Contact free members ?

I'm not sure that free members can even tell that they have messages.

I have a free account that I rarely access. Months ago I could tell there were more than 30 messages (red circle with number in it). I just checked and there is no red circle nor a birdie when I log in. When I click on messages all I see is a message to upgrade to a paid membership.

I have no idea if the previous messages just got so old that they all dropped off or if the recent changes to the new message indicator just did away with my notifications.

I know when we were new it took us a lot longer than a week to determine if this was worth the membership fee here. Think about how successful you were here after a week of membership.

As for blocking free members, they might as well be blocked because AFAIK, there is no way to contact them or vice versa. They can see that someone sent them a message, but have no way to read or return it.

They are likely blocked from the forums because then they might see the posts here that say maybe 10% of online contact leads to an actual response, then maybe 50% or less of that leads to an actual meeting, then maybe 50% of meetings lead to actual play time. Plus, people could post outside contact info that would slip through the cracks before it was noticed and deleted.

The real value here IMHO is the LS event notices and, to some degree, Hot Dates. Unless you experience a LS party/event, you don't even know if that will be fruitful when you're new.

It’s just my opinion but I think there should be a one week trial membership and if not paid after that, it should be purged. No pay, no play. It’s certainly ok to check things out but after that, bye bye. We have free members blocked. Again, just our opinion.

That's right ! I forgot about the replies. That actually makes sense for free members cause it's not hurting the paying members. But I do see the point of excluding free ones.

We were free members at first as well ... it def gave us a taste for everything. If we had to pay right off the bat, we prob wouldnt have stuck around.

But yeah it used to be 5 messages a day you were allowed in the old email system but I figured out a way to get more ... used to be able to get like 8 a day, but the extra 3 was only if you were replying to an existing email, couldnt create a new one beyond the 5 allotment

Our membership just expired as of yesterday. When I logged on this morning, I couldn't even get to the messages I had from when I was paying. That is BS. Once I paid they all opened up again.

At least it's the paying members choice to go off site to email or text them.

I had the same input regarding the X number of free messages a day. We also started as free memeber and probably would not have become paid members under the current restrictions.

As we all know, you can get and respond to dozens of messages that do not lead to any actual meetings or play time. The proof is in the pudding, but as the song lyrics go, "how can you have any pudding if you don't eat yer meat". In this case, "eat yer meat" = pony up some $$$.

Some will say you can sign up for 1 month and cancel if it doesn't work out, but many (myself included) are reluctant to offer up a credit card for any sort of temporary membership, and probably more so when it's for a swinger website.

They do need to make free users feel some pain because there'd otherwise be no reason to ever sign up. Even 1 or 2 free messages a day would give a better idea if it's worth shelling out any money for a membership.

Of course you will have the people that will send a message with an outside email address, and it may not be worth the effort to monitor that and/or rewrite code to enforce the message restrictions.

FlipFlops, it used to be 5 messages a day. When SLS discontinued the email system in favor of the current IM system, it went to zero.

Freeembers used to be able to reply to x amount of messages. I believe it was 3 at one point years ago.

FlipFlops, you can write and I believe they’ll see they have a message from your profile, but they won’t be able to open it to read without paying for a subscription.

As a member you can always make contact

But how do you even reach out to them to send them your email address ?

We agree with @2much. When we reach out to free members now, we have to send our email address to keep in contact. Not as secure imo. Free members should get a very limited amount of messaging per day

We successfully met quite a few free members back in the glory days of SLS.

We were free members to start.

If we hadn't been able to contact or answer anyone we would have given up and never paid for a full membership.

IMHO it would be a good business decision to bring back the limited messaging for free members.

We would not be here , or likely in the LS at all if this site had not had limited access to free members, as far as the ability to communicate.

We were at the tipping point and that helped fill in some of the points that we were unsure of.

They most probably have CERTS because at one time they paid for membership.

Some free members have certs from members we know are legitimate users.
So it seems there is no way to reach out to them.

Free members can't use the messaging feature, but it's possible to contact them. Not sure why you'd want to. Personally I wouldn't even consider it.

A lot of free members are not legit. Some, like us, occasionally let our paid memberships lapse, some are just looking around to see if this site is something they would use, but a lot are not legitimate profiles. Chances are you'd regret it.

Don't ask how it's possible, you'll have to figure it out by yourself.

No. Free members have no access to the messaging system.

Is there any way to contact free members ?