahoo dot com and the e-mail would get thru to the lady.
Usually if a man cannot get the ladies home address or phone number by the third or fourth letter, your not going to get it and it is time to move on. If you suspect the woman might be real, and your not going to get her address thru the agency and you don’t want to give up on her just yet, go to other sites in this ladies city to see if she might be listed with another local agency as well go to some of the larger sites and look for her. If any of the larger sites have a search engine put in your ladies age plus and minus two years, her city, her height plus and minus a few inches and see if she is listed. If so maybe you can buy her address from another site.
I think you guys will have better results, be more successful, if you try to communicate with ladies who can speak at least a little English. Most of us only have a few hours with any one lady if we are meeting several women on a trip, others usually only have a few days if they are meeting one or two ladies. To not be able to communicate with these ladies directly, and having to use an interpreter, is usually not the best way to go. It is always so much better when you can communicate with any woman directly one on one and does reduce the degree to which a guy can be scammed.
If you are writing a lady who does not read or write English tell her to write you in Russian and your letters to her will be in Russian. You accept the responsibility of translating her letters here and sending your translated into Russian letters to her. You can avoid sending money to her for translations if you cover the expense of translations.
Since most ladies do not have internet access at home and only a small percentage have I-net access at work, and you want your lady to not communicate with you thru an agency, have the lady use a local I-net café.
Never send money to a lady you have never met. When most of us are scammed we have two things happen, we lose some money and have a broken heart. If you never send a lady money, your not going to be scammed out of any money. Nothing much can be done about the broken heart of you are writing, communicating with only one woman but if you are writing several ladies, going to meet several ladies on your trip, guys don’t seem to really get the broken hearts after finding out one of the women was a scammer.
So one of the first rules of not getting scammed is do not send any money to any lady you have never met. However there is one exception to this rule. I think it is important for each man to meet many sincere ladies on a trip. Now before we go any further I realize there are some guys who prefer to write one woman, visit one woman and there is nothing wrong with that method. To wovo or to wmvm is strictly a personal decision and the right way is the way that the individual is most comfortable with. So let me continue on at this point and referring to men who are writing, visiting, more than one woman. Once a man can go on a trip and meet several sincere ladies, ladies of high morals, non-scamming women, the man’s trip will in many cases be the trip of a lifetime. If you make a trip to see many ladies and half the women are scammers, party girls, ladies of low morals, then the trip, although at the time may appear to be fun and exciting, will often times be inefficient. Any time a guy can meet only sincere ladies, ladies who have a real interest in him, than that guy is going to have a meaningful trip. It usually takes work and dedication to pull off such a trip.
So we need to correspond directly with the ladies, not thru any agency. With many of these ladies we do not know if we are compatible, we do not even know if they are real. Usually after one month of corresponding directly with a woman we will learn a lot about her. If we are writing her directly, then of course she is going to give us her home address, her home phone number, she is going to tell us where she works, maybe even her work phone number. We are going to learn a lot about most women with one months of corresponding.
Now here comes the exception to sending a woman money. I want to make sure this woman is real. I have acquired her address as I bought it from the agency but the agency is still in the middle of our communications. You send by mail or hand deliver a letter to this woman’s home address. In this letter you tell Elena that you would like to correspond with her directly, not thru the agency. You tell Elena for her to pick the I-net café of her choice, close to work, close to home, her choice, and you will give her $20 for one months I-net access. At an average cost of $1 an hour (exception is Moscow and St. Pete) that is $12 allotted for 12 hours, 3 hours a week for four weeks and $8 to cover cost of transportation to and from I-net café. We tell Elena we will give her $20 to cover her I-net expense to communicate with us for the month.
Any Russian woman who is serious and sincere about a man will agree to this. If Elena says, “Nooo, I want to use my agency” then it’s time to move on. In my opinion if a woman has trouble in wanting to leave her agency to communicate with a man it is, and should be considered a big red flag.
As mentioned before, if Elena has trouble writing, reading English, we tell her to write us in Russian and you will have translated and your e-mails to her will be in Russian. Let’s not give her an excuse to need more money or to rely on someone else to translate for her, you assume this responsibility.
Most men will be able to tell in one month if the lady is real, if she is sincere. Some times it will take two months but most the time the guy will know in a month. If the woman turns out to be a scammer, if the woman turns out not to have sincere interest in you, then you lost $20, it’s the cost of doing business.
