The Sugar Daddy / Secret Benefits Scam – What are the “Mechanics”?

[Bru1901]

I signed up to seeking benefits

Assumed online actually meant online

Complained to CS that online was a scam

They banned

Next day payment csrd received a full refund

[GingerNuts]

I signed up to seeking benefits

There's Secret Benefits and Seeking, which did you sign up for?

Assumed online actually meant online

Complained to CS that online was a scam

Could you explain this please?

[scutty brown]

Everything you said is 100% right. I am 100% wrong 

Now that we've established and cleared that up: if anyone has had any experiences on sugardaddymeet.com it would be appreciated if you could share any experiences whatsoever. Otherwise, I may consider signing up and reporting back.

Looks like just another dating scam site
This is the parent company     External Link/Members Only
This page lists all nine of their sites External Link/Members Only

you've got STD/HIV dating, herpes dating, fatties dating, granny dating, millionaires  dating, bisexual dating, interracial dating, pensioner dating, and  massive age gap dating. Something there to scam anyone with

[Vice Admiral]

Incidentally, employees of External Link/Members Only / External Link/Members Only are very active on the internet trying to drown out the negative commentary:

(Auto censored removed)

[LAZY_GENTLEMAN]

Looks like just another dating scam site
This is the parent company     External Link/Members Only
This page lists all nine of their sites External Link/Members Only

you've got STD/HIV dating, herpes dating, fatties dating, granny dating, millionaires  dating, bisexual dating, interracial dating, pensioner dating, and  massive age gap dating. Something there to scam anyone with

Thanks for sharing, however sugardaddymeet.com isn't listed as a sub site on successfulmatch.com...
Can I ask how you found the association between sugardaddymeet.com and successfulmatch.com?

[datwabbit]

With the help of a willing Sugar Babe on SB we did an experiment.  When you 'log off' the site will continue to show you as being online for at least an hour, if not longer.  It does this for SB and SD profiles.

In terms of receiving messages, when an SB sets up a profile they are asked to write a generic message that the site will automatically send to 'the best sugar daddies'.  In essence, the site is designed so that an SB only has to upload a few images, possibly a verification video, a few words in their profile, and a generic message.  In theory, the SBs sit back and wait for us SDs to respond to their generic message, at our cost.

As to what the women want - the vast majority are dreamers and have no intention of having a proper arrangement, especially when reality hits home as to what that arrangement is likely to entail. 

Out of the limited success I've had on SB, I made the first move with a specific message to the SB.  It is hard work and the online status thing can be a pain, especially if your sat with your SB at dinner and they are still showing as online on the site - hence why we did the experiment.  We both had heard about the online issue, so we checked the site and lo and behold she was still showing as online when I logged in, despite her being logged off.  I guess not every SD would be as chilled and would be asking questions.

This post is very useful for anyone joining the site or thinking about it.

[Bru1901]

There's Secret Benefits and Seeking, which did you sign up for?

Could you explain this please?

Secret benefits

Basically profiles that shoe online or appear online havent been online for days even months

Its a scam to make you buy credits

I sent 10 messages and received 1 in 36 hours.

Complained to them and they blocked and refunded confirming scam

Once your credits run out theres timers offering you cheap credits etc.

The sites for money - not connections

[southcoastpunter]

Secret benefits

Basically profiles that shoe online or appear online havent been online for days even months

Its a scam to make you buy credits

The sites for money - not connections

all of these sites are commercial so yes its profit focused.
In addition to those recently mentioned there is also sugardaddy.com and sugardaddie.com and i am sure others too. I have only tried seeking and sugardaddy.com. the later is a "buy credits to message" type site and is imo as bad as mentioned above.

[scutty brown]

Thanks for sharing, however sugardaddymeet.com isn't listed as a sub site on successfulmatch.com...
Can I ask how you found the association between sugardaddymeet.com and successfulmatch.com?

It's mentioned in the smallprint blurb on the SDM site

[Vice Admiral]

Just to reiterate – because I don't think this is clear to everyone – External Link/Members Only and External Link/Members Only are the same site.  All the girls’ profiles are identical, as is the methodology and the design. 

The site makes most of its money from a scam that is central to its systems. 

Dirty Harry’s masterly research – see Reply #36 – has established how the scam works.  Men on the site are sent generic messages by the site’s bots.  These messages purport to have been sent by the girl.  The gullible man duly pays his fiver and replies to the message, in the belief that he is replying to a girl who has viewed and liked his profile – when in fact until that point she does not even know of his existence.

Needless to say, the internet is awash with men expressing the view that the site is useless, a scam etc – but the site counteracts this by getting its staff to post five-star reviews all over the place extolling the site’s (non-existent) virtues.  There is even a website that supposedly does objective assessments of sugar babe sites, but has in fact clearly been created by Sugar Daddy / Secret Benefits for propaganda purposes.

OK, the internet is full of sex scammers, but there is something particularly devious and disgusting about the Sugar Daddy / Secret Benefits modus operandi.  However I guess there's no way of running them out of town.
 
