The flakiness has got to STOP

CuddleWhoCuddleWho
edited April 2021 in General

I was supposed to have my first cuddle in a long time tonight (with a pro; I'm mainly looking for pros right now). And, of course, she didn't show up. No text, no message on the site, she just didn't show.

Based on my prior experience with this site, this is extremely common. The pros who are generally easy to communicate with, who are easy to book sessions with, and who show up roughly on time (or let you know when they can't) are rare.

I've had a number of bad experiences from this site. Experiences that would seem at first glance to be worse than simple flakiness. But honestly I think the flakiness is by far the worst problem here. The amount of time and effort I've wasted on selfish, inconsiderate people is astronomical.

I'd like to invite discussion on what can be done to mitigate this problem.

Karma is the obvious thing to turn to. But, in my experience, karma doesn't work. It's essentially meaningless. I've had terrible experiences with people with lots of glowing 5-star karmas. (And pros have also told me about their terrible experiences with clients who have lots of glowing karma.) I think one problem here is the fear of retribution. I'd like to leave this particular pro a 1-star karma, but I'm worried she'd leave me one too, and screw up this account before I even get started.

What I'd honestly like to see is for no-shows to become a reportable TOS violation. I realize that it wouldn't be realistic to expect a person to be banned based on one report of a no-show. However, I think people who repeatedly no-show absolutely need to be off the site.

I suspect, from the site admin's perspective, they think that banning flakes doesn't make financial sense. After all, this particular pro does occasionally actually show up for sessions, and the site makes money from that. But that's a short-sighted perspective. Having the site full of flakes pisses off everyone else and makes everyone else less inclined to stick around. I am seriously considering deleting this account and forgetting this site exists because I am just so sick of it.

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Comments

  • [Deleted User]DeadGirlWalking (deleted user)

    If you're considering leaving the site and deleting the account anyway, there is no fear of retaliation on her part re: karma.

    If you leave, she'll still have a 1 star review on her account, and if you want to you can rejoin later with a different account.

  • pmvinespmvines

    Not really supposed to be leaving karma unless you have cuddled or or met the person. If you are upset that your appointment didn't happen you can always report to admin.

  • CuddleWhoCuddleWho

    @pmvines That's not accurate. You are allowed to leave karma if they no-show.

  • CuddleWhoCuddleWho

    The text when you go to leave karma says

    Please only write about your experience if you have met the member in person or if they were a no-show.

  • CuddleWhoCuddleWho
    edited April 2021

    Also, I'm not upset that my appointment "didn't happen." If she had communicated with me and let me know she wouldn't be coming (you know, the behavior we expect from anyone over the age of 12) I wouldn't be here ranting about it.

  • CuddleWhoCuddleWho

    Just to say some more words about this topic, here are the signs I've noticed that a pro is fairly likely to be reliable... if she is missing even one of these characteristics, she is very likely to not show up:

    1. She sends reasonable, coherent messages, with a greeting, punctuation, etc, and booking a session doesn't take 20 messages back and forth due to her inane one-word replies.

    2. She visits the site fairly often. I know it's sometimes considered stalkery behavior to visit someone's profile to see when they were last logged on, but if you're messaging a pro and it's taking forever for her to reply and you look at her profile and she hasn't been on the site for 6 days... that's a bad sign. (It's something that theoretically shouldn't be a big deal, but in practice I've found it to be a red flag.)

    3. After you book the session, you give her your number, and she sends you a text. As with the last point, theoretically, I have zero problem if pros prefer to keep communication on site. However, in practice, for whatever reason, reliable pros are almost always happy to communicate off-site.

    I actually have a guess for item 3: I think reliable people realize that, if you're meeting someone for the first time, it's pretty likely you're going to need to ask them about parking or tell them you'll be 10 minutes late or whatever the hell else. And this site doesn't work very well for that purpose, so reliable people very much want to communicate by text.

  • sunnysideupsunnysideup

    Assuming you were cordial and respectful in all your engagement with the professional, I'm sorry that you were left hanging with no word, that's very disrespectful.

    You should still leave karma, if the karma that was left for you was unfair, you can try reaching out to admin in getting it removed if you get a retributive 1 star review.

  • CuddleWhoCuddleWho

    You should still leave karma, if the karma that was left for you was unfair, you can try reaching out to admin in getting it removed if you get a retributive 1 star review.

    I've actually received bad karma in retribution before, in response to the only 1-star karma I ever left, and it was not removed, despite my requesting it.

  • pmvinespmvines

    Have you tried contacting the person to ask what happened? Could be something innocent that was out of their control

  • CuddleWhoCuddleWho

    @pmvines I sent her a message. No reply yet.

    Yes, of course, it's possible something happened.

    However, between dating and cuddling, I've been stood up... let's conservatively say 50 times. Not once has it been for any reason other than that my date/cuddler doesn't give a shit. So, yeah, maybe this time it's something out of her control. There's a first time for everything. But the odds say otherwise.

