PenPalWorld

I was member since more than one year (I think 15 months). Suddenly, they blocked my account without any explanation. And they have no mail to contact, no staff who explain the reasons my account was blocked. I didn't anything bad, I always had a good behavior and can't understand their decision.
I had friends, people with I was used to talk to... all is lost. Thank you Penpal, you are a very very bad website

I'd stay away, especially if you are a female! The idea is great but in fact there are many African males on there who are pushy and I don't think they got the best intentions. I decided to delete my account after 1 day. I thought it would be fun to have a few people from over the world to write to but not via this website (or any other for me, I'm done). Shame!

90% of the profiles are fake on this site. No one wants to be your friend or learn different languages, unless your a 25 year old woman with a racy profile picture. Was a member for 6 months off and on. Everytime I would reactivate my profile, it didn't take long to remember why I deleted it in the first place.

I was thinking of registering my teenage child but found the racist term, Nigerian scam used in the site, despite dating scams now a worldwide phenomena. As my teenager is Nigerian-british, we don't feel we can trust a site that already racially profiles her.

Use to have an account years ago made friends that have still lasted. I decided to join again only to be messaged by scammers and perverts. Don't trust anyone on this site, not worth the head of dealing with scammer $#*!s in the state of the corona virus

It is certainly better than other sites I joined in the past, but do not expect life long friendship with anyone! Scammers do exist on this site, in spite of good moderators: they really seem to care, unlike other penpal clubs around... But most of the times, especially if you are a female member, you will be contacted by men looking for romance and also perverts, continuously, even though you specify you are looking for friendship only. I joined a couple of times, I received messages from the same men members over and over again. And this club is not meant to be for dating. After a while, I was annoyed. I give it two stars as moderators are good, but pals will stop writing after a while. Nothing new... Same happens with people in real life...

There are lots of nice people there, a few nasty ones and lots of scammers. I reject anyone who gives me their contact details immediately. Chat with the people there by messages and if ye like each other, then start chatting off the site. I've started writing letters to 2 people there within the last 10 weeks. I highly recommend the site but you need to be patient & vigilant.

I had an account for about 3 days or so and after understanding that you can't block more than a certain amount of people without paying for it, I gave it up.

Moreover? If you like Interpals, then go to Interpals! This is a green version of it, with more restrictions, but they actually take care of the scammers so I guess it's not that bad.

I joined in the hopes of finding interesting people from around the world to chat with, and was contacted non stop by people who would ask for your Email address. Many seemed legitimate, until you never received a reply. With the only 3 message a day credit limit (which is absurd!) You kind of understand why someone would ask for this. Over 95% of the profiles are fake, with images of syndicated photos taken from the internet. Mostly young attractive women... perfect for a scam artist to con pathetic sings men. My advice is stay away from this site! I have activated and deleted my profile several times. Every time it is a bad experince! I have never found a sing legitimate friend on this site, that claims to have such success ratings. I do not know if better site exist, but this one has been an absolute joke!

I upgraded my subscription to Pen pal world, to be able to send more than 3 messages a day. Nothing happened after I paid. There is no contact information on the site. On the privacy page there is a link to a contact from, which leads to a 404. So, I wrote Pen pal world on their PayPal email address, no response. Except that my profile got blocked the same day. I will try to get my money back through PayPal. When I login, it says; 'profile has been cancelled', but this very same page also asks for donations... In any case, Pen pal world's site looks as if it has been made in the 90s and support is nonexistent.

I joined as a 13 year old girl, my 13 year old daughter was excited by her experience on this site. As a 44 year old woman I did not expect such easy access... to young children! My opinion is this is dangerous and I will ensure my child has no access. I could easily have been a 55 year old man portraying a child no barriers no age check no safety! In this day and age things should be more secure

This used to be a great page for finding friends. I originally signed up 5 years ago and actually found someone who I still talk to on a regular basis. However, it has gone downhill since then.

I deactivated my account in 2016 and reactivated it a few weeks ago. All the interesting people are gone. Now you'll get flooded with messages from entitled sleaze balls from god knows where that don't bother reading your profile. It's basically turned into a hunting ground for young men who are looking to prey on women from certain countries they want to live in. If you're from the U.S., the UK, Australia, or even Germany or Austria - buckle up.

Also, I don't understand why people can see who has blocked them. What's the point of that? If you block someone they should not be able to see that you blocked them and/or see your profile. They shouldn't be able to see anything you're doing.

I joined and was blocked within about 30 minutes. On receiving email notifications that I had messages, I tried to log in and was told that my account had been blocked. That's it. No further information. No way to contact them and ask about it as their contact page is missing (404).

I hadn't written anything untoward in my intro and had not even put up a profile picture.

Waste of time, but at least it wasn't much time. Other sites are available. Interpals seems fun, so far.

I'm a New Yorker in Japan. A penpal in Arizona recommend PenPalWorld.com to me. I joined yesterday (12/9, JST), and I wrote a decent profile. Within a few minutes, I got a page saying my account was "temporarily blocked" for 24 hours. So I waited.

Today, I signed in again, only to see the page declare, "Your Account Is Blocked / Your account has been blocked at PenPal World." I searched around the site to contact technical support. I found a link to the "support page." Yet I got this message:

"That's An 404 Error - Page Not Found / You have tried to open a page at PenPal World which does not exist."

