A Foreign Affair - Review

A Foreign Affair (AFA) is owned and operated out of Phoenix Arizona by three American men who found their wives in Russia. It is one of the largest, most well-known companies in the business.

From my personal experience with A Foreign Affair (AFA), it has some good points and some bad points.

If you read other pages on this site you will see that I strongly favor the approach of writing women first, getting to know them from a distance, narrowing the field down to one, then visiting just that one.

But if you are not ready to make a trip to meet just one girl, and really just want to get your feet wet, I would recommend AFA's group tours, especially if you are not a seasoned international traveler. Their local staff (at least in Kiev) are friendly, fun, and helpful, and the tours are fairly well organized. You pay one price, show up at the designated U.S. airport at the designated time, look for the guy with the "AFA Tour" sign at your departure gate, then "follow the leader" the rest of the way.

Your flights are covered (except the getting to/from the designated departure airport - usually JFK), your airport pickup/drop-off at the Russian/Ukrainian airport is covered, your hotels are covered, city-to-city ground transport is covered (for multi-city tours), and the parties are covered. Food, dates, ground transport within cities, and other entertainment are not covered.

Traveling to and around Eastern Europe is considerably different than traveling within the U.S. or most of Western Europe, and A Foreign Affair's group tours smooth all that out for you (as much as possible).

BUT, there are a few things you need to know before deciding on an AFA group tour.

1. Adjust your expectations of what you will see at the socials on their tours. Of the guys I know who have been on A Foreign Affair's group tours, one very consistent opinion among them was that they were bit disappointed in the women that showed up at the socials.
   
   Let me put it this way... Look at the girls pictured on AFA's home page. Those pictures rotate all the time, but they're ALWAYS HOT. Well, NONE of them are ever going to show up at an AFA group tour social - at least not in the tours to Russia/Ukraine.
   
   From the hype on their site you'd think all the girls at the socials were carefully selected, marriage/family-minded, sweet-hearted, pre-screened swimsuit models. Well, it's really nothing like that! To be sure, some quality women attend – attractive, decent, sincere women. But it's very different from the expectations AFA sets.
   
   
2. If you read their site and/or listen to their "video blogs" you'll hear that many men who go on such tours come back engaged, and already working on fiance' visa paperwork. That didn't happen to anyone on my AFA group tour to Kiev. And it didn't happen on other AFA group tours other friends have told me about.
   
   That's almost all sales hype. Sure, it may happen now and then, but the picture AFA sometimes paints is that half the guys on a group tour sit at tables in the hotel lobby the day before returning home all starting their paperwork to bring their lady home. It's totally misleading.
   
   
3. Despite the first two caveats, you can really make the most of an AFA group tour by making HEAVY USE of the included "Unlimited Personal Introductions" feature. Forget about the socials unless you can't get a date through the intros (and if you can't get a date through the intros, you really should just go home).
   
   

It is fun and can be worthwhile if you set your expectations realistically and follow my advice on group tours.

The Downside...

Letter/Gift Fraud

Other than their group tours I would recommend against using most of the services of A Foreign Affair. First, I'm not completely sure of how their network and affiliates are related, but I am sure – from first-hand experience and numerous reports from trusted friends – that many of their offices have engaged in letter-forwarding fraud (writing letters on behalf of the women without the woman's knowledge).

I wrote "Anna" in Odessa, Ukraine from AFA's site using AFA's letter services for a while before I started suspecting that something wasn't quite right. So then I wrote her through another letter-forwarding service whose reliability is 100% sure (the letter-forwarding manager is a personal friend) and she didn't write back. Then I wrote her through another highly reputed agency's letter-forwarding services... she didn't write back. Then I wrote her through AFA again, and sure enough, she wrote back immediately, and was unaware of my many other attempts to reach her. John Adams, one of the three owners – and apparently the main operational manager – offered to comp me for ONE fraudulent letter. There were 19 letters total one way or the other. That's about $7/each x 18 letters = $126.

Now $126 is not a real big deal in the grand scheme of things, but would you spend $126 calling in to those "local girls" advertised on late night TV? When you consider that such practices are very widespread it is a real big problem.

In addition to Anna I wrote quite a few other girls in Russia and Ukraine using AFA's letter services that I strongly suspect were fraudulent, but didn't independently confirm my suspicions.

AFA (John Adams) did admit they had some problems with their Odessa office (where "Anna" lived), but that those problems had been rectified. But I had some seriously suspicious correspondence in other parts of Ukraine and Russia that I didn't bother to confirm by writing through other means. It was largely through these experiences that I came to so distrust letter forwarding services, especially those of A Foreign Affair.

"Profiles That Sell"

Why do almost no women on A Foreign Affair's website state the age range for the men they seek? Most sites have a field for a woman's age preferences, and in some cases a girl may enter a preferred age range in this field then even reiterate that preference in her text description of the men she prefers. Is it just the case that women on AFA's site do not care about a man's age?

I think the reason for this is somewhat obvious. If AFA allowed women to state their age range preferences, or REQUIRED that they state this preference, they would lose a lot of business from really old guys who think they can score with a 19 year old super hottie.

Other more ethical agencies, like Elena's Models also want to earn a profit, but they prefer to do it by providing honest service, not selling fantasy. At Elena's Models they want their clients to have successful meetings, but based in reality.

AFA would have you believe that in Russia and Ukraine women don't care at all about a man's age so that they can maximize profit by selling an illusion.

EuroClub Individual Introductions

If you are traveling to a city and want to meet just a few women from A Foreign Affair's website in that city, GOOD LUCK! As I understand it, if you want to meet a girl from AFA's network who does not live in one of only a few big cities where they run an office (not an affiliate), then the only way to meet those girls is through their "Euro Club" program, which is exorbitantly expensive compared to any other approach.

You can't just walk into the office of a local A Foreign Affair affiliate in Kharkov, Ukraine, as you can with Angelika or any normal local agency and pay $25-$50 for an introduction. Instead you need to pay them $700 for a week-long program where they'll introduce you to up to 3 local women per day from their site. Airport pickup/drop-off are included, AND they'll offer suggestions on where you might go for your dates. But with the Angelika Network for almost the same price you get all the services included in the Euro Club program, PLUS UNLIMITED intros, LODGING INCLUDED (not so with AFA's "Euro Club"), and in most cities the Angelika Network has more good prospects anyway.

If you see a girl on A Foreign Affair in Ukraine that is NOT in Kiev, I would forget about her unless she is also on other sites (in which case I'd usually recommend using the other sites to meet her). The only way you can meet such women through A Foreign Affair is through their exorbitantly priced Euro Club plan. And as I've said, their letter services outside Kiev are highly suspect at best, so you won't likely establish reliable contact that way.

I once asked John Adams via email why they couldn't offer individual introductions on a pricing scale competitive with the Angelika Network. He explained that "our parent office in Phoenix AZ, USA is ultimately responsible for the service you receive. I know of no other US based international marriage agency that will stand behind its services with the same integrity as the other service [Angelika Network] is a co-op that is based overseas..." (implying, it seems, that anything based overseas lacks integrity).

If you should have occasion to interact with A Foreign Affair, you will encounter this mantra... integrity, trust, blah, blah, blah, and how they are so committed to service and earning your confidence... But see how much good that will do you when you start to have good reasons to believe that you are the victim of letter fraud and want a refund! Then all the talk about integrity and trust give way to "Well, we don't really KNOW FOR SURE how many of the letters were fraudulent, so we can't just refund you for all of the letters..."!

So in summary... A Foreign Affair offers great group tours and they can be fun if you have realistic expectations and manage it right. All their other services are scammy or overpriced.