The External Link/Members Only / External Link/Members Only site is, of course, American. 

According to External Link/Members Only, its big cheeses are:  Cecelia Truax Basilotto (CEO), Herb Rose (Director of Communications) and Tom Finney (Owner).

Duly named and shamed.

The fragrant Cecelia is on LinkedIn, but I'm not a member so I can't view her profile.

As far as I know, other sugar babe sites are honest, so should not be tarred with the same brush.

[Vice Admiral]

As a postscript to what I wrote above, I found this complaint online:

Secret Benefits is a scam
Finally found the SD of my dreams-- intelligent, handsome, humble, funny, positive, passionate, supportive, and generous. He asked me to be exclusive and after agreeing to terms I had no problem agreeing. Then today he messaged me wanting to end our agreement bc he saw me "online." He even sent a screenshot. I haven't been on that site in about 2 weeks-- ever since I agreed to be exclusive. I even made sure to log out completely bc I've been accused of this in the past with previous SDs. He then sent a boosted message and it showed on his end that I opened it and was Read. He sent a screenshot of that too. Like I said, I haven't been on that site in weeks. Has this happened to anyone else? After speaking with a friend who was also on the site, I found out she had a similar experience. Her SD was accusing her of being online and she hadn't been for weeks. I think the site likes to show women online because that's what has the paying men coming back. But the fact that it's showing I read a message when I haven't been logged on is beyond bizarre. A violation of my privacy and ruining my reputation as a loyal sb with integrity. I genuinely care for this man as a human and it's heartbreaking that he thinks trust has been broken. Any advice is appreciated. Also I have, in the in the past, received responses from men that I knew I didn't send my message to. So they are also, sending my generic message out without my permission. All to make a buck.

[datwabbit]

As a postscript to what I wrote above, I found this complaint online:
...

I don't mind the pay per conversation model because it works out better outside of cities. I can't see why a site can't use both models and let the guy choose. Just undercut SA on the monthly by a bit if they're not sure what to charge.

However, being online can be because people don't officially log out and a connection is kept alive for a long time. Normally systems avoid that because you're keeping connections open long than needed. But if your computer/phone is rebooted there shouldn't be an existing connection. So that would have to be a deliberate fake online.

[Mr_Shins]

Cecelia Truax Basilotto

on linked-in, CEO at Travel Companions since 1994. Nothing else listed and no idea who "Travel Companions" are as there is nobody else listed under that name. Possibly her own limited company used for consultancy work. But it comes with this line: "When you cannot travel on your own , we will arrange for you not to be alone. Many scenarios are available."

Based in Phoenix, Arizona.

[jimbobted]

Useful thread this. Recent signed up to SB and have had lots of messages from potentials. I was suspicious you had to buy at least £50 worth of credits in one go, but  little brain took over. Fortunately the bank blocked the transaction and I decided to think on it. Then this discussion started and it's obvious it's a scam.
£50 saved.

[ik8133]

Useful thread this. Recent signed up to SB and have had lots of messages from potentials. I was suspicious you had to buy at least £50 worth of credits in one go, but  little brain took over. Fortunately the bank blocked the transaction and I decided to think on it. Then this discussion started and it's obvious it's a scam.
£50 saved.

I wouldn't say it's a total scam as I've met girls from there, but they do encourage you to use up your credits unnecessarily and girls show as being on-line when they actually aren't.  If they screwed the nut a bit and stopped all the fraudulent actions, they would have a site that would give Seeking a run for it's money.   

[Mr_Shins]

On Secret Benefits they also show you who has viewed your profile and also made you their favourite, and the bots don't do either of those things.

So if the one who appears to have sent you a message hasn't viewed or favourited your profile, they probably didn't really send it.

I think I actually put in my profile that they need to favourite it if they are actually interested.

On WhatsYourPrice there are no bots, as you have to get into a bidding agreement to unlock a conversation. So unless the "sugar babe" sets a maximum and minimum accept price (maximum is where they start the bidding, minimum is what they will accept) and a bot gets into the bidding for them.. but no, it doesn't do that.

You do of course find some who accept a bid and then "no I didn't really mean that, I know you want a low bid to unlock a conversation.." usually once you've taken it offline by which time it's too late in general to get the refund.

My experience of numbers of people I have met:

Seeking: 1, which is actually 2 because of her friend.
WhatsYourPrice: loads, mostly led to dating, only one led to sex. One of them lived with me for a number of months.
SecretBenefits: 2, one I met just once, the other one lots of times and much kinky activity but no sex.

[Vice Admiral]

On Secret Benefits they also show you who has viewed your profile and also made you their favourite, and the bots don't do either of those things.  So if the one who appears to have sent you a message hasn't viewed or favourited your profile, they probably didn't really send it.

An interesting point, but I think only half right. 

I don't think the bots "favourite" you.  However I think they can and do mark your profile as "viewed" by the girl.

My reason for thinking this is that, looking back over the last eight messages I've received, in every case the girl has seemingly viewed me.

