Similar to what Molly said, certs are part of the consideration, especially for profiles that have been around for awhile.
For us, face pictures (his and hers) are the most important factor when determining if we will contact and/or respond to another profile, but certs definitely help.
Welcome.. so we have been on SLS a long time, even swinging way before that and all our FWB's were word of mouth in south Florida area.... since moving to Georgia area we personally have seen many couples on SLS who collect Certs.. not for playing, but for breathing, chatting on IM's , meeting for lunch and dinner and everything in between except playing!
Whats so funny is one of our first CERTS was from a party on Bourbon st in NOLA , advertised as a swinging event on SLS with very high fees , but we said okay lets go and play on Bourbon St.. SLS people showed up from all over USA only to find out it was a meet and greet! The guy was a scam artist and many in NOLA knew about him. We all had words with him and still he gave everyone a CERT.. its a joke for us.
We care more about ones profile, photos and are they for real in our swinging world... we personally would like to see a YELP rating on singles and couples.. LOL, I know very subjective.
I see both sides of the CERT situation. Now if someone has like 20-30 or more.. they need some help REALLY! Are they that insecure and or brag about playing.. funny thing is that when you read some they say.. we never played but met them at a meet and greet.. WTF?
We know many singles and couples who will not accept a CERT as its no ones business who they play with and YES they are real SLS swingers we have met in person.
Wayne will tell you they look at ( CERTS) as someone is real on SLS... but thats not what we find true in our swinging world.. we are here to play and have sex.. not just chat, have dinner, collect CERTS etc.
If one wants to see if we are real just ask to meet.. or if we are going to meet we will open our xxx photos which shows our playtimes.. or maybe I will send them to my Linkedin profile well over 600 business contacts!
When we were still actively looking for new playmates, certs were a paramount consideration. Certs helped validate that someone had actually played with these folks, and the profile wasn't some catfish situation. Not an ironclad guarantee, but cert(s) sure helped us build the confidence to reach out to them.
When we played with a new couple (and came away happy with them), we would always write a cert for them. Then it was up to the other couple to either accept the cert or not, and to decide if they wanted to reciprocate with a cert for us or not. Sometimes they accepted, sometimes reciprocated, sometimes nada. We never pressured other couples for certs.
More the content of the profile rather than certs. We don't post any either so it may cut down on how many contact us.
It might be unfair, but my working assumption is that any profile on here that doesn't have certs and is more than a year old is quite possibly not legitimate. Unless there's something especially compelling about their profile, I'd be at best skeptical and at worst would make it clear I wasn't interested, even if there was no other reason to reject them.
We were never the couple that would ask for certifications, and never thought about giving them unless the other couple asked. They just never seemed that important to us. Then a couple we met said they had bypassed us several times due to our lack of certs, so it made me wonder how many others had done the same thing.
Question: How important are certs to you when scanning a potential couples profile?
