Avoid the Academic Singles scam!
Review about Academic SinglesI was recently (2016) scammed by "Academic Singles". After I signed up for a free account, they kept sending me messages saying that specific women were interested in me. Each woman had a picture that was blurred out, but several of them appeared reasonably attractive at a guess.
Eventually, my curiosity was eventually piqued and I signed up for a package. Then and only then did I find out that the women I was curious about had NOT uploaded any pictures, and the photographs were "placeholders" put up by Academic Singles. In short, it was a scam.
Within the hour I signed up, it became clear to me that I had been cheated. I then contacted Academic Singles about a refund and stopped using the service. After several emails, it was abundantly clear that they had no intention of processing any such refund. Their incredible response? "Rather than have a blank space in your profile, the use of a placeholder template photo to fill the space where your profile picture should be has a proven positive effect."
In other words, they are blatantly and quite smugly deceiving us.
Their latest excuse for rejecting the refund is that I had already used their service and had read/sent a large number of messages. These messages were all read/sent within that first hour, all to women who had first indicated interest in me, and almost all to let them know (nicely) that I did not return their interest. The others were to a bunch of very different looking women who had all written me the exact same message asking me to contact them at the same email address (lol).
Incidentally, the real women who had written me were all NOT academics.
I have previously signed up for other dating services and know that legitimate businesses do not use fake pictures to lure in customers. The ratio of genuine to fake users is also far worse here than on any other site I have used. I had googled Academic Singles extensively before signing up and had not seen any evidence that they are scammers. To put it simply, there is no way an uninformed person could know that this particular website engages in deception of this sort. So here I am to tell you this so you don't waste your money and time here.
tl;dr Academic Singles brazenly lies to you using fake pictures. Save your money and avoid this scam site like the plague.
Pros
None
Cons
This is a scam site.
They use fake pictures to lure in the unsuspecting.
replies:
Review: Avoid the Academic Singles scam!
Glad you got the warning in time, Michael. When I wrote this review, I was hoping it would save a few people from this scam, and it's really good to hear that it's helped at least one person!
Review: Avoid the Academic Singles scam!
I'm really sorry to hear about this, Tracey. :-( I wish there were something that could be done, but warning others is about all I could come up with.
Maybe you could talk to your bank and see if they will pursue a charge cancellation on your behalf? Show them this set of reviews, maybe? Don't get your hopes up though - my bank (UOB) just shrugged and said too bad.