Also, whatever else you may say about the fragrant Cecelia and her chums, they're not stupid – and it would blast a pretty big hole in the scam if girls were (supposedly) e-mailing men without having viewed their profile.

[jimbobted]

I think bots can favourite. My profile has been favourited by loads of girls in London and other parts of the country far awaymfrom me.
Meanwhile I continue to receive about 3 messages a day, and I just can't believe so many girls would message a profile that has no photos and only relatively scant information (though I do mention I have an aeroplane, but still...).
If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

[Vice Admiral]

I think bots can favourite. My profile has been favourited by loads of girls in London and other parts of the country far awaymfrom me. Meanwhile I continue to receive about 3 messages a day, and I just can't believe so many girls would message a profile that has no photos and only relatively scant information (though I do mention I have an aeroplane, but still...).  If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

On reflection I think you're almost certainly right.

The site therefore has two ways in which it tries to lure men to part with a fiver or so.

The stronger of the two is a bot-generated message (which is given credibility by the fact that the girl has seemingly also viewed your profile).

The second-string approach is for the bot to "favourite" you on a girl's behalf.  When a girl indicates that she "admires" a man  – and the girls who favourite you are listed as your "Admirers" – she is in effect flirting with him.  She's seemingly taken an interest in you.  What's not to like?  Why not write to her?

[Mr_Shins]

I've been on the site for a while, so am probably less prone to be scammed now. I guess they hit on the new members.

Still, I see 4 messages in my inbox from Amber may24, Bella-Brazilian, nicoleew_SB and Wavylocks.

They may have a setting to hide when you view profiles but of those four only Bella-Brazilian has viewed my profile and none of them are on my admirers list.

The first 4 names I see on my admirers list as Taysiah, mjaii9, Cherryhanna444 and Thickthighs_724. None of them appear to have viewed my profile.
I had a look at my profile and there is nothing on there telling interested women that they must add me to favourites as well as send me a message, but it's probably a good thing to do as the bots will often not do both. That would rule out all those on the list above, including Bella-Brazilian who is shown to have viewed my profile but not add me as a favourite.

[Vice Admiral]

A problem is that the evidence does not appear to be consistent.  We do not all seem to be getting the same experience.

Before reading Mr Shins's last post, I was about to post what follows – and now do so, for what it's worth.

I have just looked at my list of "Admirers".  Only one of the last 50 girls who has favourited me has also send me a message.

This suggests that the site's bots take an "either / or" approach to trying to get you to part with your money – you either get a message (accompanied by a view) from a particular girl or you get favourited.

It is, after all, very odd that almost none of the girls who have (supposedly) messaged me have also favourited me.  No?

Indeed, it may me that the combination of a message and being favourited by the same girl is the sign that the message is genuine rather than bot-generated!
___________

Postscript

After posting the above, I scrolled right down my list of "admirers".  There must be around 250 of them – but only four of them have messaged me.  Ridiculous!

So I rather suspect that the messages I received from those four girls are indeed the only non-bot-generated "conversation-starting" messages I have received.

[Al R]

When I joined up there I received many profile views, was favourited and received several messages. Apart from one girl who I messaged first (she had a verified profile) - and received a reply from but only after I “boosted” my message. I used the rest of my credits up messaging every local girl who sent me a message first - and didn’t receive a single reply. Either my messages didn’t get delivered (because I didn’t boost them?) or I suspect were sent by bots.

It could of course have been they didn’t like my profile or return message - the odd thing about both of those reasons is firstly they (allegedly) messaged me first so why do that if they didn’t like my profile, and secondly I use a very similar (but personalised) message on SA and probably have over a 90% success rate in at least receiving a reply. On SB I literally only received the single reply off the girl I messaged first - and went on to meet.

So while there are obviously genuine profiles on there, there’s definitely some dodgy stuff going on behind the scenes as well…

[Vice Admiral]

So while there are obviously genuine profiles on there, there’s definitely some dodgy stuff going on behind the scenes as well…

The prevailing view among contributors to this thread is that – while most of the messages that male members of External Link/Members Only and External Link/Members Only receive are sent by bots – the profiles themselves are probably “genuine”, in the sense that real girls have set them up.  (Although how “genuine” the girls in question are about meeting up for a dinner-date, let alone considering providing after-dinner entertainment, is arguable.) 

But having said that, it would be the easiest thing in the world for SD / SB to create fake profiles to sit alongside the genuine ones.  All they need is a photo of an attractive girl-next-door type and a few words of text.  Since the people behind the site are cheats and scammers, what’s to stop them putting up fake profiles?  Who would ever know?   

I’ve just randomly searched on Chicago, Illinois.  Hundreds and hundreds of girls, most of whom could easily pass for British.  What’s to stop SD / SD re-using the photo of a sugar babe girl in Chicago, Milwaukee or New Orleans who left the site a year ago as the basis of the profile of a supposed sugar babe in Chichester, Milton Keynes or New Barnet?  And vice-versa?

