Anastasia is the Ferrari of international dating agencies: Well-designed, expensive, and loaded with options.
Important Note About Anastasia
Remember, that on all the sites in the Anastasia family communication flows exclusively through their site and all personal data and contact information is deleted from your emails.
The site has tens of thousands of beautiful Eastern European women, many hot enough to make a dog chase his tail.
The women have all been professionally photographed and they look gorgeous, so when you sign up you will end up getting lots
of emails from real knockouts in your inbox.
Anastasia also has one of the best search engines of any service and the site is well laid out and easy to use. Most of the profiles on the site have been verified and that's valuable.
Anastasia offers as many services as any of the other top shelf International dating agencies, but what really sets them apart is the luxury spin they put on their services.
All of the full-service sites offer phone translations, but Anastasia assures clients that... "The interpreter will not only provide high quality translation but will also do her best to represent you in the most favorable light".
Important Note About Anastasia
Remember, that on all the sites in the Anastasia family communication flows exclusively through their site and all personal data and contact information is deleted from your emails.
That little extra is what has made Anastasia such a tough competitor.
Anastasia's is the only large international dating site that has video fully integrated into almost every new profile and no one has the innovative live chat program that Anastasia has. These services can give you a lot of valuable information about the women.
Anastasia's Romance Tours
Romance tours are a big part of Anastasia's business and the tours consistently receive great reviews. It's certainly worth thinking about signing up for a tour, because not only do their tours have a great reputation with the men, apparently they have a good reputation with the women in the cities where they are held.
That's important, because it means that tons of beautiful women show up for the socials that Anastasia holds.
Criticism of Anastasia
However, it is worth noting that there are critics on the Net who HATE, and we really mean HATE, Anastasia. These people claim that Anastasia is a scam.
However, when you read these reviews remember that many of the most angry comments about Anastasia seem to come from former competitors that they forced out of business. Essentially, Anastasia is the Microsoft of international dating; they probably have never had the very best product, but they have had a competitive product and a great business strategy.
So, much of the anger that they have generated apparently comes from disgruntled competitors and most of those comments are more or less ancient history, often ten or fifteen years old, but there are two issues worth considering:
First, Anastasia pretty much invented the "letter of introduction" practice that many critics condemn as a scam.
What happens is that each woman writes a letter of introduction that sounds sort of like it was written with a specific guy in mind and then Anastasia sends it to every guy that matches her VERY BROAD criteria in what she's looking for in a man.
That's why when you sign up for Anastasia you will get hundreds, yes hundreds, of emails from stunning young ladies.
If you respond to every e-mail you will soon spend a small fortune. What you might do instead is to search through the site yourself and FAVORITE the women that you find most attractive.
Those women can see that you have made them favorites. Then they can look at your profile and decide if they want to send you a message.
So, if you get a response from a woman that you have already identified as a favorite then you can go ahead and begin corresponding with her with much better odds than otherwise, because you will know that the girl is still active on the site and that she is specifically interested in your profile.
Second, Anastasia does not do a good job of explaining their fees and policies. For instance, only guys that carefully read the sign-up material will realize that all communication with Anastasia's ladies has to occur ONLY through the companies e-mail system. Some guys are annoyed when they discover this, but it is a common practice in the industry.
In fact, unless an agency specifically states that you are buying an email address outright, you should assume that all communications will occur through the company's email system, because that is largely the industry standard.
Because of these unclear policies Anastasia earned a low grade from the New England Better Business Bureau, however it looks like they are being compared to hardware stores in Portland.
Anastasia had a grand total of eight complaints to the BBB last time we checked. Remember, this is a business that has literally thousands of clients around the world and they are in a business where emotional attachment are integral to the dating process. It's just not the same as selling nails and lumber.