Warren G.

First and foremost this is my experience of Anastasiadate. I expect that a representative from them will have some generic comment but that's to be expected. Experience is experience and the following is my opinion based on my experience with using this website to find a mate.

I didn't expect to fall head over heels with the first lady and I didn't have much expectations either. I'm 45, I don't have time for games and I am pretty naive when it comes to matters of the heart. I take people at face value and trust easily. However, once that trust is broken there is no opening that door again. The following is my account of what I experienced using the site and the people I interacted with.

I was a subscriber of Anastasiadate for about 6 years. I cancelled my subscription in August 2016 after a heartbreaking and expensive exercise with using their 'services'.

I visited Odessa Ukraine in May 2013 with the intention of meeting a lady I was exchanging mails with at the time and chatting to on and off. I didn't have much money and still don't. After I had bought my ticket, got my visa and done all the necessary arrangements she suddenly wasn't available to meet me.

With no one to meet I headed to Odessa anyway since I had a ticket and everything was booked. When I got there I met 6 random ladies. One was a lady called Irina. She was a lot younger than me and I had chatted to her before I left and told her if she was serious then she had to send me a letter, which she did.

Our date was over a cup of coffee with interpreter and I thought she was nice. When I returned home after my short visit she was the only one who kept in contact with me. All the other ladies had exchanged private contact details with me, yet none corresponded with me since.

Over the next few months I chatted to Irina on a regular basis. We got along well on a broad range of subjects and eventually I was able to get her email address, but only after I had to pay for a call to her through the site at a premium. It didn't matter to Anastasiadate that I had already met her in Odessa in person.

However, she still insisted on only chatting through the site. She cited her lack of English skills. I had, by this time bought Russian language courses and was trying to hone my language skill for my next visit which was August 2014. We had discussed her visiting me in my country and although she showed interest, she had no passport and her intentions to get one were based on her lack of finances to do so and lack of time due to work commitments.
By the time I visited her again in August 2014 we were chatting on an almost daily basis, often for at least an hour. She rarely sent an email, except for to ask where I was if I hadn't been on anastasiadate for a day or two. I had rung up quite an account with them by now but I was smitten with Irina.

My time with Irina in August 2014 was limited to a few hours every other day as her work commitments kept her busy. I tried to get her to chat to me off site but she always maintained she didn't know how and wasn't very good with working on the internet. I even set up a vkantakte profile to make it easier for her since she didn't know how to set up a facebook one. Sadly she just never did anything to make keeping in contact with her easier and cheaper for me!

After my 2014 visit we seemed to chat more about serious relationship stuff and I again visited her in May 2015. Not much had changed as far as communication off site. I'd always be referred back to Anastasiadate to keep in contact with her and the daily costs had escalated especially since the South African currency's crash against the USD. It was already expense, now it was downright unafffordable especially since it cost me on average 300 - 600 USD a month on chat alone.

My biggest fear was our age difference. A concern I raised quite a number of times and one she assured me was not a problem. Unfortunately Anastasiadate's chat system is designed in such a way that many words or phrases are censored, so one eventually ends up talking about the weather and daily life because any attempt at trying to converse with her about setting up a facebook, vkantakte, skype account is immediately censored and you end up just giving up trying to get your point across.

After my May 2015 visit I asked her via chat to please start contacting me off site. I reduced my activity on Anastasiadate to once every 2 weeks, but she never tried to contact me via email. In June 2015 she told me that it was best we not communicate because our 'relationship' was not developing. In later chats where I tried to patch up something I had no control over she said I was moody and negative.

I had been nothing but positive in all the time I was communicating with this woman, even when the warning bells were screaming at me that she had too many excuses for not trying to communicate outside Anastasiadate. Subsequent research has revealed that her email she supplied me as been searched online at least 22 other times. So her claim of only communicating with me was false. My email has since tagged her emails I saved to a folder as containing possible malicious content so I can't open any of her photos she did send to me. I have subsequently deleted those mails because they are actually worthless.

After this devastating event I just wanted to delete my profile and forget the whole episode but I had 'bonus credits' built up from years of paying for chat which were unused.
By this time I had also been told by someone who studied medicine in Sumy that most women he knew who were on dating sites got paid a percentage to do so and openly admitted to it. Many had boyfriends or were even married, but had profiles on dating sites.

Given this information I was even more skeptical, but since I had free credits that could be used on camshare I opted to give Anastasiadate another go. My thinking was I'd thrown so much money away I may as well use up the 'free' credits due to me. I must stress that yes, you receive thousands of letters, but only the first is free to read... but not always the case. In the last few months on the site I also noticed that I would get repeat letters as 'free' letters already sent months prior by the same person. This happened more and more frequently. All other letters and replies are charged for and you have no idea if it's a letter or a line or 2. No matter the content, the rate stays the same. Don't even bother opening attached pictures, because they too are charged for and more often than not they are actually photos she already has on her profile. Try tell me that it's not about the money!

One lady in particular sent me over 215 letters. I responded to her after she sent the first few and thus as per site rules was allowed to exchange private details. I spent a few 'free' credits chatting to her to get to know her but although she was 'serious' she didn't want to exchange private details because of a 'bad' experience she had with a man on the site.

Strangely though she still sent me the balance of the 215 letters. I never opened them bar a few here and there. Her profile claimed she was an interpreter but still suggested that we would need an interpreter should I decide to visit her.