This scam site must be taking in millions of dollars.  The crooks who run it know every trick in the book to maximise their revenue.  I wouldn’t put anything past them.

[datwabbit]

So are we agreed then? Both sites are dodgy and subscribe with caution. As things stand, you'll not get your time back but it looks like you'll get a full refund.

[Vice Admiral]

For the benefit of the (very) small and (fairly) close-knit community of UKP members with an interest in the External Link/Members Only / External Link/Members Only scam, here’s an update.  It largely confirms or repeats material already posted in this thread, but may nonetheless be of interest.

1.  Aftermath of Complaint

I duly complained to Secret Benefits (just as I long ago did to the Sugar Daddy version of the site) about the lack of replies from girls who had messaged me, and was given 100 fresh credits.  Those male members of the site who express a major grievance or are strongly accusatory appear to get a refund and a ban.  Those who take the faux-naif “more in sorrow than in anger approach” that I took seem to get a fresh set of credits.

As soon as I had received my new credits, messages to me from girls on the site – which until then had been at the rate of two or three a day for almost six months – stopped completely.  There hasn’t been a single one since I got my refund.  This may be because the site knows it has got all the money out of me that it is ever likely to get; or it may be because the site doesn’t want a repeat of my complaint about not getting replies from girls who had (supposedly) messaged me.  I can’t really complain if my non-replies are from girls I myself messaged out of the blue.

It can, I think, safely be assumed from the above that every single one of the hundreds of Secret Benefits messages I received over a six-month period were sent by bots.  Dirty Harry (Reply #36) told us how this works: “When an SB sets up a profile they are asked to write a generic message that the site will automatically send to 'the best sugar daddies'.”  The gullible man pays his fiver and replies to the message in the belief that he is replying to a girl who has viewed and liked his profile – when in fact until that point she does not even know of his existence.

2.  “Bumping Up” of Dormant Profiles

The second part of my update concerns the possibility that the site bumps up old profiles that have long ago lapsed into dormancy.  This was first raised in Reply #56 on this thread where Bru1901 wrote:  “Basically profiles that show online or appear online haven’t been online for days even months.”

I have three reasons for thinking Bru1901 is right. 

(a)  There is a hard core of girls in my area who I believe to be genuinely active.  Week after week their status is “Online”  or “[Active] Today”.  However there are also girls who turn up out of nowhere, are active for a brief period, and then disappear.  If I search for their profile in the “Newest” rather than the “Recently Active” sequence, I often find it pages and pages down.  Therefore the profile was set up a year or two ago – and in all likelihood it long ago lapsed into dormancy.  The site’s bots are bumping up these dormant profiles and sending out generic messages from them.  Men will spend a fiver replying, unaware that the girl in question long ago lost interest in the site and has no idea that her profile has become active again.

(b)  A girl I know who tried the site and abandoned it months ago suddenly started apparently being very active on it again.  When I mentioned this to her, she denied that she had been back to her profile.  I can’t be 100% certain that this denial was truthful, but on balance I think it was, since in this particular case there would have been no major embarrassment in her admitting she was back on the site.  Also, more tellingly, at the time that she supposedly became very active on the site again, she had just got into a serious relationship with a new boyfriend – hardly the moment to go looking for new sugar daddies.

(c)  The post from another site that I quoted in my Reply #60 reported the experience of two girls whose “dormant for many weeks” profiles had been bumped up by the site without them knowing, causing them serious problems with sugar daddies to whom they had promised exclusivity.

That the site seems to bump up dormant profiles is an even more shocking fraud than the primary fraud involving bot messages sent from profiles that are genuinely active – because in the latter case there is a (very small) chance of your reply to the bot’s initial contact receiving a response, but in the former case there is no chance at all.  Any reply you send is vanishing into the depths of a profile that hasn’t been accessed by the real girl for months.  Only the bots have been active on it.

Also – even worse – this second type of fraud can cause major awkwardnesses for girls who are in “monogamous” sugar daddy relationships.

[tynetunnel]

Thanks for the in depth update Vice Admiral. It all sounds perfectly plausible, and you’ve certainly put a lot of time and effort in to figuring it all out. It’s unlikely I know, but it could be an interesting case for law enforcement to take on, presumably in the home territory of the site. Yet that seems a distant hope and meanwhile the site owner continues to steal money it seems from guys like us.

If I had a few bob or a legal mind I’d be up for going further with it, but it’s not a fight I can take on. I did eventually get a refund of my money after an initial complaint and credit refund. I threatened them with a chargeback, and they obliged me with a full refund. I guess because they would rather refund me and lose my money than risk their ability to accept card payments. Which is at risk if multiple chargebacks are received. Particularly for those businesses in the ‘adult entertainment’ arena

[Vice Admiral]

Thanks for the in depth update Vice Admiral. It all sounds perfectly plausible, and you’ve certainly put a lot of time and effort in to figuring it all out. It’s unlikely I know, but it could be an interesting case for law enforcement to take on, presumably in the home territory of the site. Yet that seems a distant hope and meanwhile the site owner continues to steal money it seems from guys like us.

