Complaint Review: Seeking Arrangement - Internet

Many of the ladies’ profiles resemble the output of an industrial-scale production machinery. I imagine a team of men sitting in an office constructing ladies’ profiles all day long, attaching photos from some large stock archive.

Many profiles on SA contain several of these phrases:

- Let me bring light back into your life.

- I am a force to be reckoned with, but emit only positivity - something I'd love to see in the world

- Something many can attest to, is the radiance and glow that often follow me

- I am seeking a gentleman. Someone honest, direct, and kind.

- has the means and desire to support, dote on, and guide me

- wise, generous and willing to share his insight

- I want financial support and great memories.

- I'm certain we'll get along just fine - don't sigh too loudly at my corny jokes.

- Treat me respectfully and I will do the same for you. We are both here for a reason.

You can search for these phrases on the internet and see how common they are. This is obviously industrial-scale production. It would be very easy for SA to set up an alert to the administrator every time a profile is created containing the above phrases, and then shut down those accounts for obvious fakery. The question is why they don't do this. Another question is how many of their "millions" of profiles, a number they use to encourage people to hand over money to them, are such fakes.

I have reported the fakery to SA's customer service, but they never respond, never take down the offending profiles, and indeed new ones continue to appear.

Often there are contradictions in these profiles, e.g. in the profile attributes they select the box for seeking "Men" and "Women", but in the free-text description they write "I'm looking for a man". I've seen quotation marks at the beginning or end of descriptions containing the above phrases, and other indications of sloppy and impersonal industrial-scale copy/paste in the profiles.

SA's founder Brandon Wade responded in report #684478 that "we never employ fake profiles". So, Brandon, if it's other people who are creating these obviously fake profiles, many of which are months, even years old, what prevents you from automatically detecting them and immediately removing them?

In the last couple of days just before your paid membership expires, there is a surge of interest in you, and a number of carefully crafted but generic incoming messages from people who obviously have an incompatible personality and goals, and nothing in common with you, but write lengthy messages praising your profile and expressing a desire to develop a relationship, without quoting a single specific attribute from your profile that they actually liked. They could send this "let's talk" message to hundreds of departing members and it would be equally valid. To continue messaging at this point, you have to pay more money to the site. These people act like the "retentions dept", even if they weren't actually hired by Brandon Wade.

Having said all that, I have called, met up with, and personally gotten to know a few good people from that site in real life. There is no doubt there are SOME real people on SA, just not as many as SA claims when they take your money.