The day I had joined, I received two confirmation emails from site founder/webmaster, one Jakob H. Herrmann. The email address was noAnswer(at)penpalworld.com. In other words, there's no way to contact anyone about what happened to my account.

My time and effort were completely wasted. Frankly, the experience with PenPal World was a major disappointment.

Any one rating this site above a 1 is probably one of the scammers or a pervert. There are 55 yo men seeking 5 yo female's. This is just a hub for child trafficking. The owner must be one of the pervs to allow it. The men send dic pics and video dic pics and the site won't block them. The Feds need to take this site down permanently. Just run from it.

I tried it for several months (and recently for a month), and I suggest you to avoid it: many years ago I received a message from a guy who told me he had some sexual problems (he enjoyed making some taboo things I couldn't describe here). Other young people texted me for a week and then ghosted. Recently I found a young user around my age, from the USA: I wrote him, he read my message and then ghosted suddendly without an answer. I think it doesn't worth to pay the membership for a site which has weird, creepy and mentally ill people.

I noticed a lot of people complaining about scammers and fake profiles. This is almost inherent to the internet today. Any and every platform has the same issues- FB, IG, etc. Where this becomes a problem is if your inbox is flooded by scammers and you're on a free account.

With a free account you can send 3 messages per day and read (perhaps up to the last 10 send to you). I understand the frustration, but if you're dedicated to finding genuine people and have good intentions, the cost of VIP is worth it.

With VIP you can block countries, write more emails and comments, and have a few dedicated features.

Contrary to other reviews, I've always received a reply from support when something is awry. I have support tickets from 2016 to 2020. - See attached photo

As far as I know, each banned profile is done manually. It's a small team who approves every single photo and every ban. There is no community ban algorithm. If you get banned, you did something wrong, your message was reported and reviewed, or you tried to do something you're not allowed to do (like pander for relationships other than friendship).

The bad:

The website is a bit dated and the interface could use work or upgrading.

Yes, there are scammers, but with VIP you can block certain countries who are prone to scam, and access all of your inbox/messages. Just like any other social media platform, block is a great tool.

Yes, people ghost you. It happens everywhere else too, including texting someone. It's no fault of the website that someone doesn't want to talk to you.

It seems pointless to leave a profile description especially when you say "NO MEN" women Only please. And MEN message you anyways! Plus there is no "Contact" to ask a question to! I have made some Great Friends there, but the fact that men don't understand NO MEN, is ridiculous.

I joined Penpal World on a months subscription on September 28th 2020 but on 12th October they informed me that i needed to renew my VIP Membership and yet i still had 2 weeks to run also when i tried to contact them its impossible because they removed there support page? How very Convenient?

I do believe this site has been online one year less than *I* have! Seriously, that's pretty impressive. How long have you been online? Meaning *after* you spent ages denying you'd ever touch the internet? (Those were the days and I remember them!)

Yes, yes, yes, people are paranoid on PenPalWorld, just like they are paranoid on most "social" sites minus the major names out there that remove inhibitions like alcohol does. The thing is there are a ton of options for searching on this site and this is a major advantage to the other sites. You can look for recently joined, recently logged in, age, gender, whatever the person feels safe enough to share or lie about. (Of course!) Those search options are the thing you really want to investigate and get a good sense of to find who you are looking for.

The other really great thing with Pen Pal World is they give a big list of smileys which show a theme of interest and if you look for others with that smiley interest you shall be very intrigued. (The best one for postal mail geeks is "I feel like Snail Mail". Really! That darn thing works!)

So what many of these reviews lack is pointing out the major options in the search parameters. That is the big advantage at Pen Pal World, along with their longevity. I recommend this site and forking over some cash if you can, especially when you do find decent pals. Might as well return the favour. It's great to have other options but considering, well, "Interpervs"? Y' gotta admit this ain't lookin' too bad!

(My User-Name is Sir Simon Milligan on PPW, btw. ;)

Blocked me for no reason other than to. Never approved profile photos.
Rude and mean spirited.
Filled with 60-75% fake profiles.

I read a few reviews giving this site a bum review IMO so I thought I would write why I think it's a good site all things considered. I am not affiliated at all with the site just a user.

I know it's costly to run a website so not sure what people using it would expect for free. They only allow non paying members 3 messages a day for free which I think is fair considering that they ALSO have messages at each profile where someone can leave a short comment there up to 10 messages a day for free.

While I can't remember the name of another similar site that only allowed one or two credits a day if you are lucky if you are a non paying member there but in addition to that if you were on the free part of that site you could not send any messages to someone there that was/is a paying member there. No messages at their profiles other than the one or two a day that non paying members are allowed to send. At PenPalWorld they do allow non paying members to send messages to paying members.

You always have to watch out for scammers on any site but it's pretty easy to tell when you get spam and they do have a report/block on each profile that non paying members have access to.

The only reason I don't give a 5 star review is because you can only see the last 3 messages that are sent to you and that you send others if you are a non paying member so that's inconvenient especially for people that can't stay signed on and be there frequently to get their messages However, if you go to someone's profile there it will let you know if you have sent them a message before which is really good if someone is like me and can't remember if they sent a message to someone or not. I can't remember if it also reads that they have sent you a message before if they have sent one to you before, too.

It also allows people to see if someone has read their messages which is another plus.

No site can be blamed when a person doesn't get replies to their messages. It is up to individuals to reply or not so the owner would have no control over that.