If you have been writing to a lady, or several ladies, and any of them tell you they love you, before even meeting you, watch out. Many scammers will often tell men that they love them, that he will be her husband, in letters before meeting.
Many scammers will also try to use sex to try to close the deal or to get gifts or even the old green card. Many scammers will have sex with a man the first day they meet him. Russia and Ukraine are not immune from bad women, women of low morals. Many scammers think nothing of screwing a guys brain out the first day of meeting him. In America you would never marry a woman like this, why would a guy marry a Russian woman like this? If you could have sex with this woman the first day you meet her, so could, and probably have, many other men. If a guy is meeting several ladies and one of the women turns out to be a Russian woman with low morals, not so big of deal, you just move on to the other ladies and hope they are Russian ladies of high morals. If you are going to meet only one woman and she turns out to be a scammer or woman with low morals, then your trip is probably wasted and hopefully you had a back-up plan.
If you are ever writing a woman and she ask’s for money, if she ask’s for new shoes, or that her mom was just in an accident and needs money for hospital, these are bad signs. If a women tells you she can get a visa and airline ticket for $800 and will come to see you, it is a bad sign. If a woman tells you she does not make much money or how difficult things are, this is usually not a good sign.
I met many Russian ladies myself, I read many letters from ladies who write guys every week. I never met a good Russian woman, or know of a good Russian woman who would ask for money or gifts, I never meet a good Russian woman who would discuss her salary or what she was paid, until after meeting a man. Most Russian ladies have to much pride to discuss something of such a personal nature until at least after they met. If this ever came up in a conversation before meeting a woman I would consider this a red flag.
Be weary of ladies who do not want to meet you in their city, who insist on meeting you elsewhere. If you are meeting only one woman I think it is best to meet this woman in her city, meet her family, her friends. Now sometimes it is in the man’s best interest to ask a lady to meet him in another city if he is seeing more than one lady. If he is trying to meet several ladies and one lady lives far away and she is the only lady he has interest in from that city than it may not be wise for the man to spend so much time to travel and visit this one lady for a day or two. In some cases it is better for the man to ask the woman to meet him in another city. Once meeting a woman and if you like her and she likes you, then you should try to go to this ladies city. Go visit her family, her friends, see where she lives, work, BEFORE you marry her! Maybe she has a not so nice past you should know about. If a lady has reservations about introducing you to her family or friends, could be a red flag. If you have a lady you want to meet and she is from another city and you decide to meet her in Moscow and as you walk down the street she interlocks her arm with yours and you then go to her city and she does not do this, or hold your hands, this could be a red flag.
If you are writing ladies from some of the I-net based agencies like match.com, Absolute agency, etc, make sure to get the ladies home address and phone number quickly. If she does not give it to you then she is either not interested or does not want to give it to you for a reason.
If you run into a Russian woman who says she does not have a telephone, well, this might be true. However times are a changing and I think probably 70% of all ladies probably do have telephones today. But if your lady says she does not have a telephone, and she might not, then ask her for the phone number of her neighbor, or friend or relative. During the mid to late 90's there were more ladies who really did not have phones than their are today. But if a lady had real sincere interest in you and she did not have a phone, she would give you the phone number to her neighbor, or her work number or that of a family member and often you would set aside a time and day to call her.
The way these Ukraine and Russian people are, which is for the most part a very caring nation and helpful to each other, if a lady really does not have a phone it is quite common for her to use and pass out the phone number of a close neighbor or friend. So when asking a lady for her phone number and if she says she does not have one, then ask for a phone number of a neighbor or friend. If she does not know of anyone or cannot give you a phone number where you can call her it would cause me to have a little concern and raise a little red flag.
If when you write a lady a letter or e-mail and she writes you back and does not answer any of your question but instead tells you how blue the skies are, this is not a good sign. If your name is Bob and she writes you back as Steve, this is not a good sign. If your lady is in her early to mid 20's and has her own very nice flat and lives by herself, this should be a little flag. Not many young ladies have there own flat but many mafia girlfriends do. If you hand deliver a letter and flowers to your lady and her ex answers the door, this is not a good sign. If when you are writing a Russian lady and she writes about how she looks forward to making love to you it can be quite stimulating but most good Russian women would never write such a thing to man before meeting him.
There are many other red flags bad signs and hopefully some of you more experienced guys can comment on some of those. These certainly are not all the things you need to watch for or be concerned with in regards to identifying scammers but are a few of the things I thought of in the past few minutes that you should watch for or be concerned about.
