Some background... I'm happily married to an awesome wife and have a beautiful daughter. I have no interest in having an affair and messing that up. I don't like the idea behind AM, but not everyone is in my situation. To each their own. I don't judge what I don't know and that is certainly not the intent of my post. I just wanted to be clear about my biases as you read this.
That said, sometime ago, I decided it would be kind of fun to see if I could determine how much of this site was legitimate and how much was a scam. Maybe I thought I'd blog about it someday, maybe it was morbid curiosity, maybe I was curious about the people that wanted to cheat... I really don't know. It doesn't really matter. What does matter is I can corroborate what most people are saying here and then some.
Just to eliminate any doubts in this thread, AM absolutely uses and encourages fake profiles. They openly (well, somewhat openly) admit to it. According to their FAQs, they call it "market research" and admit that there is no way to tell the difference between a research (i.e. fake) account and a real one. You have to manually opt out, as it is on by default. Otherwise, you give them permission to contact you using collect messages which you have to pay to open, and then pay additional credits to send a response. Read that again... AM acknowledges that some of their profiles are fake and yet you still have to pay money to read the admittedly fake messages. It's OK though because it is market research!
Now why in the world would anyone ever want to opt in to that?! The answer, of course, is that they wouldn't, but I suspect that whole scenario exists to protect them in the event someone actually wanted to sue them for using fake profiles to burn credits. And most people aren't going to read the FAQs. I just happened to do so because I was intent on learning as much about them as I could.
BTW, I'm still curious how the message, "do you wanna chat?" and literally nothing else, is market research. I'd love to see the published results of said research, assuming it is more in-depth than "99% of men will respond to an unsolicited message sent by a hot chick". Surely that result was figured out some time ago.
And it gets better... these "market research" profiles are still visible in searches even after opting out. So, you can still potentially waste credits on emails to them. And by potentially, I mean it's 100% certain you will... they are everywhere. To be fair, if you can catch them by providing proof that the profile pic is a fake or other such methods, they will usually refund the credits. That is about the only positive thing I have to say about the site. They don't, however, usually remove the profiles.
I spent a little money to be a full account and I've spent a few months playing detective... I treat it as a kind of game. I've found out that most of the profiles within 500 miles of my location, in my age group, are either fake or escorts. In my anecdotal and non-scientific opinion, just about every picture with a face (singles excluded) is 100% fake. There do seem to be a lot of "big women" that are real, some are actually very nice. I don't think this is what a majority of men are looking for.
I also spent time looking at Twitter, other forums, blogs, etc... and in my opinion, AM has a really aggressive social marketing strategy going on which creates fake posters, commenters, and twitter accounts. I didn't look at Facebook because, well, that would get weird and personal, but I suspect much of the same there. My question is, if the site was so popular and people were rushing out in droves to have an affair, why would all of this be necessary?
So, to all the supposedly happy AM members that have posted earlier on this thread or in other threads, please include your AM profile name and I'll gladly look you up. I have no doubt that most, if not all, of these "happy customers" are employees/social marketing consultants, but I'd be happy to come back and admit I'm wrong. Maybe it is a coincidence that your experiences sound so similar to the marketing promises that AM makes. More likely, I'll end up posting as to why you are a shill. I personally think these practices are intentionally deceptive and go way beyond fair advertising.
So to recap...
-- They admit to using fake accounts for market research, which will still cost you real money and you get no clear benefit.
-- They are aggressively marketing AM through fake accounts in all sorts of social media.
-- They automatically opt you in to recurring charges when your credits expire, and don't make it clear where to opt out.
-- Even though they bill you anonymously, they will un-anonymously provide your information to your bank, and most amazingly, mail(!) you correspondence if you dispute charges. I'm guessing that would suck.
There are other things I've observed that I could mention, but I've rambled long enough. Maybe someday I'll post an article about it, or more likely, I'll get bored and move on to other things. And like others have said, I don't doubt that there are some genuine matches made on the site by accident, specifically in major metropolitan areas, maybe in other countries. Maybe the site was originally started with ... um, "pure" intentions. But if you think for a second that this service (or pretty much any other similar site, for that matter) is now anything other than a thinly-veiled money taking site, you are crazy.
