Help - Messaging Rules

General Rules and Etiquette

No offensive messages. This includes swearing, sexual language, racism, angry emails and any other sort of unpleasantness. As a general rule risqué is OK but crude is taboo. If you have been sent an offensive email please report it.

Messages are only for private social purposes - for members genuinely looking for friends, relationships or conversation. No messages are to be sent offering goods, services, business opportunities, etc. Our Terms and Conditions spell all this out in full detail.

Please respect our messaging system and help make this site the sort of place you'd happily recommend friends.

Happy messaging!

From the point of view of a FREE MEMBER In a nutshell: Lots of winks/icebreakers PLUS there is some free messaging to fellow free members but you need to do a wee bit of 'Tagging' to earn this right. The purposes of our (new) messaging rules are to a) Generate more 'dating opportunities' by getting all free members do some Tagging (see bottom of Yes-No-Maybe for explanation) b) Give a greater incentive for you to contact FULL members Here are your opportunities to communicate as a free member: 1. You can always reply to full members If a FULL member writes to you (or even if they just wink at you) then you are able to reply without any further ado. ...Hint: Vice-versa if you upgrade then all free members can contact you! ;-) 2. More winks/icebreakers You now have *lots* of winks and icebreakers that you can send to both full and free members. ...The idea is you can send loads of these out to tempt interest in your profile. 3. Quota of 'Direct Send' free messages Thirdly - if you want to proactively send *messages* then you will be given a DAILY QUOTA of free messages. You earn this quota by doing a small amount of tagging every week. Tag 3 people a week as Yes/Maybe > you earn the right to message FULL MEMBERS Quota = FOUR messages a day to full members.   Hint: If you use up your quota - actively search out and wink at full members - as if they wink/write back then messaging unlocks between you Tag 7 people a week as Yes/Maybe > you earn the right to message FREE MEMBERS Quota = ONE message a day to free members We want you to tag people genuinely. If you are a very fussy person and cannot find 7 good new people each week - then simply re-tag some of the existing people you have tagged as Yes/Maybe from weeks before ...that will count towards your total and unlock the messaging The above are weekly quotas - so you don't have to login every day to tag people - you can do it all in one weekly 5-10 minute session. We may increase these quotas in future - as we set them as very easy to begin with.   4.  'Lock-Send' Messages Once you run out of quota you can still 'Lock-Send' messages to other free members. When you 'Lock-Send' a message the recipient will be notified you would like to be in communicate and can read your message when they upgrade . This is a good option if they are rich and you are poor but gorgeous! ;-) ...alternatively they may send you a standard reply saying they're happy to correspond but not choose to upgrade ...thereby putting the ball back in your court   FREE MEMBERS & Email address + phone numbers Full members are (of course!) allowed to send out contact details (email + phone numbers). Conversely Full members are able to receive everyone's contact details i.e. you can 'Direct Send' your email/phone details to full members If you are a free member you can also 'Lock-Send' your contact details to other free members. Basically this means the other (free) member is informed you have sent your email address / phone numbers and they can access these once they upgrade.	...
From the point of view of a FULL MEMBER In a nutshell: Unlimited communication PLUS we have clever encouragements for free members contact and reply to you. Unlimited communication As a full member we like you to write what you want, when you want to whom you want within reason. We have a spam filter and fair usage policy plus you can't (of course) send rude stuff . It is very unlikely you'll hit the daily limit unless you are copying and pasting messages to loads of people ...which you shouldn't be doing.  Free members can always reply to you Even if you just send a wink - then this opens up a communication corridor between you so that the free member can reply within seven days. We only time limit it to encourage the free member to act relatively promptly. If you don't hear from them within seven days then you have a good excuse to send them another wink/message to open up another seven day period. Free members are encouraged to proactively contact you. Their free 'Direct send' messaging quota to FULL members unlocks way before their quota to Free members and it is also much more generous. Basically it is a lot easier for them to contact full members than fellow free members.  Free members and contact details Free members cannot send their email address and phone number to fellow free members. However, they can send it to you full members. Prominence for your messages The messages you send to free members have a big REPLY NOW on them and are given prominence in their Inbox.  eCards, Read Receipt and CC me a copy These are exclusive full member features Our motto is for full members to have more dates and more fun - so we do everything in our power to get you more dating opportunities. You'll see from the above that you are very much in the fast lane compared to free members with respect to communicating. Please do bear in mind the old saying 'You can lead a horse to water...' Basically we can't force them to contact/reply to you and it is not in your interests for us to be too draconian with free members. We still want them joining and telling their friends about what a good site we are. From your point of view - see free members as a 'good thing' because when you are in communication with them you are not facing so much 'competition'  as they are limited in their free member to free member communications.

Other Notes
Checking the "Request Read Receipt" checkbox lets you know when the recipient has logged in and opened your message. You'll see a tick next to the message on your 'Messages Sent' page plus we send you an email. Of course not sending a copy of your message via email is less convenient for the recipient - so use this feature with discretion.

Messages are kept on our system for a minimum of 1 month (usually a lot longer). After this they may be archived to save space and speed up our database. Full members can retrieve messages form the archive. .