John asked the following question, which is of relevance to most of our clients, so I've posted this reply to our client base, which is why you have received it.

Question:
>From: John
>
>I have read postings about people purchasing addresses and writing letters
>but have not found much about success with e-mail. Is it better to
>purchase addresses and write letters?

Answer:
John,

Email has it's good points and bad points. The availability of email access in the former USSR is not great, and varies dramatically from city to city. Access in large metropolises like Moscow is much easier than in small towns like Sumy for instance. The ladies have access to email either through their own personal computer (rare), via an internet cafe (mostly) and sometimes through an agency. In most cases each option costs them money.

The last time I was in Minsk for example, I paid $2 an hour for using an internet cafe. We'll that's fine for me, because I come from the west and $2 is not a great deal for me and I only use it for maybe an hour a day. However, a typical 'good' salary in Belarus might be a $100 per month, so $2 per hour is a considerable cost to them. Now if the lady is not familiar with a keyboard or computer, she has to sit there and translate words using a dictionary and type them very slowly into an email. It's therefore not too surprising that the girls are not too keen to do this. Also, you need to remember, she has to actually get to the internet cafe, something which is ok in the summer, but would you want to make the journey in winter time, when it's -20c outside?

The second option is postal mail, which really doesn't work too well either. Sending mail, to the former USSR, is a bit like a lottery, sometimes it gets there and sometimes it doesn't. The only way to stand a reasonable chance of delivery is to send it by registered mail, i.e. when the lady has to sign for it. Typically registered letters from the US cost around $8 and take around two weeks to be delivered. The same is true of the return postage service, so if you're lucky, you'll exchange two letters per month. The main problem with the reliability, of course, is relationships often break down because one person's reply gets lost and the other person thinks they were just no longer interested in them.

One of the problems both email and postal mail has in common is that, unless you can read and write in Russian, or she can already read and write English, you are limited to writing to ladies who already understand English. One extra service most agencies supply is the ability to have your letters translated to/from Russian, allowing you to write to those ladies who don't speak English yet or simply have not learned enough English to feel confident in writing to you.

I went through the process of finding a Russian wife (from Belarus actually), myself. I now run on one of the largest Russian marriage agencies in Europe, Blue Sapphires (http://www.bluesapphires.net), listing some 16,000 plus ladies from all over the former USSR. Knowing the problems, on a personal level, associated with trying to find a Russian wife, has allowed us to take part in constructing the one of the largest and most successful Russian marriage agency networks around to date.

Blue Sapphires is based in the United Kingdom, so provides client support in English and works to the same high standards you'd expect of any western company, something you'll struggle to find in the former USSR. However, at the same time, we have people, on the ground in the former USSR who deal with the day to day issues as they arrive.

This brings me to the next problem about writing letters, that of the quality of the addresses you purchase from an agency. I remember, when I was first started looking for a Russian wife, this was a big problem. I signed up with a number of the large US based agencies and have to say, I'd be being generous, if I said the response rate was poor. The problem with a lot of western agencies, is they go to Russia, buy 3000 addresses of ladies, many of whom have moved, got married or who are no longer interested, and then proceed to sell them to whoever is fool enough to part with his money.

We work on a different basis, in that all the ladies on our database, have to register in person, at one of our offices in the former USSR. We keep in regular contact with the ladies, to ensure they get removed in a timely manner should they we loose contact with them, they get engaged/married etc. Unlike a lot of agencies, if we do manage to supply you with incorrect details, then we provide you with a replacement address entirely free of charge.

Well, if email and postal letter writing have all these problems, how should you correspond with the ladies? We offer a mail forwarding service that allows you to submit letter to ladies through our web site 24 hours a day. They are sent by email to our various offices in the former USSR for delivery, either by hand or through the local postal service. Because of this, we can also offer translation to/from Russian for those ladies who struggle with English.

Letter delivery is typically one to two days, as opposed to the usual two weeks by US postal mail. The ladies can either reply to us by post, or come along to one of our offices in their city. Providing we have an office in the ladies city, we can even process mail for ladies who have not registered with our agency, i.e. from another marriage agency. On top of this, we actually charge less for a registered letter ($6) than the US post office ($8), even though the delivery time is a couple of days and not a couple of weeks like the conventional postal service.

When the time comes, we can arrange personal, one to one romance tours for our clients. Despite the fact that group tours would be much easier and cheaper for us to run, we don't do these because they are not as successful at building LONG TERM relationships as personal tours. Despite group tours being much cheaper to organize, we still manage to charge around half the price of our US competitors.

If anyone has any questions, or need any advise, please feel free to email me directly.

Kind Regards,
Shane Cook.
Blue Sapphires - Beautiful Russian Ladies Seeking Marriage.
http://www.bluesapphires.net

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