Don’t Send Money To Someone You’ve Never Met
Don't confuse charity and love. Offer your companionship but keep your cash.
We’ve written about how we prohibit any of our members from soliciting money through our website. We’ve also written about how we strongly recommend that our members do not ever send money to someone they have not met in person. We want to emphasize the importance of this.
Some members understand this advice right away, based on their past experience or our blog entries. From our correspondence with our members, we also know that some other members refuse to follow our advice. Let us be as clear as possible – we believe that any relationship in which any money is sent before the two people have met in person, will not work.
We thought we’d make a list of the reasons a person might ask another member for money. Every single one of these reasons is a manipulation. No decent person would ever provide tall tales like these to fool people into sending them money.
- I need money to study.
- I need money to eat.
- My family is starving.
- There was just a typhoon, and my family’s house has been washed away.
- The caribou water buffalo died.
- The rice rotted.
- I loaned my family money, and now I owe them.
- I need a new phone to call you.
- I need a computer to write to you.
- I need a better apartment so that you will respect me when you come here.
- The police are demanding a bribe.
- My mother is about to die due to lack of medicine, and they won’t even give her an antibiotic.
- My brother wants to start a business.
- My sister is about to give birth.
- My tuition payment was stolen.
- The jeepney driver broke my phone.
- The police confiscated my brother’s hubel hubel motorcycle and now we can’t earn money.
- I need to get a passport before I meet you.
- I can get a visa to come to your country.
- I can get a visa to meet you in another country.
- I need documents in order to process your visa.
- I need an engagement ring.
- I need to start processing the papers for our engagement.
- My parents are demanding a dowry.
- I want to give my parents a gift.
- I already have a loan at the cybercafe and I have to pay for it.
- My father has a loan due to gambling at the cock-fight, and if I don’t repay it, our house will be repossessed.
- I need load for my phone so that I can receive your call.
- I need to buy a new phone for international calls.
- I need to process a business application to get a good job and they require me to buy the uniform.
We could go on with this list for a very long time. There is no end of pretexts that people can come up with to try to solicit money. Just say no. Here are a few questions and answers on the topic as well.
What should you do when someone you’ve met at our site asks you for money? Our suggestion to you is that you simply send us their user number with our feedback link, and then you correspond with other members instead. We will investigate it, and in most cases we suspend the user profile. We do not allow anyone to ask for money using our site; we do not think people who ask for money directly or indirectly are ready for relationship (at best) and are often fraudsters or criminals. We do our best to screen for these types of users, but we also rely on our members to report violations to us to help us keep our members honest.
But is it OK if one person initiates a gift to the other without a request? We hear this all the time. One member wants to help another member. Please do not do it. If you want to send money to the Philippines, please donate it to the Philippine Red Cross. Visit the Red Cross donations page to make your donation. They will do a much better job than you can from far away, seeing to it that your donation goes to the neediest people at the times when it is most likely to make a difference.
But we’ve been chatting now for a few weeks. I just want to give her a phone so I can call. This is also common. Our advice is don’t do it. By sending money before you have met someone, even just a few dollars, you are risking ruining a potentially good connection. As soon as someone receives money, then the pressure from family and friends to think of you as an ATM machine starts. Just don’t risk it. Save the money, and buy a plane ticket to go visit as soon as possible. We insist – don’t send money to someone you haven’t met, under any circumstances, for any reason, period.
But I want to surprise her with something nice. Send her flowers. You can search for ‘send flowers to the philippines’ on the internet.
If you are ever wondering, “Is this story legitimate, should I send money to this person I met at Christian Filipina”, if you don’t know the answer yet after reading this, just call us or send us an email, and we will talk to you about the particular situation and give you our advice.
Remember, the people who will be most quick to contact you on any dating website will almost always be the criminal scammers. They work 24 hours a day creating fake profiles and trying to trick others to send money. Learn to accept that this kind of person may contact you, and just report it, and move on. As you take your time to get to know more of our members, you’ll find that we have many professional, innocent, and sincere ladies. They may be more shy, you may need to take the initiative to contact them. We have thousands and thousands of quality ladies who would never ask for money. Don’t let the drama of a misguided person prevent you from meeting the sincere partner you deserve. Take your time, quickly discard any letters from those who don’t deserve your attention, and be patient to slowly get to know five or ten ladies from our site, so that when you plan a trip (hopefully, soon), you can meet three to five in person as friends, to know in person which one deserves your company.
