I have not used any, but I hear decent things about Elena's Models and Bluesapphires.net

Brian

As I have told you on another post, I have not used the services of any of the Marriage or Dating sites.

Personally I can't understand why people have to use marriage agencies and paid web sites, when there are so many free dating sites around?

I get the impression that American men (USA), don't want to make any effort, having read all the publicity and sold on the idea of finding a hot woman in the FSU. For that reason they prefer to pay when they are looking to find a partner for life, but I may be wrong. My guess is that most of these men are not really serious when looking to find a partner who will be their wife later and are playing with the idea of of finding the dream Hot woman.

Both sites you mention and all the others, of course they feed their dream with their photos of very young, very attractive and sexily dressed in their front pages. The truth of the matter is that you can find beautifull slim and hot women in any country but looking in the FSU you have to digg deep and hard to find the right woman to share your life, if you are seriously looking for one!

There are many naive men around who spent 1000's of dollars chasing that dream!

I don't think of Elena's Models as a traditional agency, it's a pay-per-month dating site much like match.com. My experience with EM was similar to those US-based sites ... except, of course, better

One advantage to those sites could be that the woman has already seriously considered moving abroad. That's likely not the case on free sites like mamba.ru (though it may be more common on freepersonals.ru)

While I agree that agencies may not be the best way to meet, for someone with realistic expectations they can be good as an introduction. It just so happens that I met my fiancee through a more traditional agency. I had a direct recommendation (they are part of the angelika network). We took a very winding path after that first meeting.

And I didn't exchange pay-per-letter correspondence before meeting: I had a plane ticket in hand and a list of women I found interesting, sent to the agency owner beforehand. I paid for the introduction in country, which was the only extra cost beyond a normal first date (and a terp, which is fairly normal in this type of dating).

Most women at agencies now also have profiles on free or relatively low-cost sites (EM costs are basically similar to match.com, or at least they were when I was there), or vkonktate.

I have seen a few other agencies get good recommendations (which I might share on PM), but people later had bad experiences. I think "traditional" agencies are on the outs. I believe I got (very! ) lucky.

I'd advise someone starting out to look at the free sites until they have some idea what "realistic expectations" are, and then perhaps seek help from a local who can place ads (and when you go there, you'll need help with booking transport, apartments, interpreters, etc. anyway) and give some feedback.

The very best plan is to go live there for awhile, make friends, and keep your eyes open. But of course that's not viable for many of us.

Just my tuppence

I have to agree that I don't consider Elenas to be a traditional agency. Some of the more traditional agencies that I have heard good things about are Kherson Girls, Cindy Agnecy (I used them once in two different cities and was satisified) and LTP in Tver.

I had a platinum membership in Elenas and that is how I met my wife. It was the best of any method I ever used and most everyone I know has been happy with thier membership except for one or two who were non paying members.

Why use Elena's when there are so many free sites. It depends on how you value your time. I also used freepersonals.ru and my response rate was very low compared to Elenas and they quit writing much faster. People like free so there are just hoards of people use them and lots are armchair romeos who never make the trip. It is discouraging for the women and makes it tougher for the men.

I had the same experience on any free site vs one with monthly fees, Western or Eastern-based. And I learned quickly to check the "last logged in" date on any website.

It seems to me that one of the benefits with using a reputable agency is that the ladies are prepared to leave the FSU.

Brian,

While I have not used an agency of any type, ......
I found my gem by accident while I was working here.

I do not think that the type af agency is relevant regarding the willingness of a lady to leave the FSU.

The only advantage that I would see in using an agency with a good reputation is that you are much less likely to become a victim of a scammer.


But then, if you follow three simple rules you can immunise yourself against scammers.

Rule 1. Never send any money to someone that you have not meet in the flesh.

Rule 2. Do not send gifts that can be converted into money and by gifts I also mean paying for a ticket.

Rule 3. Go back to Rule 1