@Mike403 You can also hug yourself for free, but many people on this site are happy to pay others to do it.
I've never paid for an oil painting, a heli-skiing experience, a ride on a horse, a male stripper-gram, or any kind of illegal drugs ; but some people are happy to pay for those things.
There's a Mr Bean sketch, where he writes a greetings card, posts it through his own door, then comes back in and joyfully opens it. Interactions with other people can occur in many different ways, and some people are happy to pay for some of them. A man who pays for his date's dinner, or movie ticket, or half of cab fare ; is effectively paying them for their company.
@Mike403 I've been texting with a few "pros" on here for free as well.
@geoff1000 - I tried hugging myself.. It's not the same. However texting myself is the same as getting it from somebody because I paid her to do so. It's just text on a mobile device I'm holding in my hand. It's not the physical touch of another human.
@Mike403 What is it about the physical touch of another human, that you enjoy ? Is it the pressure, temperature, texture, movement ? All of these characteristics can be replicated by an inanimate object. To me, it is that another human being is communicating with me.
Conversely, what is so unpleasant about an offensive or insulting text message on a mobile device ? It's just tiny squares of LCD being different colours.
Have you never been in a difficult situation, and been helped by a message from someone, be it verbal or written ? Some people are. Think of a driving instructor, whom you pay, wishing you good luck with your test.
If you are only uplifted by physical human contact, I think you are missing out.
@geoff1000 - It's very different having the person in front of me communicating with me rather than texting. Not all texts are bad. A friend will text "good morning" because they're thinking about me. A transactional text just feels like it came from a robot that was programmed to text me at a certain time.
@geoff1000 @Mike403 I have a thought. How about you both do and believe what you want in terms of pay for text , and then you will both be happy and minds unchanged 😋
@geoff1000 @SoulcuddlerZ
Regarding my suggestion for the option to pay through cuddle comfort - I don’t have it all figured out by any means, and understand that it could potentially pose a risk to the site ( as well as pros & clients), But as it stands I feel like the risk that now rests fully on pros & clients is greater. ( but that’s just my personal opinion ) I think the way “Poshmark”, a clothing resale site, handles their financials would make a great model. Obviously cuddling isn’t clothing resale and many things would need to be different.. but I think the way their payment system works is wonderful. If I’m thinking of what CC handling payment would if especially look like for me... the client would enter their payment information when confirming a booking. That money would be held by cuddle comfort until the scheduled session, where upon meeting both pro & client would confirm the session start, and then cc would release the clients payment ( minus the fee ) to the pro. Obviously there would be issues with people trying to scam, request refunds for weird reasons, and probably a bunch of other stuff I can’t begin to imagine. Clear rules, specific policies, legal agreement, a resolution team, and more would be needed. I’m definitely not saying I’ve got it all figured out, or that I have the perfect framework for this, i totally don’t. this is all simply a suggestion idea. And I know y’all will pick it apart. I’m not here to argue, just share what I think may be beneficial. I think something that would work well with site holding payment, would be protection in case of last minute cancellations & no shows. For those of us that are not able to retain clients & get booking when we require a deposit, it would be great to get the 50% (or whatever amount is stated in the rules ) on these occasions. Vice versa, when a pro cancels last minute, is a no show, or clearly violates their contract it would offer the client some reimbursement had the session been previously agreed upon to take place in a split cost hotel room, or another situation in which clients currently loose money. I know this would obviously get really complicated with all the “I’m not satisfied with my cuddles” , “my pro spent the whole session in the bathroom”, and so much “he said / she said” crap.. I don’t have a suggestion for a way around that, aside from the clear terms & rules, legal agreement, & resolution team I previously mentioned. I also think paying through the CC website shouldn’t be mandatory, but would be so great to have as an option we could all choose from.
Just my thoughts. Please don’t crucify me. I know my suggestion is far from applicable as is
@geoff1000 @Mike403 @pmvines
The text service, you all are talking about.. seems like it may be the (hopefully)platonic version of something like a GFE - girl friend experience.. or to be blunt, paid friendship. I'm not quite sure even on the platonic level it works with the cuddle comfort system & terms of service... but it definitely is something other people pay for, platonic of otherwise. Hopefully for $150 a week, this person would be sending you texts and having personal conversation with you throughout the day. Which actually seems like if done well it would take a significant amount of time. So to ask about $20 a day for a unique, personal, and friendly conversation via text doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me. It does seem like something quite distant from cuddling.. but I know there are people who really enjoy this stuff. It feels good to have your phone beep and have someone ask how your days goings, read your relies, and answer. If someone is offering this service (through any website or venue) scripted or automated texts without personal replies would indeed be a rip off, but that generally not what is being advertised.
ps. sorry i know this is a suggestion thread and that was not a suggestion at all, just a reply.
..but in terms of suggestions.. i would say that i think its kind of sketchy of let people offer a subscription conversation service on a platonic cuddle site. especially from username "VictoriaSecret" - no offense intended to this young woman
I think it is too difficult to reliably and objectiively measure the quality of a cuddle session. That means we are reliant on the Karma system to weed out and discourage those who repeatedly either provide a poor service, or unreasonably complain that the service was poor.
