Anyone who has read my Elena’s Models – Review prior to August 2014 knows that I have always recommended Elena’s Models (www.elenasmodels.com) very highly. They were simply the best service available in the industry and had the best reputation even among the harshest critics.

Elena’s Models used to be the best on several fronts: (a) Anti-Scam, (b) size of database, (c) “realness” of the Ukrainian women users, (d) site function/design/features, (e) price.

Many of these qualities may still exist, with the most notable exception of “D” (site function/design/features). They had a major site “upgrade” released on June 1, 2014, and in my opinion, since this “upgrade” it has been downhill ever since.

Consequently this new revision of my Elena’s Models – Review reflects this decline.

Naturally a guy who builds a site about “Meeting Ukrainian Women” accumulates a number of friends and acquaintances along the way who somehow interact with the world of foreign dating. And of all such friends and acquaintances, many who have had exposure to Elena’s Models, none of them like the new site. NONE.

Now mind you, that may only be a sample size of 8, but what they say mirrors my own observations: that features didn’t work, the site is slow and glitchy, pictures didn’t display correctly, members who had “Gold” membership status lost this status, for some members whose “Gold” status was restored, their previous unused credits were still not restored, etc. (see Elena’s Models – Review Evidence for documentation)

Some of these issues may have been fixed since the release, but not all. And many other bugs – many of them small but irritating – remain. In summary, NO ONE LIKES THE NEW SITE — at least no one I have heard from.

And these claims are rather quantifiable. Alexa.com/ is widely considered one of the most reliable website ranking sites. And this is no fly-by-night operation. Alexa is owned and operated by Amazon.com — not exactly a lightweight in the internet world!

According to Alexa, prior to Elena’s Models’ “upgrade”, Elena’s Models ranked around the 30,000 range in terms of web traffic (i.e. 30,000 sites on the web had more traffic). Since the upgrade Elena’s Models’ Alexa rank has rarely been better than 80,000.

Alexa also reports other diagnostics about sites they visit, and in early 2015 they say “How fast does elenasmodels.com load? Very Slow (3.845 Seconds), 91% of sites are faster”. These figures may fluctuate over time, but the decline that they report pretty clearly supports my observations and experiences with Elena’s Models.

Maybe all Elena’s Models’ issues will be worked out in the weeks, months, and years to come, but I’m not optimistic. Whoever is managing and executing their I.T. operations just doesn’t seem up to the task, in my opinion.

You will probably see the reason for this by reading Elena’s Models – Review Evidence (but read the rest of this Elena’s Models – Review first or it won’t make much sense).

Ownership Change?

I have heard speculation that Elena’s Models’ ownership and/or management has changed. And I must say it made sense. I even suspected it myself initially.

But on July 30, 2014 they sent an announcement to users denouncing rumors that the business was under new ownership and claiming that Elena (the founder and namesake of the Elena’s Models) is still the “sole owner and contributing head”.

Well, depending on what they mean by “contributing head” this may be true, but in October 2012 Elena sent an email to all Elena’s Models users explaining her “new passion” for fashion. She talked about her history of involvement in the international dating arena and the founding of Elena’s Models, and then after basically saying she had given the dating business enough of her life she said “but since recently I have not been involved that much with the dating industry…”

So by her own explicit admission in late 2012 she had stepped away from involvement in the dating industry (presumably including her dating website business). And it seems fair to interpret that her withdrawal from the dating industry started some time prior to this announcement (“since recently”).

Maybe it’s not an accident that I started observing what seemed to be a decline in service quality around that time.

For example, prior to that Elena’s Models offered an “Individual Search” service. Basically the service involved someone from Elena’s Model’s staff really working with you personally to help you find and meet your special Ukrainian lady. It was a little expensive, but to have a hands-on personal guide through the whole process was probably worth it, especially if the guide was very good.

But in 2011 a reader of my site wrote me reporting that he had attempted to inquire about Elena’s Models’ “Individual Search”, but received no reply. Imagine that… The service was offered on the site, but would-be customers couldn’t get a reply to inquiries.