  • CuddleWhoCuddleWho

    I mean, I guess I don't really know, right? Most of those people who stood me up I never heard from again, so for all I know they all died. But... I doubt it.

  • pmvinespmvines

    I realize you are frustrated and prob a little hurt and I am sorry you are going through that . Me personally, I try to let some time go by to get a bigger picture if the situation , and also give myself some time to settle before I decide how to respond and how to react to something like that . I wish you better luck moving forward . I do see you have only had your account since March . There is plenty of time to meet folks . You can't let a couple negative experiences over such a short amount of time run you off . Not trying to minimize , just I dont see having a no show cuddler as a life altering matter . It's an inconvenience and enough to make your day suck a little, but it is not going to impact things in the long term either way for you .

  • [Deleted User]DeadGirlWalking (deleted user)
    edited April 2021

    If you never heard from them again, there could well have been another reason than them 'not giving a shit'.

    Maybe take a breather and come back to the site when you feel calmer. Like pmvines says, you've had your account for less than a month. We're in a global pandemic. These things take time, even in ideal circumstances.

  • CuddleWhoCuddleWho
    edited April 2021

    @pmvines

    I do see you have only had your account since March . There is plenty of time to meet folks .

    I've been on and off this site for something like 2.5 years or so. I've met on the order of 40 or 50 cuddlers, and communicated with a lot more than that. I've got a decent amount of experience here. I've definitely had some great experiences and met some great people, but I feel like I have enough perspective to be able to state, unambiguously, that most pros on this site are terrible.

    Not trying to minimize , just I dont see having a no show cuddler as a life altering matter . It's an inconvenience and enough to make your day suck a little, but it is not going to impact things in the long term either way for you .

    I appreciate that you are trying to alleviate the situation in some way, but this is irrelevant. I'm not saying my life is ruined. I'm here to talk about this site. A lot of stuff about this site sucks. I want it to be better.

  • pmvinespmvines

    I hear ya . I hope it gets better moving forward

  • JasonCuddlesJasonCuddles

    Perhaps besides a rating system there should also be a "does this person show up" review too. A 1 star review is very vague.

  • CuddleWhoCuddleWho
    edited April 2021

    @JasonCuddles yeah that might be a great idea. It really is something outside the normal rating system. After a booked session, the site could give you the opportunity to check either “yes this person showed up” or “no this person didn’t show up (and didn’t notify me)”.

  • CuddleDuncanCuddleDuncan Mod

    I haven't experienced this in the cuddling world, but I have experienced it in other contexts. And I've read and heard plenty of similar stories on here.

    Obviously I have no idea what happened in this particular case, but allow me to propose an hypothesis.

    We all know that far more people than we would like have unhappy, unpleasant or downright horrific early experiences. One of the possible expressions of that in later life is known by psychological professionals as a "chaotic lifestyle". This is characterised by living in the moment, sometimes to an extreme degree. In more serious cases this may lead to dangerous patterns of drug-taking and/or a severe lack of self-care. Tomorrow and yesterday are irrelevant, and personal relationships of any kind essentially impossible. Friendship relies on the concept that if somebody is your friend today, then they will still be your friend tomorrow. That's no good if tomorrow doesn't exist. And that's before we even get into the trust issues.

    For some young adults, such difficulties make it difficult to obtain or keep a job. And that's assuming they are even able to contemplate the restrictions of having a job in the first place. This can lead them into freelance self-employment. Some become sex workers and some inhabit the fringes of sex work, which thrive under various euphemisms. One of the markets they bump into is cuddling.

    On a good day, they will turn up on time and give you an amazing cuddle. The five star Karma is well deserved. But good days are rarer than average or bad ones. With the consequences outlined by @CuddleWho. On other occasions they turn up on time, smile, start the cuddle and fall asleep. We all know that it's not safe for a female professional to fall asleep with a male client she does not know, but this is a person who doesn't deal in consequences.

    It's not that the site doesn't care about all this, but it's not going to do anything about it for two different reasons. Firstly, CC positions itself very carefully as a social networking site. It is paranoid about doing anything that could be construed as making it an agency. In other words, CC is not going to intervene any more than facebook would intervene if you met somebody in your neighbourhood facebook upcycling group and they didn't turn up to collect that thing you were going to throw out.

    Secondly, although many good ideas for the site have been thrown around in the six months I've been here, none of them have been implemented. Bugs are fixed quickly and efficiently, but the site is not being upgraded. I have no idea whether CC2 is in the pipeline, or if the place is just being run as a cash cow. But don't get your hopes up for any improvements.

    CuddleWho's advice above for how to spot such people is, I think, spot on. (And I think he is right about point 3.) As for the solution, it's much bigger than Cuddle Comfort. The answer is training and certification, so that we can actually have an industry of cuddle professionals where "professional" means something more than simply "is paid".

    Is any of that consolation for being mucked about when you were at a low, needing and expecting a cuddle? In the instant, no of course not. But once the moment has passed, remember that the person who didn't turn up and didn't message might well have been having a worse day than you.

