I do not trust it

I do not trust it

Been on the site as a free (standard) member for six months or so. Been tempted to pay up the ridicilous fee for gold membership, but everytime I've thought about it some mystic voice in the back of my head has stopped me.
I'm pretty certain that the site mainly is a scam and most of the "attractive" profiles are outright fakes. Now I'm not saying that all the profiles are fake; if I am there, then there must be some other legitimate people too.
Just that the less attractive ones mostly are legit and the attractive/model-types are fakes... it also seems like profiles that seek company from japan or areas near them might be legit more often, just because they seem to expect you to meet them.
I've had a few interests and messages from people who definitely are fakes ("too" attractive, doesn't look at your profile before sending interest or message and so on) and a some from people who might be legit (less attractive, tend to write non-standard profiles)... but still I'm not going to take the risk of paying anything.

Besides then that, it's pretty interesting how the platinum/gold members never answer your messages, interests or rarely check out your profile even if you direct any attention to them. That makes me think most of them are also fakes, because I'm pretty confident that I'm not the ugliest guy around and certain that I can strike a conversation with at least a few ones.
Also some obvious fakes are online almost 24/7. And, as someone mentioned earlier, you cannot delete your pictures... talk about extremely fishy.

I believe that some of these people who write supporting reviews or defend cupidmedia-affiliates are working for them or the creators of the network... or something like that. They might be scanning these kinds of sites for the bad publicity and trying to "cover" up their site so as to make it look more legit.
Sure, some people might be just users who'se had good experience and found someone... when they've coughed up the payment for membership upgrade.
I don't know what happens when you upgrade, will you lose your money and your profile, and I'm not gonna take that chance either.

Fun fact though... when I registered to japancupid.com in july or something, you could write the topic to your message (not completely sure, might remember wrong). At some point (few months back or so) they changed the layout of the site and stuff, and then you couldn't write topic anymore... maybe so you couldn't abuse writing your email/contact information in the topic, because standard members can see the topic but not the message.
Everytime you edit your profile, they closely inspect and verify your profile (might take more than 24 hours) so you don't try to tip off anything there (contact info, site being fraud, you being a real person).

Anyway, to make it short: seems too fishy, I do not trust the site because it's too good to be true and it's the standard members who message you/show interest, never the gold/plat members whom you could speak to.

Pros
Don't really know. There may or may not be legit profiles, mostly probably those who seek companionship near their area.

Cons
I don't trust it. Most profiles seem way too fakey.
I'm a standard member so you can't interact with anyone and those who you can (gold/plat members), won't interact with you... instead standard members try to hook up conversation/interests/whatever most of the time like trying to bait you to upgrade and pay up.