So I wrote to them and asked. Essentially the answer was something like “Oh, yeah, the Individual Search is a very involved process and right now we’re at our capacity and cannot take on any new clients for that service”. I wrote them back suggesting that if they advertised this service on their site (which they no longer do), and there was a demand for it, then they should try to increase their capacity to handle the additional demand (makes sense, doesn’t it? 🙂 I received no reply to that suggestion. (see Elena’s Models – Review Evidence for documentation)

And then there’s the matter of profile screening. At least as I understood it, the Elena’s Models policy was that they screened all female applicants. But starting sometime between 2010 and 2012 (approximately when Elena announced that she had lost interest) women applicants didn’t seem to be as carefully screened. Maybe there was no change, but I know several Ukrainian women who assured me that they signed up on Elena’s Models with no useful validation… Usually just a call asking “Is your name Natalia?”, “How old are you?”, etc. In all fairness, that may be more validation than many sites do, but it’s not exactly infallible, and scammers have made it through that screening.

Then a reader of my site contacted me informing me that had been scammed out of some $17000 or so by a woman he met on Elena’s Models. He forwarded me scanned copies of his “Internet Crime Complaint” form filed here in the U.S. and his letters written to the prosecutor’s offices of Kyiv and Kherson. See Elena’s Models – Review Evidence for documentation.

Elena’s Models may investigate reports of scams and removes scammers when they are found, but to me the screening seems fairly light, and not always very effective.

So what does all this mean? Simply this… and this is just my speculation… From sometime around the founding of Elena’s Models till around 2010-2012 when Darrin Field took over management they seemed serious about their founding vision because Elena was on the scene providing direction and leadership.

When Elena announced her loss of interest she probably farmed out the operation of her site to people who didn’t truly share her core convictions, and consequently many of her values vacated the scene with her. They stopped screening new applicants as carefully, they stopped providing the more labor-intensive services, and helpdesk responses to inquiries were less helpful, etc. See Elena’s Models – Review Evidence for documentation of this fact.

About the helpdesk, Elena’s Models’ helpdesk is still the only helpdesk I’ve ever contacted who told me that the problem was on my end and that I should find a computer-knowledgeable friend help me (I’ve been a web/software developer for 18 years!)

This is a help desk who, when I reported that I received “Page Not Found” errors ALL day, although I was able to reach all other websites as usual (demonstrating that my system and network were running fine), replied saying “Hi Tom, Thank you for your message. It’s very strange – working fine at my end. Warm regards”.

Maybe these negative experiences just coincidentally started around the time Elena announced her loss of interest and withdrawal from involvement, or maybe they were always like this but I didn’t notice. Whatever the case, it isn’t top notch like I remember it.

But whether or not there is new ownership or new management doesn’t really matter. And it doesn’t matter whose fault it is that the site has become such a mess. What does matter is that the site was good, now it is a mess, and there’s no end in sight.

LEGAL HARASSMENT OF CRITICS

As I mentioned at the very top of this review, I used to recommend Elena’s Models highly prior to August 2014. But after their disastrous new release in June 2014, months passed without things getting noticeably better. I could no longer recommend them, and that release disaster awakened in me many of these growing frustrations that have been accumulating (all that described under “Ownership Change?” above), and I revised my review to its current critical form.

Up till October 2014 I still thought they were an honest, decent company with just some slightly clumsy notions of customer service and clearly lacking the competence to pull off the kind of I.T. task they took on.

At first glance that may seem like a bit of a slam, but if you really think about it, it’s not. In their industry, that’s far from a bad review. The combination of (a) honest, (b) good customer service, and (c) top notch I.T. rarely come bundled in one company, and “honest” is often the bottom line. And I believed they were honest and decent… until October 2014. Now I no longer believe that.

October 2014 was when their management apparently found my negative review and embarked upon a new low once reserved exclusively for the slimiest operators in the industry: Threats of legal action, which in my opinion is nothing short of intimidation and harassment in an effort to silence criticism.

In a nutshell, Elena’s Models’ Management has threatened to sue me (and others too, according to their own letters) for “trademark infringement” for essentially using their NAME in my review.. It’s a little more technical than that, but not much. If readers want to know the more detailed story, I’ll be happy to add it here.

But they also claim that my criticisms are not valid, and that I lied about many things in my review above, and have insinuated that I might even be guilty of “defamation” (they have thrown the term “defamatory” around, but thus far they only threatened to sue me for the trademark issue) by making up damaging things designed to draw search engine traffic to my site in order to send those visitors to one of their competitors.

But as you can read in the review above, much of what I say is my opinion and experience – completely within my right of free speech and freedom of the press. And where I present something as a fact, I have evidence supporting the credibility of my claim.

I don’t want to clutter up my message here with too much “legal” detail, but if you wish to see what they claim I’m lying about, and the evidence I offer to support my claims, see EM – Review Evidence.