If I had a few bob or a legal mind I’d be up for going further with it, but it’s not a fight I can take on. I did eventually get a refund of my money after an initial complaint and credit refund. I threatened them with a chargeback, and they obliged me with a full refund. I guess because they would rather refund me and lose my money than risk their ability to accept card payments. Which is at risk if multiple chargebacks are received. Particularly for those businesses in the ‘adult entertainment’ arena

It actually makes me quite angry, Tynetunnel.  Not because of my own very minor "losses" (£50 on Sugar Daddy six months ago and £50 on Secret Benefits recently), but because the whole thing is so sly and despicable and disgusting.

If a scam like this operated in the real world, I imagine it would relatively easily be investigated and closed down.  But in the case of the internet?  I just don't know.  Others more internet-savvy than me may contradict me, but pinning down online villains seems to me very tricky.

But there may be a way?  This is an outwardly legitimate international business, based in the USA, which must make millions of dollars every year from its fraudulent business model.  Perhaps somewhere there is an electronic Sir Galahad who could put it to the sword, as it deserves?

[ik8133]

Thanks for taking the time to post your update Vice Admiral.

Like you I don't get flooded by messages either, any messages I do get seem genuine enough, I've been on the a while as well.  I did set up a dummy account a while back and low and behold, I received a message from almost every girl on there.   

Regards girls profiles showing as being active when they are no longer on the, I was in contact with one just the other day that this was happening to and another in the past as well.  This proves that Secret Benefits is now very fraudulent, I don't think it's always been like that, but it certainly is now.   

[datwabbit]

Thanks.

As I got a full refund, my complaint is my wasted time which was quite a bit and anger which is not a healthy emotion to have.

However I think the pay per conversation model works for areas outside of cities so I'm assuming that the site is using bots because it can't keep it's women active. Alternatively it's just a scam. It would be a pity if women aren't staying because I think it could work with the verification video feature. So if it is having problems keeping women then it needs to ask because the sugar daddy market is there and Seeking is annoying guys with it's banning policy and unreasonable expectations.

[Carl Adams]

I have met 6 girls off SB - half of them were on Seeking too but I had not subscribed there.

I think you do pay over the odds on SB but they have not yet invented a website that is scam or cost free.

Several of the girls on the SB site do seem to be scammers too - I have had two off there that were basically thieves but also had meets with 4/5 of them and one of those lasted several months.

So I dont agree with all the negativity but recognise some of the problems - I think there is a degree of being able to spot the red flags from the adverts and not paying to start a conversation with them.  I think I probably have a meaningful exchange with about 40% of the girls - whether the others are bots or scams I do not know. But I recognise that some 19 year old girls do not want to meet or talk to a guy who is almost 40 years older.

[Mr_Shins]

I met 2 women on SB, one was just a coffee meet and she didn't even ask for money. The other is one who is well known to me and recently tried out WYP but has deleted her profile 3 times. I have no idea why. She seems to want support without giving anything back in return. She is also on fetlife as forureyes, after I got her into "kinky" activity and told her she could make money that way if she put the effort in. But of course she hasn't really done so..

[rubric]

I think it's just a question of incentives.  These sites have good information on customer retention and ideally want someone to stay a paid member for as long as possible, even if they weren't doing anything sketchy over time their app/site will end up with features that work against the goals of their users.

The online status thing - for instance - probably has a measurable effect on retention, and the few arrangements that suffer are just noise by comparison, they probably justify this based on mobile users who may otherwise be 'offline' everytime they switch apps.

I'd expect they also put people 'online' when they just sent them a reminder to log in via email, but that gets into sketchier territory.

[Mr_Shins]

Someone is often considered online if they logged in within the last few hours.

The lady I've been seeing from WYP though still has an active account there and it said she had logged in when she was abroad and correctly identified the country she was in, but she told me she had never logged in there and the app must have activated that automatically.

Mobile apps will often start when you switch on your phone and do stuff silently, e.g. log into the site in order to get notifications, even if you have them switched off, in which case you won't see them but the app logs in anyway.

[Vice Admiral]

I've just done the same search on Seeking and on Sugar Daddy / Secret Benefits, using identical parameters in each case.

The one parameter that couldn't be exactly replicated on the two sites was the girls' "last signed on" status.  So for Seeking I went with girls who had last signed on either today or yesterday; and for SD / SB I counted the number of girls with their sign-on status as either "Online" or "Today" (which in practice probably means within the last 24 hours).  Close enough.

The "score" was Seeking 12, SD / SB 49.

So a relatively obscure sugar-site has four times as many girls active on it as the market leader?  I think not.

In addition there's a girl who's (supposedly) very active on SD / SB – most days since Christmas – who hasn't signed on to her Seeking account since 26 December.

So this girl regularly checks her SD / SB messages, but hasn't bothered to go to Seeking for almost three weeks?  Again, I think not.