In March 2016 Anastasiadate phoned me to ask if I would accept a call from a lady in Kiev. I accepted the call but restricted it to 5 minutes as I didn't know who it was. The conversation made no sense at all, she acted as if we were old friends and didn't leave me with any contact details. I did receive a letter from her which I had to pay for too, but later on chat she didn't seem to know who I was.

One lady's free letter to me was strange because she was upset that I didn't answer her letter and when I checked I did indeed find a letter. Her 'first' letter was not free but only the second which had 2 lines with the question as to why I hadn't responded to her letter.

So I decided to chat to her while I was in Odessa Ukraine, perhaps even arrange a date, but Even though I said to her I was in her city, she didn't seem interested in meeting me. However, every day while I was in Odessa after that chat she would send me chat requests... strange way to behave if you are not interested in meeting!

During my August 2014 visit to Odessa Ukraine I met 4 women I had occasionally chatted to via Anastasiadate. The first was woman who insisted on meeting me even though there is a 20 year age difference. We went on 2 dates. Between dates her chats were full of 'missing' me and so forth. However, when I was waiting for my flight to Istanbul from Odessa she arrived for the same flight. I was quite happy to see her but when she recognised me she was all embarrassed in front of her friends and later during the flight I was one row behind her and saw her flipping through pictures of a man she was obviously on her way to meet in Turkey. I handed her my email address in the airport, but a month down the line and no response, unsurprisingly.

I also met a lady I started chatting to in September 2015. She wanted me to send her flowers with my mail address with the assurance she would respond. She insisted on this during subsequent chats but later didn't mention it any longer. When I did meet her in Odessa in August 2016, she was distant and hardly attempted conversation which was strange since she insisted on meeting me. I found her vkantakte profile long before I went to Odessa but only contacted her there after I returned home. Also no response, which is also not surprising.

I also met a lady by the name of Anna who was really excited to hear that I was going to be in Odessa in August 2016. Out of all the women I met in Odessa over the years she was the only one who attempted to converse with me even without the help of an interpreter. My accent when I attempted to use my basic Russian skills made her laugh and I thought she was cute. Sadly, even with her having my email address and with me contacting her on vkantakte, she hasn't continued contact with me. She responded once to me on email and once on vkantakte, but other than that, nothing. I am pretty disappointed actually, since she seemed genuine.

My experience isn't over a month or so. It spans years and multiple visits to Odessa Ukraine and meetings with more than one lady from the site. Yes you get thousands of letters and 'attention' from thousands of women. What I came to realise too late is that chat requests from ladies are automated. Although I had learned quickly to close a chat when a woman didn't respond within 30 seconds, I was unaware that even chat requests from the girl I fell in love with were automated.

If you are a VIP member your first letter from a lady is free, the rest not. So you gamble 10 credits on getting a letter or just a line or two. I learned quickly to ignore multiple letters from a lady you haven't responded to.

Due to my visits to Ukraine and my study of the Russian language I realised in the latter part of my subscription experience that very few letters are written by the lady it came from. I received a few letters from one lady from Kharkiv which at face value was quite sweet and sincere, but when I attempted to chat with her in chat I could clearly see that she had not written those letters to me. She had no clue of what I was talking about when I made reference to points in her letters.
Another batch of letters from a lady also from Kharkiv was clearly written by an American based source. The language structure and style was atypical of a Slavic person. She kept changing her profile photos and after a couple of attempts at responding to her chat requests I realised she had multiple chats running.

Which brings me to my main issue with Anastasiadate. There are thousands of free chat systems on the internet from Facebook to vkantakte and Skype. None of which are monitored and most of which have pretty good translation algorithms. Anastasiadate's chat is slow. I learned quickly to close a chat if the girl took more than 30 seconds to respond. When I was regularly chatting with Irina my chats were often filled with empty time. I would have to resend a response multiple times or restructure what I was saying because the system would edit anything it deemed private information no matter what the actual material contained. So if I asked Irina if she had set up her facebook she would just see dots for that entire line. Do that enough times over a course of 2.5 years and you can see where that 'relationship' was heading...

As for Anastasiadate support. Don't waste your time raising your concerns with them. Each correspondence is handled by a different individual and their job is to defend the 'name' of the site, so you can expect a generic response.

If you do use the site to find your 'match' you have about a 1% chance of success in my honest opinion. Anastasiadate may give you the impression that thousands of women are interested in you, but it's all algorithms to give you a 'thrill' of 'dating' a foreign lady.

Anastasiadate charge men only for their services and there in lies the problem of them proving without a doubt that men are not being set up for a scam. Yes there probably are women on the site, just as there are men like me who genuinely are looking for a life mate. Sadly they have little or no chance of finding a decent man because by the time that decent man makes contact with them, both have been burned by scammers and fake people that they don't trust the other person to be real or sincere... as I have experienced.

I have spent tens of thousands of USD on Anastasiadate.com with zero success and absolutely no proof that the people I interacted with had any intention of anything more than helping me spend my money on a dating site.

Realistically speaking, yes you can have 'fun' having a cyber date with girls on the site and maybe meeting them in reality, but neither you nor Anastasiadate can vouch for them once you log off or set off home on your flight out of the country you went to visit them in.