  • [Deleted User]creedhands (deleted user)

    I agree with @CuddleDuncan, and have said so in a few threads- the pros on CC should have some sort of training or certification, or be able to pass a basic test on business and cuddling before being allowed to become a pro here. But that would limit CC's revenue. So-no changes.

  • Sheena123Sheena123

    With cuddling still being such a niche world, unfortunately there are so many cuddlers who join as “pro” and don’t care about being professional. I definitely agree that becoming a pro should be a lot more difficult than what it is now.
    I’m sorry you were dealt an uncaring pro. I refuse to think anything bad happened to her. If she hasn’t communicated with you since then but is still showing up on the site, she didn’t go through anything that would excuse her. She just doesn’t care. It upsets me because it makes the good pros look bad....

    Maybe leave her this deserved 1 star karma, block her so she can’t go to your page and send a message to @sideon letting him know you left a bad karma and blocked her and are worried she will retaliate. Let him know about the situation. He’s a very caring moderator.

    Good luck 🤞

  • cuddlerforu24cuddlerforu24

    This is basically a cancellation even tho the op was ghosted . Maybe there was a family emergency. Depending on what was spent by the client, I’m not sure there was a hotel room , the pro owes a discount . Perhaps a reasonable time period could elapse then let the pro reach out and offer to make up .

    I would also refrain from immediately posting in the forum . The pro is probably reading this .

  • jay20211jay20211

    Haha im new here and noticing alot of flakey people who dont respond or talk or just ghost very unprofessional and disgusting begavior

  • pmvinespmvines

    @jay20211 the OP complaint is that he had an appt scheduled, confirmed, and no show by a pro cuddler who he had hired and made plans around . I would not say that somebody not messaging or responding to you on an online platform is, as you say, disgusting. That is a stretch. You really aren't entitled to responses from anybody no matter how entitled you might feel you are . Not really the same complaint as OP

  • nurturingmannurturingman
    edited April 2021

    I've heard this a lot, and I believe the men who've said it. I like this site for several reasons, but if you're looking to book a pro who is trained and/or certified, you might want to book through Cuddlist.com. The tenth and final tenet of the Cuddlist Code of Conduct is "All feedback is valued and confidential. Client and Practitioner agree to let Cuddlist.com know if either party does not uphold this code of conduct during a Cuddlist session through our feedback form."

    If a pro you find here flakes, you can report them this way:
    "How do I report a member?
    Visit their Profile, then click the white button with three dots (it's near 'Save to Favorites') and then click Report.
    The above is the most effective way to report a user and will allow us to act in a timely manner. However, if you cannot access their profile then please use the contact form below." (CuddleComfort FAQ & Contact)

  • bekah_cuddlesbekah_cuddles

    Let me just say that it's not just pros who flake. I'd say at least 75% of the guys who reach out to schedule an appointment cancel on me, most often at the last minute (within 24 hours). It can be very frustrating on both sides.

  • sunnysideupsunnysideup

    @bekah_cuddles Wow, that's rough. Have you considered requiring a deposit for all new clients for the first booking? Personally, I'm leery of professional profiles that require a deposit unless they have a lot of positive karma. You already have multiple positive ratings which should lend to your credibility.

  • nurturingmannurturingman
    edited April 2021

    Thanks for sharing your point of view, @bekah_cuddles . I hope we can all agree to believe people who complain about the treatment they get from other people, regardless of their gender, or at least give them the benefit of doubt. We all deserve to be treated with respect.

  • CuddleWhoCuddleWho

    Perhaps a reasonable time period could elapse then let the pro reach out and offer to make up

    There’s no way I’m going to try to see her again.

    Actually, I once did try to see a cuddler who stood me up. She messaged a couple days after standing me up, sort of apologized, and asked if we could make a second appointment.

    She no-showed again. Not kidding.

  • CatloafCatloaf

    @bekah_cuddles

    Let me just say that it's not just pros who flake. I'd say at least 75% of the guys who reach out to schedule an appointment cancel on me, most often at the last minute (within 24 hours). It can be very frustrating on both sides.

    Yes yes yes. Out of all the sessions I’ve ever booked on here, I can count on two hands or less the amount of bookings that have actually materialized into something, and I can probably count on more than 5 hands the amount of flakes or last-minute change of mind. A lot of people who seek pros are “shoppers” and so last minute cancellations can happen often if they find someone who’s more in line with what they need or want.

    Chances are the pro who OP is frustrated about might not be on here seriously. I feel like tons of people choose to go pro and just expect there to be no work involved.

    At the same token this isn’t a regulated industry. This is a social site at the end of the day and cuddlers on here are independent contractors on what is essentially an advertising platform. It’s no different than Joe Blow or a small biz on kijiji offering dump hauls for $40-$100 plus mileage for gas. They don’t owe anybody a response, as unprofessional as it might be not to respond in some cases.

  • bekah_cuddlesbekah_cuddles

    @sunnysideup I don't require a deposit, but I do require my travel fee to be pre-paid now since I had a guy cancel while I was literally already on my way. But I get pushback even from that.

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