(P.S.  It occurs to me that this research may appear a little cryptic if I don't make clear what this evidence suggests – namely, that the bots at SD / SB are regularly showing profiles as online or recently active when in fact they may not have been active for days.  We know from the research of others that a girl's status remains as "online" for at least an hour or two after she's signed out. But the number of profiles that are supposedly recently active suggests that manipulation of active or recently-active status is indeed, as has been previously suggested, considerably more comprehensive than just that.)

[Natwest]

A while ago I spent time on Secret Benefits and wrote a long description of my experiences on UKP. I must admit I was sucked in by a couple of things,. Firstly you didn't get banned on a whim as with Seeking Arrangements and also the slightest complaint to Customer Support always resulted in refund of credits. One time they weren't so quick to respond and I put a negative review up on Trust Pilot and they again came back with loads of credits to get me to take it down. However, when my credits were all used up and I tried to buy more, all I got was a message that I could only pay by Bitcoin and to contact Customer Support.

Every time I wrote to Customer Support my message was ignored. I then decided to start a new profile and mysteriously noticed that it was allowing me to pay by credit card. However, I decided I would wait to join and just see how many messages I would get. Sure enough the messages flooded in but as I had a modicum of success on there in the past, I thought I would take another punt. As soon as I put my credit card details in I was banned. To be fair they never charged my credit card. I decided to write all my observations on a review on Trust Pilot again which pretty much goes along with a lot that has been written on this thread. I gave Secret Benefits one star.

There ensued then the most incredible battle between me, Secret Benefits and Trust Pilot which resulted in the review being taken down. The amount that Secret Benefits threw at it was incredible and in the end I ran out of steam and interest. The review was removed.

They have it all covered. Any complaint, refund credits, any bad review, fight it. And live off the thousands of people who spend a few quid and can't be bothered to complain when nothing comes of it their membership.

[Al R]

I've just done the same search on Seeking and on Sugar Daddy / Secret Benefits, using identical parameters in each case.

The one parameter that couldn't be exactly replicated on the two sites was the girls' "last signed on" status.  So for Seeking I went with girls who had last signed on either today or yesterday; and for SD / SB I counted the number of girls with their sign-on status as either "Online" or "Today" (which in practice probably means within the last 24 hours).  Close enough.

The "score" was Seeking 12, SD / SB 49.

So a relatively obscure sugar-site has four times as many girls active on it as the market leader?  I think not.

In addition there's a girl who's (supposedly) very active on SD / SB – most days since Christmas – who hasn't signed on to her Seeking account since 26 December.

So this girl regularly checks her SD / SB messages, but hasn't bothered to go to Seeking for almost three weeks?  Again, I think not.

(P.S.  It occurs to me that this research may appear a little cryptic if I don't make clear what this evidence suggests – namely, that the bots at SD / SB are regularly showing profiles as online or recently active when in fact they may not have been active for days.  We know from the research of others that a girl's status remains as "online" for at least an hour or two after she's signed out. But the number of profiles that are supposedly recently active suggests that manipulation of active or recently-active status is indeed, as has been previously suggested, considerably more comprehensive than just that.)

To add to this as I posted on the London area thread , another site - Sugardaddie shows literally thousands of women across over 100 pages as “online now”.  All “online now” means is they are logged into the site and haven’t clicked on log off, they could have closed their browser and not returned to the site at all for a couple of weeks.

I asked a girl I know who has a profile on there when she was last actually on the site. She said it was 27th December - she was still showing as online now on 11th January! Many hundreds of women showing as “online now” aren’t actually online at all.

I suspect the likes of secret benefits are similar.

Even on SA - I’ve sent a message to someone who was showing as online. Logging back into the site several hours later her last online showed as over an hour before I sent the message - and yet her green light was on when I sent it. 🤷‍♂️

[ik8133]

A while ago I spent time on Secret Benefits and wrote a long description of my experiences on UKP. I must admit I was sucked in by a couple of things,. Firstly you didn't get banned on a whim as with Seeking Arrangements and also the slightest complaint to Customer Support always resulted in refund of credits. One time they weren't so quick to respond and I put a negative review up on Trust Pilot and they again came back with loads of credits to get me to take it down. However, when my credits were all used up and I tried to buy more, all I got was a message that I could only pay by Bitcoin and to contact Customer Support.

Every time I wrote to Customer Support my message was ignored. I then decided to start a new profile and mysteriously noticed that it was allowing me to pay by credit card. However, I decided I would wait to join and just see how many messages I would get. Sure enough the messages flooded in but as I had a modicum of success on there in the past, I thought I would take another punt. As soon as I put my credit card details in I was banned. To be fair they never charged my credit card. I decided to write all my observations on a review on Trust Pilot again which pretty much goes along with a lot that has been written on this thread. I gave Secret Benefits one star.

There ensued then the most incredible battle between me, Secret Benefits and Trust Pilot which resulted in the review being taken down. The amount that Secret Benefits threw at it was incredible and in the end I ran out of steam and interest. The review was removed.

