Complaint Review: asiandate.com - Internet

I usually regard myself as fairly scam aware and resistant, but I got totally sucked in by this one. I've read many reports about this site in the last few days, but none come close to exposing the complex and confusing scheme these people are using.

When I first started using the site in 2012 they went by the name AsianBeauties and advertized themselves as an international marriage broker. They have related sites for different regions such as Russian etc. They are part of Anastasia Inc.

When I first joined the site their primary push was overseas dating vacations which seemed relatively ligitimate. There were no indications of sex vacaction etc. and the goal was to hold a few parties at hotels and introduce people. This had no attraction to me as it seemed a total waste of time but made the site seem more legitimate. I notice now they no longer offer these trips.

The other aspect of this site is a more traditional dating site, however all the girls claim that to join they had to sign up with a local match making agency in China. They also claimed they paid large sums to join, I have no way of confirming this.

The first thing you will notice is the high quality model images on the site. This seemed a dead giveaway until I did some research and found that Chinese dating agencies excel at glamour shots. So I thought this might just be a cultural thing.

One of the key dangers of this site is that they have extremely effective filters blocking exchange of contact info such as phone, email, chat addresses etc. They claim this is required by IMBRA regulations, but their own policies allow you to share this info via site sponsored phone calls and physical gifts of flowers. I don't think IMBRA had a waiver for this. Also other sites which claim IMBRA compliance don't have these restrictions.

There were obvious bots and spam emails, but there also seemed to be a core of genuine women seeking husbands.

In short, I made a trip to China to meet a couple of laides I had met online and when I arrived none were available. I had been in contact with both for several months and one of them showed some real character and risked her job by contacting me away from the site. Of course the filter was no barrier to sharing info when she decided to do this. So probably the filter is simply the person on the other end doing the filtering. She explained to me that the site employs many fake female clients, but that there are also many real women seeking husbands. Her advice at the time was that all of the profiles under 30 years old were fakes. For a time she offered to help me identify real from fake, but this may have been part of the scam also.

Since I failed to meet the ladies I had planned to meet, and was in China for two weeks I took a make lemonade from lemons attitude and tried making some short quick contacts following my contacts advice. I did actually meet several women for lunch or dinner, had to pay an agency interpreter $75 per meeting and these women seemed sincere. So I thought possibly there was something real behind all this mess. One of the women and I did actually have some chemistry and we met three times. I spoke a little Chinese and she could read and write a little English so we could communicate a bit. It was a very cordial platonic set of meetings. We held hands a couple of times.

During the third date the interpreter (an attractive young woman with excellent English) asked "Do you like her? For $3,000 we can send her to you." This honestly freaked me out. There was no way I could interpret this as a legitimate offer of any kind. Either they expected me to hand over 3k to a foreign agency I didn't know and they'd take it and run, they were charging 3k for $160 visa plus service charges or they were involved in some sort of trafficking.

I tried to stay in touch with my friend after I got home, but none of the offsite contact info she gave me worked. And she seemed very distant during conversations on the site. I can only assume she was part of the scam.

These people are extremely good at their jobs. They are very convincing and unlike USA dating sites the women are very persistant and good at providing whatever their male clients are seeking. If you're interest is sex they'll talk sex, they will also talk kids an family, history, politics, media you name it. It is easy to develop an internet addiction to this and I did.

I even made a second trip!!

During this trip I met a more traditional gold digger who just wanted presents. When we broke up she said "Don't trust this place." or words to this effect. I also met a very sweet quiet woman who seemed genuine, but all attempts at breaking free of the control of the "agency" failed. I mean my wechat id is 8 characters long and Chinese people use a phonetic alphabet using English/Latin characters. In short, we have the same writing system. We agreed we wanted to know each other better and needed to away from this site. She never contacted me. I must assume she is part of the scam or under some sort of restrictions.

This was all 5 years ago.

Last month I was curious and wasted some money checking it out again. Many of the same profiles were up and I contacted some women I had spoken with in the past. A woman I had fairly meaningful conversations with in the past was now just broadcasting "Want to see my t**s and p***y?" in chat. Another who had helped me practice my Chinese in the past (for 9 months) didn't remember me and was astonished that I knew Chinese - obviously not the same person.

I also saw a "Have sex with Asian women" add on a porn site. Out of curiousity I followed some links and ended up at their site. I don't think a legitimate marriage site would be advertising like this.

Clearly any pretense of delivering as a marriage/dating site is gone.

Before I started I did find some positive reviews online. These are probably fakes.

The site charges outrageous fees claiming the cost of translation. About $0.40 per minute of chat and $4 per email - each way. If you purchase in large blocks. The price is higher if you don't buy in bulk.

I saw other complaints about illicit CC charges, I never had any issues there. They even provided some refunds for billing errors. If they addvertized themselves as a sex chat/cam service there would be no grounds for complaint, they provide that service although at a high price. The problem is claiming to be a legitimate dating/marriage site.

There are other options for the usual $20/month sort of fees. But they are much more like USA sites, the women are selective, don't respond to mail, don't deluge you with unsolicited contacts, etc. 

In hindsight I feel lucky I didn't get robbed or worse during my visits.