Jen and Peter
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You certainly can’t be accused of pulling your punches. But from what I’ve read, your strong words are warranted and important for us to hear. I’ve appreciated all your advice columns. Thanks for the site. God bless you.
i’ve talked to as much as 6 women i’ve known tru relatives 2did not take advantage of my money! somehow i’d like to be with either of these 2 but i guess i can’t find one real love if i don’t invest money! luckily i did not meet any of them in this site maybe i should try here.
Hi Bruce and mr.dad,
Yes, we believe that relationships require both parties to take risks and make sacrifices, including often financial sacrifices. Just make sure those risks and sacrifices are wise ones at the right time and are reciprocated by similar and proportional risks and sacrifices given the resources and responsibilities of each of you. And remember the stories of the Gospel; do they teach us that money can buy happiness, or is a deeper love expressed in a different way? While we don’t like to preach, we ask ourselves, did Jesus offer His presence, or did he send a western union payment to buy everyone new cell phones and laptop computers? Sorry if we’re more blunt than you might be used to, but this is how we see it.
Jen
Yes i agree to that!!! Don’t send money to someone you have never met!!!
I agree! Not only men can be victims of scammers…women too.Sadly to say, I had been, I did fell in love with a man I had seen only in pictures. I also sent some money.Never did think his email address is just a sham,and he’s in no way gonna do his promise to come, and that we’d get married. Now it’s getting harder for me to trust men..even those claiming to be good christians and say they fear God. Hope your site is clean.
this is very good advice.. my husband {,we are seperated} was sending $ to several “women” he met at a dating site before he met them.. he flew to the philipines to meet them… that was jan.2010.. i have heard from him a few times but now no one has heard anything.. he is supposedly in mindanao .. if any one can help me to locate him i would very much appreciate help… his family is worried. his name is Bob or Bobby Reynolds.. he is 53 years old 5’2″. and an american..
I am a God fearing woman and met someone who seems authentic. 4 months later, he seems to be having some business problems. He has not directly asked for money, but the insinuation is there. As a Christian one wants to help, but the Spirit of God tells my spirit…no…I follow that before what anyone wants. Is he real? I would sure hope he is, but in reality, I don’t know…will I send money to find out? No. It is a sad testimony to know that many more men are imposters under the Christian label than the ones that are truly unbelievers.
I need to clarify that we did not meet on this site, I only stumbled across this one looking for such information this morning. We also have never met four months later, due to he was to go overseas for work for one month. While there he is apparently having this financial crisis. I have come to conclusion that there are very few trustworthy and honest people on any of these sites. If this man turns to be an honest one and has wanted nothing of me financially, I will truly repent. Until then I am cautious.
Hi godlywoman,
From what you say it’s hard to know what the situation might be. We always encourage our members to not fall in love over the internet, but rather to use our site and any other resources they may have to get to know people casually, then later meet several people face to face before allowing themselves to be financially or emotionally involved. Some of our members take our advice, and some don’t. It sounds like you’re being realistic and not foolish, which is important.
If you have the resources to do so, you might just take a trip yourself. At worst, you might get to see a new place and know for sure what is going on, improving your ability to read people by the excursion. At best, you might find that face to face you inspire each other to get to a place financially and emotionally where you can spend more time together.
Jen
This article is very cold-hearted. As an American living in the Philippines, I’ve seen these things first-hand. Sometimes, the rice DOES rot. Sometimes the police DO confiscate the hubel hubel. Sometimes the family truly IS starving.
To call every one of these reasons a manipulation or a “tall tale” blindly ignores the hard facts of living in this country. I can’t believe Christ would want you to so coldly turn your back on people.
Sure, protect your wallet from scammers. But don’t think for a second that these are always excuses. Every day I witness these things happening for real.
And I’m shocked how the author claims decent people won’t ask for help. I’ve seen these troubles happen to decent people. And they, of course, will seek help for their situation.
If you’re going to get involved with a filipina, then accept that you’ll need to help. In return, you’ll be rewarded with the most loyal and loving woman God could give you. And you’ll feel better about yourself. Just trust your heart to know when it’s the right time to give.