Pros who have better Karma, will be able to charge more, and have a wider catchment area ; and clients with better Karma, won't have to put up so much deposit, or might get a discount.
That unfortunately means there will always be clients who feel they were overcharged, and pros who feel they were underpaid.
Maybe the site needs to employ "mystery shoppers" to assess the quality of the pros, and get an objective standard measurement ; but I suspect the best pros, are those who cope well with clients who are nervous or having a bad day.
A cuddler provides a warm body, but I think we all hope for and expect some emotional connection too. That emotional connection is also provided by drink/food serving staff, hairdressers, taxi-drivers etc. who don't cuddle ; and some people will ( perhaps unconsciously ) pay extra for those services, when the emotional connection is good.
Paying for just the emotional connection, whether that is by video, voice, or text ; is just a distilled form.
@saramajara I had a cuddler cancel on me last minute because she had a dog sitting client that wasn't sure how late they were going to be picking up their dog. As far as Miss VictoriaSecret goes, this is what I received from @Mark. If it does violate the TOS and someone reports her, it will be attached to her profile forevermore
I think if you believe a Pro has been exceptionally unprofessional, it's good to report them via the profile button. This logs it in our moderator queue and also will be attached to her profile forever more. If we see a pattern of this build up on her account then we might ban the account.
But do bear in mind that as a platform, we accept that there will be a mix of Pros who are great, good and bad. We hope karma ultimately serves its purpose there. Whereas in cases of extreme unprofessionalism we would consider getting involved and taking action.
Some cases that definitely get our attention are 'no shows' and bad language to clients.
@saramajara perhaps her government name is Victoria and she wants to just live her truth and not be secretive?
@saramajara et al ... the deposit option to the website .. I want to add , I think , if the pro cuddler cancels , she canceled . The client should have the right to refuse the cuddlers reschedule , and let the client allow the website to hold his funds .. to apply the held deposit to another cuddler , if they want . Yeah , I know it complicates things more .. my 1 cent
I’m sure it’s been said before, but an app for iPhone would be terrific!
Who cares about iPhone? Make an app for Android!
@Mike403 i thought there already was an Android App....am I wrong about that?
@warm_embrace - There isn't an app at all. Using the site on the mobile web browser works, but I would love a dedicated app.
@quixotic_life - Probably a higher rate for new clients then a discount if they become a regular? I was seeing the same pro once per month for 3 years, so she wasn't a stranger to me anymore.
I have heard a cuddler being asked to let the client brush her hair. She said it was one of the weirdest requests from this site and her head tingled for the moments after her hair was brushed for 4 hours. She would never allow that now but this was a newbie mistake.
@CrossFitNLattes ive actually had a couple different cuddlers who wanted to brush my hair. I loved the feeling lol 10/10 would do again. One of them was a female so her and I just brushed each other’s hair while watching a show. These were great sessions 🤩
I’d love to have a search feed that included men and women... but when I check that I’m open to cuddling men, so many men show up in my searches, that the women get drowned out. Something that works like an equalizer... more treble and less bass would be better for me than having to fluctuate between all or none.
Including men that are within 1 mile and women within 30 might work. (And NBs within 💯). But even better would be to tell the algorithms what percentage of my feed I would like to devote to each gender the site purports to include.
One idea would be to assign a "weighting" to each factor : 100 / distance in miles x Male = 1, female =10 Age, status, orientation etc. etc.
It's probably easier to just run a male search, and then a female search, being as stringent as necessary with each, to get a manageable number to follow up.
@geoff1000 Indeed; there are so few women on the site, it doesn't seem worth the effort. There are 4 nonpro women within 50 miles of @HoldenCaulfield. He can spend a few minutes messaging each of them and then never have to worry about whether he finds them in his general searches.
@SanFranResident He could probably message every non-pro on the site, during a lunch break. 😀
Hi @Mark I’d like to suggest an alert system that will notify me when there’s a reply/tag to a comment I’ve made in the discussion forums. Thx 🌅
@ebnb that should be a notification setting. I get emails for both. 😊
@ubergigglefritz @Mark I think I received discussion notifications at one time. I just checked my settings and they seem to all be set for me to receive all types of notifications. I am receiving message notifications, but not discussion forum notifications. No messages from cc go into my spam folder. Any ideas as to what else could be the issue? Thx
@ubergigglefritz @Mark I now see the forum notifications are in a separate window from other notifications. So, I should be all set.Ty @ubergigglefritz
@HoldenCaulfield: That makes sense—expanding the search distance to capture more of the people there are fewer of (while not completely excluding everyone else). I like that. Consider my vote added. After all, one search is a lot more convenient than three.
I'd also like to suggest an option to find people who cuddle the nonbinary....
@DarrenWalker My guess is that people who would cuddle non-binary ( or trans ), are the same people who would cuddle cis-male or cis-female. Searching "cuddles men" and then "cuddles women" would give two lists, and the overlap is what you seek.
A person who puts only "cuddles women" is probably saying only cis-women, and is excluding everyone else on the map of gender identity.