Rottweiler
Anonymous
Hi, since I'm extremely disappointed by Cupid Junction, I want to share my experiences as a "Premium Member" with the online community hoping to prevent others from running into a lot of this anger.
First it started that there were a lot of fake profiles. By fake I mean that there seems to be an organization from Africa (mostly Nigeria) behind this. They upload pictures of models into their profile and search for some dumb men. They operate like this:
The profile tells you that they are from somewhere in the States. For some reason they had to go to Nigeria. Most likely it has to do with death of one of their parents or that they visit their dad in the hospital in Nigeria. However they get robbed and so their U.S. passport plus all their money is gone. They will tell you that you are the most wonderful person in the world and they love you. They will stay with you forever if you help them, because when they go to the embassy, the embassy expects a fee of $250 for renewing their passport (which indeed is not true in such a case). So at the bottom line they ask you to help them. You should send them money thru western union to a weird address in Nigeria. As a proof of trust they will call you. I have contacted the fraud competence center of Western Union and this is a known fraud, happening to many online members. I’m happy that I saw the fraud in it.
So this is one thing and many online services get hit by this at the moment. However I gave Cupid Junction / Relationship Exchange some constructive hints. I told them that they should send out a broadcast email to all their customers, warning of this kind of fraud. Other than that I said that they should examine based upon the IP address profiles from Africa closer, because no joke – by talking to 10 members with a picture, 7 turned out to be from Africa even though the profile said they were in the Seattle area. I didn’t investigate further if all of them would ask me to send money since that’s not my job, but I assume that they were all part of this fraud. So if the screening personal of relationship exchange would pick out for example profiles which have an IP from Africa and the profile says they would be in the States, they would have an easy job to find fake profiles.
However they didn’t do anything about it – there was no mass email or something like that. It even got better, because I wrote down into my profile in the desired mate section that if the person is from Africa and just interested in me sending money thru Wester Union, then don’t contact me. You know what happened? They deactivated my profile. I’m paying $25 per month and deactivate my profile. It even got better: I got no single line of information which kind of problem they have with my profile. Just a standard page that tells you what usually is a problem and there was nothing that would justify deactivating my profile. It’s very suspicious that there are so many fake people from the Nigerian Mafia on this site and they are not interested in warning their customers of this fraud. I really have my doubts that this service is operating reliable.
The bad side effect: I worked 3 weeks all day long and this happened on the first Saturday in 3 weeks that I had off. So I complained and some time on Monday my profile got activated again. I have sent out an email because I expected some kind of compensation and an excuse for this.
No response.
I have sent another email.
No response.
Then I wrote into my profile that stuff which I previously addressed in my emails and it took them only 2h to deactivate my profile again. I wish they were so effective in either caring about their paying customers or in deactivating fake profiles.
I left the profile deactivated for some days and wanted to see if at least someone would contact me.
Nothing.
So I wrote to the customer support again and finally I got an email from the director of customer care. She was at least replying quickly and agreed on some kind of compensation (one month for free). However it turned out that if they deactivate a profile then they cannot track who deactivated it when for which reason. This is really a frustrating lack in their infrastructure. I demanded that my profile is handled in future with more care – meaning that a deactivation requires a manager approval, who will take the responsibility for deactivating my profile. This is especially important, since I have already included my lawyer on this and if there is a denial of service, they cannot even tell you why they denied it. They will just refer to this one tiny note in the terms & conditions that they will take the right to deactivate a profile at any time. I’m wondering what would happen if I would take the right to not pay at any time…
Anyways – I agreed with the director of customer care, that I would try it once more, but if it happens again, then that’s it. So today (Saturday) I finally have time to work on a new profile. I updated my profile and bang – I’m deactivated again. I got one of those standard deactivation emails (which I didn’t get for my previous deactivations) which says that due to their privacy policy I’m not allowed to write down personal information on my profile like last name, email addresses etc. I read thru my profile again and again. There is nothing. I assume that they employ some really stupid people for their screening department. Sorry, but this is the truth. This is America – people care about their paying customers. Somehow the people of the screening department don’t realize that their paying customers are the people who make their salary happen.
I will give now green light for my lawyer on Monday. I have already spent too much money, too much time and too much energy into this worst online experience ever.
