As some of you know, I’ve had a pretty harrowing month. My dog had a cancer scare and had to get 7 masses removed, my car had to go into the shop, I had to remove some asbestos siding from a rotten, termite-damaged exterior wall of my house so that I could have workers come to rebuild said wall, etc. All said, it hasn’t been terrible; it’s just been busy–and emotionally difficult because of the whole dog thing. And I was actually supposed to have a contractor come to start on the Next Big Thing yesterday and finish up by this coming Monday, but Bret and Cindy have delayed that until next week. As of right now (about 2pm on Wednesday), they’ve dropped the Tropical Storm Warning for New Orleans, and we’re only on a Tornado Watch and occasional Tornado Warnings, so I think I’ll answer this question about problems a client might have with the booking form on an escort’s website, and then I’ll go help my friend move.
Hi Annie: My question is advice on the following: I have seen companions before, have a P411 account with multiple references and always do my homework and select my companionship carefully, so what to do when: a woman catches your eye, you read her site & are familiar. You get to the booking form and discover 1. She “strongly prefers men over age X”, and you either aren’t close or are like a year or two away, what to do especially if you’re really interested because she seems special. Or 2: She requires employment info to complete her booking form that you don’t have i.e. work number & direct extension, or link to work website with a a page with your photo, but you have everything else. Thanks for the advice.
Josh
Hey Josh! As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about booking forms on escort websites lately. Actually, let me extend that to include booking forms on all adult services providers (pro-dommes, FBSM (full body sensual massage), pro-subs, tantra providers, etc.) websites. Coincidentally, I’m having my own problems with booking forms at the moment. But first, let me address yours. I’ll start with your first question, since that one is first, and chronological order is sexy. What? Shut up, just go with it.
What to Do When an Escort Prefers (Slightly) Older Men
Your specific conundrum: “You get to the booking form and discover…she “strongly prefers men over age X”, and you either aren’t close or are like a year or two away.”
Let me just say that, as long as you’re over 21, age ain’t nothin’ but a number for me. But I understand that’s not the case for many, many ladies. Lots of escorts have age limits, and that usually means “no clients younger than age x”; in fact, ALL providers should–no one should be willing to meet with a client under the age of 18, obviously, and I think it’s smart not to meet with anyone under 21, just in case drinking is involved. However, as you’ve noticed, there are a significant number of providers who have a lower age limit of 30, 40, or 50. And I’ve known escorts whose limit was even higher.
There are a few reasons for this, some of which I wrote about in a previous post: Why do escorts prefer older men?
In my experience, it’s usually one of the following reasons:
- The escort does not feel comfortable with very young men for personal reasons.
- The escort would not feel comfortable on a date with someone significantly younger than she is.
- The escort doesn’t want to be intimate with someone in the same age group as her children.
- The escort has a thing for older men.
- The escort believes that men under a certain age aren’t likely to be as wealthy as older men, and she prefers to see clients who will ultimately become reliable regulars.
- She has some other reason for not seeing men younger than X, and it’s none of our business.
I understand that this can be frustrating for a younger guy. Age isn’t something you really have any control over, and young guys can be amazing clients, too. But when you’re dealing with intimate services provided by another human being, it’s inevitable that their preferences will be a barrier to entry for some.
If it makes you feel any better, keep in mind that, in the world of dating and intimacy, younger guys often have an advantage over older guys. It just so happens that older guys sometimes have an edge in this one.
So, what’s a younger guy to do?
Well, let me start by saying it’s not all on you. In my opinion, if a provider has a “minimum age” policy, she really should state that outright so that younger guys don’t waste their time or get their hopes up. And I don’t just mean including a statement on her booking form. She should really say something to the effect of, “I’m available to respectful, discreet gentlemen over the age of 65” on the front page of her site and in her ad copy. It’s pretty frustrating to think you’ve found exactly who or what you’re looking for, only to realize right as you’re about to book that you’re not eligible, and it’s back to the drawing board.
But there is something you can do.
Option 1: Honesty is the Best Policy
If, as in the example you give, she “strongly prefers men over the age of x” and your age is x-1, you can simply be honest. If there’s a text box in her booking form, politely state that you’ve spent time reading her website and you’re very interested in meeting with her. Mention something specific that attracted you to her, preferably something she has revealed in the text of her website (this shows that you really have done your homework), rather than “I really like your boobs” (which only indicates that you’ve jerked off to her photos). Then explain that, though you’re aware that she prefers men over the age of 30, you hope she’ll make an exception for a respectful, generous 29 year old such as yourself.
Option 2: Little White Lies
Let’s say she has stated that she “strongly prefers men over the age of 40,” and you just turned 39.