They have it all covered. Any complaint, refund credits, any bad review, fight it. And live off the thousands of people who spend a few quid and can't be bothered to complain when nothing comes of it their membership.

Thanks for posting, very interesting. Maybe that's the way forward, to bombard Trust pilot with concerns about the site and force them into cleaning up their fraudulent ways!

[WKD123]

Thanks for such diligent research and information.  Just as I conclude my report on illicitencounters, I was going to try Secret Benefits but reading this it seems waste of time and money.

What I did like about SB was those verification videos where you could "see" the person for real, but obviously that's a sham as well.  So, the leaning is towards Seeking Arrangements, I guess, to try and find a more regular relationship (albeit paid) than the occasional WG.  Alternatively, I could go for a costly divorce and try and get back on the market - just can't quite face another 20 years of no sex and no romance/passion.

[Vice Admiral]

What I did like about SB was those verification videos where you could "see" the person for real, but obviously that's a sham as well. 

No.  The verification videos are genuine (as I think are all the profiles, in spite of my earlier suspicion that some might not be). 

As has been discussed at length on this thread, the scam element of the site primarily involves the fact that most of the messages men receive are sent by the site's bots, and not by the girls themselves.

In addition the site shows girls as still online for an hour or two after they've signed out – and also seems sometimes to "bump up" dormant profiles.
 

[Vice Admiral]

As has been discussed at length on this thread, the scam element of the site primarily involves the fact that most of the messages men receive are sent by the site's bots, and not by the girls themselves.

To be totally clear, I should have written "most of the initial messages".  I assume that once a correspondence has started, it is the girl herself who is sending the replies.

[Mr_Shins]

Thanks for such diligent research and information.  Just as I conclude my report on illicitencounters, I was going to try Secret Benefits but reading this it seems waste of time and money.

What I did like about SB was those verification videos where you could "see" the person for real, but obviously that's a sham as well.  So, the leaning is towards Seeking Arrangements, I guess, to try and find a more regular relationship (albeit paid) than the occasional WG.  Alternatively, I could go for a costly divorce and try and get back on the market - just can't quite face another 20 years of no sex and no romance/passion.

I'd go for WhatsYourPrice for that, if you'd rather do "sugar" dating than try to find someone on a regular site (where you are likely to find it hard to meet anyone at all, especially anyone somewhat younger and pretty). And you might want to go for the "model" was have been in the last few years of dating with no sex plus a regular escort for sex, but that may be all about to change for me.

In the past 16 months the woman I have been seeing on WYP has remained active on the site albeit I think she changed it at one point. Her name on the site is 7 letters beginning with S and ending in A although that's not her real name, and her age on the site is 32 although in reality she is 39, and she has curly hair and I think it wearing a red dress on her profile photo.

[WKD123]

Thanks for all the advice.  I suppose if I approach SB with eyes wide open it might work out, especially using your hints and tips about weeding out the fake messages, etc.  WYP I have seen some pretty bad feedback on it recently and it seems more like a dating site and I really need something which is clear from the start will lead to replacing my WG habit. Don't know if any will be able to fake an attraction to a 50 something, but I've also been more realistic about trying to limit to 40-50 year olds. Met someone the other day as it happens but we just didn't click.

I've also noted the other threads that make it clear that this is all a whole lot harder if you're going to remain at home and keep it under wraps.

[Mr_Shins]

I don't know how old you are. I am in my late 50s and I like dating women in their late 30s and 40s, maybe early 50s.

When I tried regular dating sites, I generally found:
 - Women were very picky in who they met.
 - Were probably looking for boyfriends or husbands rather than men to meet to go out on a date (casual dating)
 - Generally not interested in men a fair amount older than themselves.

Not that I didn't meet any, but one of them I had several rather dull dates, one I really liked but didn't like me back and started semi-ghosting me after we'd met (after the messaging had been free-flowing before), the third one was rather terrible. And all of them were eyeing me as a potential husband. A shame the middle one was, I'd have probably enjoyed just dating her.

You can read all kinds of bad things about WhatsYourPrice but I've met loads of women there for "sugar-dating".

[dpicardsalvage]

Good thread with interesting well researched information chaps

I had a very similar experience with secret benefits, I spent a fair chunk of money complained I felt the responses were fake (way before I read this or any other negative reviews)

They sent me an absolute chunk of credits which I haven't used.

Can someone remind me of what name they charge to bank statements please? (have tried google) time for a chargeback methinks

TIA

[ik8133]

Good thread with interesting well researched information chaps

I had a very similar experience with secret benefits, I spent a fair chunk of money complained I felt the responses were fake (way before I read this or any other negative reviews)

They sent me an absolute chunk of credits which I haven't used.

Can someone remind me of what name they charge to bank statements please? (have tried google) time for a chargeback methinks

TIA

How did you go about complaining, report each individual SB or just contact customer services and submit a general complaint?

Ccbill.Com appears on your statement when you pay, is that what you are looking for?

[Vice Admiral]

How did you go about complaining, report each individual SB or just contact customer services and submit a general complaint?

