My Experiences with Neu.de
I did a search for partner suche on google.de. One of the results was www.neu.de
I registered with the site, it continued with lots of questions and a profile to be filled out etc.
Then sort of forgot about it.
I would end receiving emails that I wasn't really sure about since I don't read German to well.
Some were offers to join,
some were quick listing of some profiles in Australia, special offers
for membership and other types of emails.
I didn't realise that
one of the emails I had received from neu.de was a notification that
I had and message only retrievable from their website if I was a paid
up member.
I was sent a another email telling me there was an text message accessible via their website. I think it was this time I realised what the email was about.
I next wondered if it was worthwhile going through and paying, I also wondered if they might pay people to send messages so that people would have to pay to get them. I checked the profile of the person who sent the message as I couldn't read it yet. The person had a picture, what seemed like a lot of profile views and flash's. I next wondered if a person could get that many view and flashes and not have found someone they liked.
Since I would never know what the message was if I didn't become a paid member for a period and then click to receive it
Flash's were free and I sent a flash to the person and I think I received another text message after that.
One of the offers was for 1 week for 1 Euro, which didn't seem to expensive.
When I decide to have some money spent I think there was also a message from another person.
I transferred $20 AUD from an account I have into a VISA debit account I have with credit union using my computer. As I understood it between one and a few days to have the funds available with the VISA debit account.
By the time I had become a member the other person's message had disappeared, which as I understand it happens when they cancel their membership or perhaps is cancelled for them.
I then retrieved the message and replied to the person who had patiently waited about a month to get a reply.
I won't be including messages sent by her as a far as I been able to find out the messages are not a created story from non existent name, so they would be covered by Copyright and I have not asked for permission to include them. From the emails I guess the person initially seemed fine with the idea to meet but then decided not to after further emails, so I won't be able to conclusively prove that a the person with the name in the email sent them to me.
Another email I received from neu.de had a months subscription for 5 Euro's. When the the week was about to expire I thought I would try and use that offer. I then had another month to see if I would get more responses and would be able to contact via the website other people who are members.
I was able to retrieve messages from two other members.
I maybe should have tried to check earlier instead of spending time writing emails. After a couple of emails and decided to paste some text from an email into google. This led me to some sites about Russian scams and one site had the same text as what was in one of the emails. After a bit of reading one of the sites it explained clues as to indicators that an email correspondence would eventually lead to requests for money to be transferred for the Russian to 'come over'.
I have links here to the email correspondence since from what I would found out they are from Russian crime groups and don't think their right to Copyright would apply.
The 5 Euro offer I used ended recently, after using google translate to further understand parts of the Neu.de website and emails it became apparent that they would charge my VISA account with continual monthly charges unless I cancelled the subscription. Before the start of the subscription renewal date I tried to follow the right steps to get to the bit on the website to cancel my subscription. I had to utilise the help part of the website which showed in print the the steps to go through to cancel the subscription. Upon getting to the right page to cancel the subscription, I put the text into google translate and it reads that for technical reasons I can't cancel my subscription using the bit the site mentions but to instead call a number and mention my member number to cancel it.
That number was a free call in Germany but I din;t think it would be free for me from where I was. Also since it was in a different time zone I would have to work out when there business hours were and hopefully they wouldn't keep me n the phone long.
I changed all my text in my profile to something like “cancel my subscription” as I knew the profiles are read for things like email addresses which would of course alter their revenue, also phone numbers, mailing addresses, other details which could help profile viewers being able to contact members without using their website and other things they don't like.
From what I have read dating websites like people not not to have details on their profile. One reason is maybe to protect members.
For me id doesn't take to long to set up another alias for my yahoo email account. I set up an alias for neu.de to send to. Over here SIM's can be brought with a numbers for 2 AUD, there are some cheap options for minimal yearly use of the the phone account.
To send postal mail could be more costly as an Post Office box would need to be set up and checked.
I sent an email to the address that neu.de alerts are sent from, requesting that my subscription be cancelled. But later understood some of the writing to read that the email address isn't really monitored.
The next day I checked with the credit union to find out if my savings account could be overdrawn by the VISA number. They customer relations person said that it could be overdrawn by up to a hundred dollars. I needed to check my email to see if they had cancelled my subscription, if they hadn't I would have to try other methods of contact before a disputed transaction could be lodged.
I checked my email and found they had cancelled my subscription renewal. I also managed to find an email address for customers to send their emails to.
I then cancelled my membership as the membership can't be cancelled before the automatic subscription renewal is cancelled.