Fancy being paid the equivalent of a week’s wages to provide witty conversation, bat your eyelids and dress like a Bond girl?
A myriad of companies offering employment as a ‘companionship escort’ seem like a lifeline to students struggling to stretch the student loan between rent, late night Efes and Sunday night Gallery.
More skeptical students may find it hard to believe that any one, however well-heeled, would ever pay for a restaurant or theatre date with no guaranteed promise of sex. Yet, escort advertising websites guarantee that anyone advertising their companionship on their website will receive at least one date a week, paying up to £600 for an evening, a claim that would make any student worried about the bank balance, look closer.
A quick trawl of the Internet reveals that thousands have been left poorer after signing up to websites that promise to make their escorts richer within weeks, for the one off fee of £300 to advertise their profile on their page. Many of these would-be escorts pay the fee after being offered a potential date, only for it to be cancelled, leaving them significantly poorer and unable to contact the fake agencies and demand their money back.
Last year, I myself decided to sign up to ‘adorabelles.co.uk’, a company that was already listed, unbeknown to me, by scam watchdogs. A friend of mine had just signed up with a male escort agency, and I typed in my details more out of curiosity than a genuine desire to entertain dull middle-aged businessmen in soulless cocktail bars.
At first glance, the website seemed fairly professional, with an emphasis on dates revolving around conversation and companionship rather than sex, and a promise that they ‘value personality and a good sense of humour’ as much as looks.
I had no real expectations of hearing back from them, but hours after sending off my details, I received a phone call from a professional, friendly-sounding woman who, by casually mentioning a fee of £600 for a four hour date, persuaded me to send her my photos and set up an online escort profile. This was all moving far too fast, and I was feeling pretty uncomfortable with my decision, but then again, scam agencies rely on students to overlook their own reservations because they desperately need the money.
My boyfriend had also signed up at the same time, and was offered a date within two days, on the proviso that he paid nearly £300 into their bank account. It was at this point I finally decided that it was ‘too good to be true’, and within minutes my suspicions were proved correct. I contacted saafe.co.uk, a website providing advice for escorts, and they strongly warned me against both adorabelles and scores of similar websites that thousands of men and women had lost varying amounts of money to, through exactly the same scam that we had encountered.
With hindsight, I still find it hard to believe that I was ever taken in by such ridiculous claim, but myself and thousands of others are tempted by vast amounts of money you are promised to make and overlook what should have been totally obvious from the beginning – the advice from SAAFE that “it’s still all about the sex – the market for escorts who only escort is very very small”.