If you merely want a new lot of credits, I would suggest writing to SD / SB customer services with a general complaint along the lines that most of the girls on the site seem not to be serious about looking for sugar daddies; and that you have received many messages from girls from whom you hear nothing more after you reply.

There's no point in reporting profiles, because the profiles are genuine.  Apparently the girls agree, on signing up, that the site should send their "standard" message to random men.  However the girls have no idea that the men have to pay around a fiver in credits each time they respond to any such message.

Alternatively, if you want to put the cat among the pigeons, you could write and tell SD / SB that it is an outrageous scam that they use their bots to e-mail trusting men who, believing that the girl in question is genuinely taking an interest in them, are induced to spend a fiver replying; and that you are going to shame SD / SB on every social media site you can find.  And see what happens!

[ik8133]

If you merely want a new lot of credits, I would suggest writing to SD / SB customer services with a general complaint along the lines that most of the girls on the site seem not to be serious about looking for sugar daddies; and that you have received many messages from girls from whom you hear nothing more after you reply.

There's no point in reporting profiles, because the profiles are genuine.  Apparently the girls agree, on signing up, that the site should send their "standard" message to random men.  However the girls have no idea that the men have to pay around a fiver in credits each time they respond to any such message.

Alternatively, if you want to put the cat among the pigeons, you could write and tell SD / SB that it is an outrageous scam that they use their bots to e-mail trusting men who, believing that the girl in question is genuinely taking an interest in them, are induced to spend a fiver replying; and that you are going to shame SD / SB on every social media site you can find.  And see what happens!

Thank you for that, I'll go down that route and contact customer services.

[Vice Admiral]

I've just done the same search on Seeking and on Sugar Daddy / Secret Benefits, using identical parameters in each case.

The one parameter that couldn't be exactly replicated on the two sites was the girls' "last signed on" status.  So for Seeking I went with girls who had last signed on either today or yesterday; and for SD / SB I counted the number of girls with their sign-on status as either "Online" or "Today" (which in practice probably means within the last 24 hours).  Close enough.

The "score" was Seeking 12, SD / SB 49.

So a relatively obscure sugar-site has four times as many girls active on it as the market leader?  I think not.

In addition there's a girl who's (supposedly) very active on SD / SB – most days since Christmas – who hasn't signed on to her Seeking account since 26 December.

So this girl regularly checks her SD / SB messages, but hasn't bothered to go to Seeking for almost three weeks?  Again, I think not.

(P.S.  It occurs to me that this research may appear a little cryptic if I don't make clear what this evidence suggests – namely, that the bots at SD / SB are regularly showing profiles as online or recently active when in fact they may not have been active for days.  We know from the research of others that a girl's status remains as "online" for at least an hour or two after she's signed out. But the number of profiles that are supposedly recently active suggests that manipulation of active or recently-active status is indeed, as has been previously suggested, considerably more comprehensive than just that.)

I hope I'm not coming across as an obsessive (obsessif, moi?), but I’m more and more convinced that what I outlined on 15 January – and others contributing to this thread have also provided evidence for – is a key part of the SD / SB fraudulent business model.

Some further evidence I have for this is the visiting pattern of girls on SD / SB whom I have "favourited".

You would expect girls' visiting pattern to be, in general terms, one of three types:
(a) a girl likes the site very much, and regularly signs in to see what's going on and to check her messages;
(b) a girl takes a vague interest and signs in now and then;
(c) a girl uses the site for a while and then loses interest and totally disappears – probably because she was hoping for a "mentor", and all she got was dudes who wanted to get into her knickers.

However the pattern I often see is girls regularly visiting for several days and then disappearing for several days – which doesn't ring true.  Or else a long-dormant girl suddenly turning up again.

My guess is that the site's bots are trained to trawl through long-dormant profiles – the profiles of girls who come into my category (c) above – and to bump them up.  The long-dormant girl doesn't have a clue that she suddenly appears to be active again.  And if she does sign in again, she’ll be none the wiser because (another central part of the site’s fraudulent business model) messages aren’t date-stamped.  This policy is so manifestly inconvenient that there must be an ulterior motive for it.

And then there’s the girl I wrote about in these terms on 15 January:  “In addition there's a girl who's (supposedly) very active on SD / SB – most days since Christmas – who hasn't signed on to her Seeking account since 26 December.  So this girl regularly checks her SD / SB messages, but hasn't bothered to go to Seeking for almost three weeks?  Again, I think not.”

This girl is still (supposedly) a regular on-and-off visitor to SD / SB.  But she still hasn’t signed on to Seeking since 26 December.

Quod erat demonstrandum, no? 

[WKD123]

Personally I think you are doing a great job with in depth analysis and research.  I am still to give it a go, so armed with your intelligence,  I can my best not to waste money. After all, there aren't many, if any, alternatives if you're looking to try and move away from WGs. That's probably why they get away with it...

[southcoastpunter]

my only comment is - be mindful that this site (presumably) has a commercial arrangement with SB.