--Most of this post deals with one type of scam, as it's by far the most common. Near the bottom there is some advice about other agency scams. There's also some links to help you find a real agency.--
There is an old scam that people have used to get money from wannabe models for years. "Sure, you'd be a great model, we'll get you loads of work! You'll need to have a portfolio though, just give us ?200, we'll do a photoshoot with you and you'll be ready to start your exciting new career!" In the last couple of years, people have started making a mint by exploiting wannabe escorts in the same way. We don't want you to be one of them, but there's no point in just warning against specific scams. Since they have no interest in establishing a business, they'll drop a name as soon as there are too many warnings about it and start with a new one, so you need to learn to spot them in any guise. Fortunately, most of them are obvious if you know the signs.
These scams mostly target the huge number of people who would like to cater to markets that in reality are vanishingly small: male escorts for women, and social-only escorting*. They'll take money from anyone though, and to make sure they don't exclude any potential victims, they'll let you know that there's a great demand for escorts of any gender, age, or level of attractiveness. You'll find these ads in local classifieds, and as websites online.
Here's how to spot the scammers:
1. They're marketing to escorts, not clients.Nowhere is the demand for escorts so high that clients are in surplus and escorts are sought after, it's not how business works! Every service provider needs a steady stream of clients to make money, especially the sort of money these people promise. Therefor a real agency will want to get some good escorts on the books and then go out seeking clients for them. If it's a website you're looking at, look at it from the perspective of a client. If it has less to offer clients then it's offering escorts, it's not going to attract clients.
2. Claims of unrealistic, undiscriminating demand."There's a huge emerging market of women seeking male escorts." There are loads of women out there who want to pay you to have sex with them. Sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? That's right, it's too good and it's not true. In the heterosexual sex and dating market, women are in demand, not men. Sure, sometimes women get horny or want some company and don't have a man readily available, but they don't go looking for anyone with a penis who they can pay to spend time with them. That's a separate topic though, back to this one.
The other market scammers invent is the one for social escorts. This one is a lot more believable because of the "time and company" fiction that's rampant in an attempt to avoid prosecution (even on many independent escort's sites, where it's not necessary). It's a fiction though: we're being paid for sex. Not always full penetrative sex, sometimes more talking and cuddling then sexual contact, but it's still about the sex. Plenty of clients do like to take an escort to dinner, sometimes to social functions or on holiday, but most of them will want to have sex at some point. Like the market for straight male escorts, the market for escorts who only escort is very very small.
If you're dedicated you can try to find these markets, but you'll have to be special and lucky.
3. You have to register to see the escorts.This is something that scam agencies often do and real agencies rarely do. When using an agency, clients don't want to put a lot of effort in. In addition, some of the fake agencies won't even let you make a booking with one of their escorts if you try.
4. You need to spend money to make money.This is the most important, but you won't know that's how they operate until you sign up, so look for other signs to avoid wasting your time. In many cases you do need to spend money to make money, but being an agency escort isn't one of them (other than getting supplies for the job). Escort agencies take on escorts, advertise the agency, take calls from clients and set up bookings. Only when their escorts have been paid for the booking do they take a fee, in the form of a commission charged on every booking. This is usually 30%, but may be more if you work in a premises which the agency provides.
There are a lot of websites that take a monthly or annual fee in return for featuring you on the website, but these aren't agencies, they're advertising sites. Most of them aren't worth the money, and if they're posing as agencies you should rule them out immediately.
Some fake agencies are quite sneaky about the fee, there was one that proudly claimed to have no upfront fees. It worked by giving you the first month free. During that time, a booking would be arranged but later canceled. Another booking would be requested, but after the initial free month, so you'd need to pay the fee if you wanted to accept it. The unfortunate men who got this far would turn up to the booking to find no client.
There is only one reason a genuine agency may ask you to part with money before you get a booking, and that's for photos. Just about every agency operates online these days and they'll be able to promote you more effectively if their clients can view your pictures. They may be happy to use pictures that you provide, but if you don't have any or they don't like the ones you have, they'll probably want you to do a shoot with their in-house or preferred photographer. Don't give an agency money just because they say it's for photos though, be critical. Do they fall afoul of any of the first three points? Are they established? Can you find evidence that they really do offer an escort service to real clients in your area? If you're not sure about paying for photos, agencies should be able to get you some work initially by promoting you on the phone.
If you want to see some examples...of real agencies and fake ones, just
search Google for 'escort agency'. The results highlighted in yellow at the top, and the ones at the right are sponsored links. The list below the yellow bit contains Google's best-ranked sites for the search term. The links which aren't sponsored are real escort directories and agencies, while the sponsored links are almost all scam agencies. You can see that the scams are focusing on attracting escorts, while the real ones try to attract clients. The real agencies cover areas no larger than a couple of counties, while the fake ones cover the whole country, continent or world. The real agencies have comprehensive marketing strategies which have got them ranked highly on Google, while the fakes just have throw-away sites that will only get noticed if they pay for advertising. By the way, they pay every time you click, so if you're upset by what these people are doing, click away!
Other things to watch out for.The scam described above is the most common, but there are other ways people posing as agents may take advantage of you. They might try to get some money from you by way of the
overpayment scam. Others are just after free sex. One way of doing this is to require an "audition" with the owner, one of their "male escorts", or one of their "regulars". Don't do it, you're not required to prove your skills before you can work, a fully-clothed chat is all it takes. Another way of doing it is to send you on a job that you never get paid for, with a person or people who aren't real clients, they're the owner or people colluding with him. The agency will say they're taking the payment by credit card and will pass it on to you, but they never do. You could also be paid with a cheque that bounces. Some agencies do accept credit card payment, but you shouldn't take that kind of booking until you've worked for the agency for long enough to know that they'll pay you.
The one rule for avoiding scams is that you should never give anyone money or provide a service until you've been paid.And for payment you should only accept cash in your hand. No cheques, credit cards, bank transfers or currency you're not familiar with.
There's another article that deals with this issue
here, and another thread on this forum
here. You should now be able to tell the difference between a real agency and a scam, but if you want to ask about an agency, please do it here. If the agency turns out to be real and people want to discuss it, I'll move it to it's own thread.
If you're a woman who's willing to have sex with men, you shouldn't have much trouble finding a real agency. The Punterlink listings are a good place to start:
http://www.punterlink.co.uk/london_agencies.htm
http://www.punterlink.co.uk/regional_agencies.htm
There's also some advice about chosing an agency in
this thread.
*Running an agency that provides sex is illegal, so many genuine agencies have a disclaimer to say that they're not offering sex. That sort of thing isn't cause for concern, but if someone makes a point of telling you that their clients just want charming dinner companions, assume it's a scam.
Topic: The big scam agency thread (Read 181426 times)