Romance Compass; The Ugly Truth
by Jason
(Denver, Colorado, USA)
I first became acquainted with Romance Compass through an advertisement on Facebook. After looking through the site, I was impressed with the quality of the women, as well as the amazing picture quality on the profiles. I signed up for the service, created a profile, and immediately began receiving letters.
Now, as many of you may know, this site is typical of the less than reputable international dating sites on the market. They offer you the opportunity to purchase credits, for which you use to e-mail, video-chat and eventually request contact information. I purchased a credit packet, and began investigating the site. I was immediately bombarded with 20+ form letters each day, all from attractive women seeking companionship. Again, very typical of these types of sites. As I used the site, I began to notice many of the obvious red flags of a scam based site. These were:
1) Return letters written by women who were not familiar with the subject matter of the original profile
2) Appearance of women's profiles on many other competing Eastern European Dating sites, many with the exact same profile information
3) Changing the name and age on my profile resulted in the exact same form letters being resubmitted to me, with only name changes filed in the blanks. Another form of scamming.
4) Many women suggesting video chat, and being online at all hours for such chat.
I was able delve into several Ukrainian Chat rooms, where I finally found the price listings for women who subscribe to the site. Women are offered free photo shoots, or a cash payout per minute for video chat minutes, e-mails written, and contact information requested. The amounts vary by promotion, by average .40 cents per minute of video, and $2.00 per e-mail. Armed with this knowledge, I decided to use some of my credits to test my theories.
After many e-mails, I received several different responses from women. One admitted that she was conversing to raise money to educate her son, and several did not even seem to be aware that men on this site were paying to chat with them. There were the typical signs of scammers and hired writers; people online in paid video chat at all hours of the night, writing styles that changed form letter to letter, and hostility at the suggesting of exchanging contact information outside of the site.
I was able to converse with one woman, to the point I was able to request contact information from her. I did so, and received... a disconnected phone number, a fraudulent address, but a valid last name. I then searched for and found this woman on vk.com (Russian version of Facebook). Well guess what? She had never even heard of me, and stated she did not converse with men on the site after her photo shoot. She even said that it was a friend of hers, running her account.
One interesting side note for any readers here. I eventually registered with a site called ElenasModels, which was supposed to be more reputable. Interestingly, I saw a familiar photo on one of the profiles there. When I began chatting with the woman on this site, she confirmed that she had indeed done a photo shoot with Romance Compass. She had then sold her profile to a friend, and never even logged on to the site. Again, clear evidence of ghost-writing and phony profiles. All in all, I spent $150 to fully vet this site as fraudulent. I hope this review saves you some money, and keeps you from doing the same. Peace.
Bob's Answer:
Thanks for your thorough research and review!
I have never heard of this site, but I did look it over after reading your review. And I see the telltale signs of a scam site.
What I would add is that since we cannot research every site so thoroughly, you can just count on a few very reliable concepts that will help determine if a site is likely a scammy site without having to confirm it.
Most scam sites are pretty easy to spot and avoid. You can go through all the effort to research this like Jason did, or you can just trust me... almost any site or company who charges per letter, per minute for video, etc., and restricts your ability to communicate with a woman directly (no direct contact information) is so likely to be a scam that it just isn't worth the risk.
And if you are bombed with letters (especially if they are obviously form letters) from the hottest women on the site within the first day you have a profile online, chances are it's a scam site.
If practically ALL of the women on the site are drop-dead gorgeous, as in the case of Romance Compass, then it's probably a scam site.
Compare the women on RomanceCompass.com to those on Russian-Ukrainian-Women.com, a truly legitimate site. Note that on Russian-Ukrainian-Women.com there's the whole spectrum, just like in the real world... Maybe 5% of them are really hot, maybe 15% pretty nice looking, 50% "medium", etc...
AND, if you are over 40, not rich, not famous, not especially great looking yourself, and you post a profile on Russian-Ukrainian-Women.com, chances are pretty good that most of the women who will contact you are going to be much more "middle of the pack" and not super hot cover models.
Anyway, better to trust the principles in identifying scam sites than actually find out about them the hard way just to be sure ;-)
But thanks again for taking the time to tell us about how you confirmed that Romance Compass is a questionable site! To hear of your direct confirmation probably helps many understand what I say when I speak of scams more generically.