However I hope that this review helps to protect you from going into any case of fraud or into the wrong dating site. There are some very nice ones. I made good experiences with www.myspace.com which is even for free.
First it started that there were a lot of fake profiles. By fake I mean that there seems to be an organization from Africa (mostly Nigeria) behind this. They upload pictures of models into their profile and search for some dumb men. They operate like this:
The profile tells you that they are from somewhere in the States. For some reason they had to go to Nigeria. Most likely it has to do with death of one of their parents or that they visit their dad in the hospital in Nigeria. However they get robbed and so their U.S. passport plus all their money is gone. They will tell you that you are the most wonderful person in the world and they love you. They will stay with you forever if you help them, because when they go to the embassy, the embassy expects a fee of $250 for renewing their passport (which indeed is not true in such a case). So at the bottom line they ask you to help them. You should send them money thru western union to a weird address in Nigeria. As a proof of trust they will call you. I have contacted the fraud competence center of Western Union and this is a known fraud, happening to many online members. I’m happy that I saw the fraud in it.
So this is one thing and many online services get hit by this at the moment. However I gave Cupid Junction / Relationship Exchange some constructive hints. I told them that they should send out a broadcast email to all their customers, warning of this kind of fraud. Other than that I said that they should examine based upon the IP address profiles from Africa closer, because no joke – by talking to 10 members with a picture, 7 turned out to be from Africa even though the profile said they were in the Seattle area. I didn’t investigate further if all of them would ask me to send money since that’s not my job, but I assume that they were all part of this fraud. So if the screening personal of relationship exchange would pick out for example profiles which have an IP from Africa and the profile says they would be in the States, they would have an easy job to find fake profiles.
However they didn’t do anything about it – there was no mass email or something like that. It even got better, because I wrote down into my profile in the desired mate section that if the person is from Africa and just interested in me sending money thru Wester Union, then don’t contact me. You know what happened? They deactivated my profile. I’m paying $25 per month and deactivate my profile. It even got better: I got no single line of information which kind of problem they have with my profile. Just a standard page that tells you what usually is a problem and there was nothing that would justify deactivating my profile. It’s very suspicious that there are so many fake people from the Nigerian Mafia on this site and they are not interested in warning their customers of this fraud. I really have my doubts that this service is operating reliable.
The bad side effect: I worked 3 weeks all day long and this happened on the first Saturday in 3 weeks that I had off. So I complained and some time on Monday my profile got activated again. I have sent out an email because I expected some kind of compensation and an excuse for this.
No response.
I have sent another email.
No response.
Then I wrote into my profile that stuff which I previously addressed in my emails and it took them only 2h to deactivate my profile again. I wish they were so effective in either caring about their paying customers or in deactivating fake profiles.
I left the profile deactivated for some days and wanted to see if at least someone would contact me.
Nothing.
So I wrote to the customer support again and finally I got an email from the director of customer care. She was at least replying quickly and agreed on some kind of compensation (one month for free). However it turned out that if they deactivate a profile then they cannot track who deactivated it when for which reason. This is really a frustrating lack in their infrastructure. I demanded that my profile is handled in future with more care – meaning that a deactivation requires a manager approval, who will take the responsibility for deactivating my profile. This is especially important, since I have already included my lawyer on this and if there is a denial of service, they cannot even tell you why they denied it. They will just refer to this one tiny note in the terms & conditions that they will take the right to deactivate a profile at any time. I’m wondering what would happen if I would take the right to not pay at any time…
Anyways – I agreed with the director of customer care, that I would try it once more, but if it happens again, then that’s it. So today (Saturday) I finally have time to work on a new profile. I updated my profile and bang – I’m deactivated again. I got one of those standard deactivation emails (which I didn’t get for my previous deactivations) which says that due to their privacy policy I’m not allowed to write down personal information on my profile like last name, email addresses etc. I read thru my profile again and again. There is nothing. I assume that they employ some really stupid people for their screening department. Sorry, but this is the truth. This is America – people care about their paying customers. Somehow the people of the screening department don’t realize that their paying customers are the people who make their salary happen.
I will give now green light for my lawyer on Monday. I have already spent too much money, too much time and too much energy into this worst online experience ever.
However I hope that this review helps to protect you from going into any case of fraud or into the wrong dating site. There are some very nice ones. I made good experiences with www.myspace.com which is even for free.
.