Come on. Just say you’re 40. It’s really not that big of a deal. Plus, if you add in all the time you spent as a zygote/blastocyst/surviving embryo/fetus, you’re pretty much 40, right? Maybe your family uses the east Asian system for age. Or maybe it’s just you. And just today. And just while you’re contacting this escort who “strongly prefers men over the age of 40.”
Plus, let’s be honest. Lots of escorts lie about their own ages. I’d even say it’s the vast majority. And, in general, it’s not because they’re ashamed of their true age; it’s because there are many, many men out there who have a really warped perception of age (and weight, for that matter) with regards to women. You say a woman’s 30, and there are 50-year-old guys who picture their grandmothers. And it’s a vicious cycle: because lying about one’s age is such a common practice among escorts, clients start to believe that any escort who claims to be 35 is actually 55. So, many escorts keep that fact in mind when composing ad and website copy, and though they may be 35, they’ll feel pressured to say they’re 25, if only to avoid being assumed to be 55 by jaded clients. (Little do those jaded clients know, there are many, many 55-year-old escorts out there having the time of their lives and making money to boot.)
And then there are the escorts who just aren’t attentive to their ad copy, and have had their age listed as 26 for the past 10 years.
My point is that nudging your age up a year isn’t hurting anyone (as long as age 21 is safely in your rear-view mirror). She did say “strongly prefer,” right? My answer would be different if she had said she has a strict rule against seeing clients under the age of 40, or that she absolutely, under no circumstances, will meet with a client under 40. In that case, I believe it would be ethically problematic to lie about your age, or to use another system of age determination (unless it is the system you normally use for cultural reasons).
On to your second question!
What to Do When Your Info Doesn’t Fit Neatly Into an Escort’s Booking Form
Your next question deals with what I consider to be a UX (User Experience) problem on a lot of websites: required fields on booking forms. Specifically, “She requires employment info to complete her booking form that you don’t have i.e. work number & direct extension, or link to work website with a a page with your photo, but you have everything else.”
I’m assuming this is a problem that can’t be solved by contacting her via email. Honestly, one of my pet peeves is when a website doesn’t provide the business’s contact info, but instead provides a booking or contact form as the sole means of initial communication with the business. And not just for adult service provider websites, either–I see this a lot on websites for contractors and property maintenance and improvement services as well. It’s even worse when, in the example you’ve offered,
- the form contains one or more required fields that aren’t absolutely necessary to achieve the objective (contact between business and potential customer), or
- potential customers won’t absolutely always have an appropriate answer to enter into the required fields on the form.
For me, this translates to the following situation:
::Curtain Opens::
It’s 11:30pm, and I’m checking my email for the first time in 2 days (heh). I open an email from a potential client who would like to schedule a date for next Wednesday. For screening purposes, he provides two escorts as references. I hop on over to the first escort’s website, click on “Contact,” and am brought to a booking form. The following internal dialog commences:
Ah, no email address, just a booking form. Wait, maybe it’s just a contact form? Nope, it’s a booking form. Hm. Well, that’s not applicable to me, since I’m not looking to book a date with an escort in Boston or wherever. So much for making yourself available for other escorts to contact you, Sinful Cindy of Cincinnati. You should have a chat with your web designer. I guess I could just fill out her booking form as if I were a client, but with my own info and stuff, and then use the text box to ask for her to vouch for Mr. Shmoe…well no, she has a required field for “work phone” and “provider references”; I’d have to type gibberish into like five of the fields on this form because they don’t apply to me. Guess I’ll click around a bit. Your email address has got to be around here somewhere…nope. Nothing on your site. Hmm. This girl must really want guys to use her booking form. I guess that’s understandable. It sure is annoying having to go back and forth with a guy 20 times in order to get all the information I need from him, including the date, time, location, and duration of the proposed date, plus the screening info I need from him. And the more I have to go back and forth gathering all that info from one person, the longer the process takes, and the more likely it is that someone else will contact me, provide all the info at once, and successfully book with me on the night the first guy wanted. Yeah, come to think of it, this is a great setup Cindy has–I bet she never has the problem of completely forgetting about week(s)-long, back-and-forth email-threads-in-progress because they’ve become buried under 40 new emails that flooded in over the past few days. Wow, I should tell her that. And I will, but first let me find her email address. Maybe it’s on her ads? Nope. Maybe in her reviews? No, that’s just a link to the booking page on her website. Dammit. Fuck it, this is taking entirely too long, and I have like 23 more emails to get to. I’ll just cram my question into the spaces on her booking form, and she can go kick rocks if she doesn’t like it.
::Curtain falls as I, grumbling, type gibberish into several fields of Sinful Cindy of Cincinnati’s stupid booking form::
Fin.
