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David K.

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Total Points
90

1 Review by David

  • CharmDate

2/22/21

I've been a customer of the CharmDate.com site/service (Qpid Network) for longer than three months as a single man interested both in the possibility of finding someone special to be with and in investigating the service itself. The operators bill through Hong Kong China. So for your most likely question - essentially yes, it is a scam operation, so 'buyers beware' before you go forward. Their primary purpose is to quickly and efficiently collect as many dollars from YOU as possible. Ladies, most or all, are not on the same schedule as men and are usually shocked at the costs to communicate with them if you show them the math.

The costs could be described most accurately as "outrageous" to "exorbitant", perhaps even "awe inspiring":
1) As I write this, buried layers down in the details is the fact that you must be an active member at least 90 days before you can request the exchange of personal contact information. That's a significant factor on the minimum you'll need to pay to contact your first lady through the site._ If you're aren't particular some women may actually try to track you down if you'll meet them at the airport, and sometimes even if you don't!_ You might be curious to know that while I eventually did exceed my 90 day requirement, verified my authenticity and met the three women I corresponded with, two would only give me their information in person when we met. I think this may have had something to do with an agent relationship but I don't have the facts to give. When I asked through the site as directed, they both independently stated they were nervous about the site having their current address and cell phone, despite the fact that their accounts were marked as "verified" under another address and phone.
2) To use the service, you will need to buy credits in bulk as one of several packages: 100@ $399 and 16@ $99 are the only real options if you spend any time at all communicating with even 1 lady. To continue using the site, the only sensible option is 100 for $399, your lowest cost per credit.
3) You must also exchange 10 paid email (a. K. a. EMF) messages before you may request personal contact information. EMF's using promotional credits and (wildly expensive) Chats did not count._ Let's assume you try to be reasonably frugal in your spending and only contact 1 lady. You usually will read and send at least 1 EMF message a day, will be asked to attach pictures and to view 2 to 4 pictures from them per day. You can view their first picture without additional cost, but the rest are 1 credit each, and videos are 2 credits each. On average you'll spend $8 or more likely $12, $20 or more per day in credits on just 1 lady for at least several weeks. For the first 90 days that's approximately $720 to a median of $1,800. If you don't want to risk your weeks and months on the chance your lady will eventually lose interest, the cost rapidly escalates (with 3) to from $2,200 to $5,400 in that same period._ The reality is that they will also be very, very insistent that you Chat with them on a regular basis 'to maintain the closeness until we meet...'. If you ignore this you will probably lose their attention. Chats are. 5 credits per 5 min as text, double that for video with no sound, and if they pass you pictures, audio or video clips as well each cost additional credits, with video the most expensive. All multimedia is stored for a limited time as well - most seems to be 90 days - and certainly not for as long as you have the account active.
4) Bots or macros? As a man, any time I logged in I was hit up for chat by several ladies profiles every few seconds. How am I nearly certain there are a lot of bots in that mix?_ within seconds of logging in you'll have 3 to 5 chat requests, much faster than they could have possibly typed after spotting you on-line, but that's not necessarily proof on its own._ Among the barrage of Chat request any time I logged in, I routinely received Chat requests from those same three ladies I already mentioned if they were on-line, using tag-lines and statements that were obviously intended for people they didn't know yet. Curious, I accepted these requests a few times and began texting with them. They were consistently unaware of those 'chat with me' messages having been sent. Given this consistent response from 3 different ladies I tend to believe they were not sending those messages intentionally, indicating to me that either a bot or agent was responsible. I lean toward a bot because IF I responded, the lady (or agent?) in question would almost always respond after 5 to 15 seconds.
5) The service will aggressively scrub any text of image using a combination of automation and visual scanning that looks like it could possibly be an attempt to pass contact or meeting arrangements from email or Chat, replacing such believed content with **** characters. The person sending the information does not see what was replaced, even if the information was flagged as inappropriate in error. That includes many numbers, names, places, businesses and others.
6) I verified with the ladies that very nearly all of my messages were left English and not translated:_ I wrote in English specifically to English speaking women - in EMF and Chat - and when asked they would say they were reading and writing in English._ When I asked Support why messages we so expensive their response was it was to support translation services at the (affiliate agency?) the ladies used. There are a great many, all contributing professional photographs and profiles. Total bunk. Excellent automated translation services are available for free to occasional users, and for a few cents each for such limited size emails like these for commercial use. I can't deny the possibility that they share their collected revenue with contributing agencies; however, to me that raises the risk of conflict of interest, and even of human trafficking._ IF an email were translated, it's the height of poor behavior and misrepresentation to pass a translated email off as someone else's written word without providing the original message for comparison. Human translators aren't always very good, so if you wanted ask a knowledgeable friend to verify a translation it's impossible here.
8) Support is very poor. Responses took days to arrive and perhaps one issue I reported was ever actually solved. The same individual appeared to answer any of the questions I posed in poorly written English. I was usually told, effectively, to live with whatever my concern was (paraphrasing of course). This included asking how to prevent clever women I hadn't even contacted from finding me at home. Yes, really. Shock and concerns of privacy aside, these just seemed to be VERY determined to find 'someone' and I was at the top of their list. Personally, I'd like to be desired for more than because I was male and still breathing, so I consider that means of being selected a problem. Support was no help at all, thought they tout their support for privacy.

SO - how can these costs be justified vs a subscription service? They can't. There is a great deal of profiteering on their part, it's obvious YOU are not their first or even second priority, and your role is keep buying credits for as long as they can string you along. They probably are passing along our fees to their many contributing agencies, who often pretend to be the woman you think you're in dialog with (as "interpreters"), and are likely out convincing women to join their service and marry abroad, as either paying, un-paying or even paid clients. At the risk of seeming too distrusting, how are we to know for certain when you actually in dialog with the person you think you are, and that their participation is above board and free from all coercion, even potentially some form of 'profit sharing' with some women?

For these reasons and more I would not use the service. There are others, now mimicking the success of Qpid Network and their CharmDate (and related) products by requiring 'credits' to participate.

Good luck and be safe -

Tip for consumers:
That buried layers down in the details is the fact that you must be an active member at least 90 days before you can request the exchange of personal contact information, and that the real cost to read OR send every message will typically be $20 or more!

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