For clients, it can be even more frustrating, because you genuinely do want to schedule a date with the provider, but some of the questions don’t apply to you, so you can’t enter the requested info into each required field.
Look, my fellow/fella escorts and providers: if you’re not going to offer an alternate method of contact, and instead provide a form as the ONE AND ONLY avenue through which people can reach you, then the only fields that should be 100% required on said form are:
- Name
- Contact info (email or phone number)
- Message (a text box)
At some point another escort will want to reach you. It may be because a client has provided you as a reference. Or, you selfish jerk, it may be because she has a client who is interested in a scheduling a double with the two of you, or even because wants to warn you not to see a dangerous client. Don’t make it unnecessarily difficult for her to do something that benefits you.
But I digress. Josh isn’t a provider; he’s a client.
If you find yourself in the situation where the only way you can contact a provider is via her booking form, you have found a savvy provider who doesn’t dick around with the back-and-forth, waste-of-time bullshit that is so characteristic of escorting.
However, if you then find yourself filling out a form that requires you to enter information into fields that clients in many situations would need to leave blank, then you’ve found a provider who either doesn’t understand the business, doesn’t understand people, or she just doesn’t care because she’s not particularly interested in extending her availability to anyone who can’t answer every question on her form. And, unless she has something against independently wealthy individuals or retirees, then that’s pretty short-sighted.
Or maybe she outsourced these decisions to a dumbass who doesn’t know much about escorts and clients. Who knows.
My advice to you is to fill out her booking form as well as you can, and then do what I do with the required fields for which you do not have an appropriate answer: enter placeholders, just to complete the form passably enough for the program to accept the data and deliver it to the recipient.
For phone numbers, sometimes the form’s admin has been generous enough to allow text, and you can enter “Don’t have a work number,” or “N/A,” or something similar. Sometimes the field is numbers-only, and you can type (000) 000-0000. Sometimes they’ve set it so that it will reject that, but you can instead enter a designated fake number that belongs to no one: in movies and TV they always use a number that begins with “555” in order to avoid using a number that could theoretically belong to someone. If the form rejects all zeroes, I usually just type all 5s, just so that the recipient knows immediately that it’s not a real number and they don’t try to call it.
For other required fields, enter “not applicable” or “N/A” or “see message.” If the form rejects that, simply enter gibberish. They asked for it.
And Now, For My Problem…
Guys! This has happened more than once in the past few months, and I need to address it.
When you are entering info into a provider’s contact form, do NOT enter an email address into the “email” field unless it is OK for the provider to use her main email account to contact you via that email address.
You have to understand what a contact form (or a booking form) is. In layman’s terms, a contact (or booking) form is a separate mini-program that provides an automated, secure way to transfer data from one computer to another via the internet. Because it’s an automated thing happening via a non-sentient being (as opposed to a phone conversation, online chat, or email exchange between two humans), the program will generally send a email to let you, the user, know that the info you entered has been received by the intended recipient (the provider, or the admin of her website). It does this by sending an auto-reply message to the email address you entered into the “Contact Email” (or just “Email) field within seconds.
So please, please, please, please, if you do NOT want a provider to contact you via your work email, DO NOT ENTER YOUR WORK EMAIL ADDRESS INTO THE “CONTACT EMAIL” FIELD. The contact form is not a person, and therefore it will not be able to read the message you typed into the text box that says, “Please don’t contact me at the email address I typed above because it’s my work email address. Please only contact me via that email address via the secret, generic email account you keep for that purpose.”
Twice in the past few months I’ve been contacted–via my contact form–by clients who entered their work email addresses into the “Contact Email” field, but then specified that I should not respond to them via that email.
It was especially problematic (in both of these cases) because, not only did my contact form auto-respond to them at the email address they didn’t want to be reached through, but they failed to provide me with any other method of getting in touch with them. So here I am, seemingly ignoring these poor guys after my website did exactly what they didn’t want me to do.
I feel like a major dick, but what can I do? For all I know, they’re already in trouble. I mean I doubt it, because they probably noticed the auto-response immediately and deleted it, and what employer constantly combs through their higher-ups email accounts that meticulously around the clock? But even so, what am I supposed to do now? I’m not going to contact them again at that email address. And I can’t proceed with screening by contacting them with my secret email address with the generic-sounding name and the fake spam-like message, because the client won’t recognize it as having come from me. So it’s just radio silence on my end.
So, to the guy from Texas who wanted to meet with me tonight or tomorrow: Sorry it didn’t happen. I really did want to meet with you. Your job sounds fascinating, and I would have loved to take you up on your offer to share that bottle of wine. I’m assuming that, after you didn’t hear back from me, you found someone else to meet up with–maybe you remembered to give her your personal email address, lol. If not, well…text me, call me, or email me–but use your personal email address so that I can actually respond ;)