Luxury holidays, eating at some of the top restaurants across London and the UK, shopping sprees at Harrods, completely not at your expense. Sounds too good to be true?

Seeking Arrangement, WhatsYourPrice?, and MySugarDaddy.com are just some of the websites hundreds of students are using in order to get through university without spending a penny of their own.

So, what exactly are these websites about? If you’re an attractive, young male/female, the chances of dozens of wealthy men and women wanting to spoil you and keep them company is high.

The set-up

After watching many videos on YouTube about all these successful stories of girls managing to bag themselves thousands in cash, private jet flights to the Maldives, and even properties, I decided to try it for the sake of creating some unusual content…. “What’s the worst that can happen?” I said to myself with a smile.

I opened up the first website that came up on Google, and indeed it was Seeking Arrangement. Creating my profile, I was already deeply cringing on the inside. Monika was the fake name I decided to use, and I typed as much false information in my biography as I could think of.

If you signed up with a university e-mail, you’d automatically get upgraded to the “premium Sugar Baby” status, enabling you to use all features of the website without paying anything. And so I did, meaning I was automatically a verified member of the site.

To make it clear, on the website it specifically states “SeekingArrangement is a dating platform for people seeking genuine relationships. Prostitutes or escorts are not allowed to join the site, and the site is monitored for such activity. If users of the site are caught engaging in such activity they are removed and banned from SeekingArrangement.”

But if that’s true, why is the website mostly known for “pay per meet” dates?

I kid you not, as soon as my pictures were approved, my inbox was flooded with men of ages ranging from 30-74.

Some nice messages I received included “You sound like an amazing woman, you’re gorgeous. I’d love to meet you,”, while others, “You into BDSM? I’d love to electrocute you, it’s good for you. I have some cables, handcuffs… Join me, I’ll take you to another planet and I’ll be generous with the £.”

I decided to just start speaking to one guy in particular who inboxed me sounding very nice.

After conversing for a while, Alex*, 32, a dentist from Wimbledon, explained to me that he’d never done this sort of thing before, but joined the website after a friend told him he’d quickly find company there, as he was very stressed at work and just wanted someone to hear him out and give him some advice.

Learning all the correct things to say from these YouTube videos I’ve seen of “sugar babies”, I told Alex* my terms before even giving him my number. He said it sounded good and that we’d get along “like a house on fire”.

After exchanging numbers, we briefly spoke on WhatsApp before arranging a time and place to meet. I’m no fool, I was not going to go alone and risk something happening to me, so I arranged for my friend Jelena to join me anonymously and observe how things were going from another table at the restaurant me and Alex* decided to meet at.

The date

When I arrived at the restaurant, he was already waiting for me at the table. Jelena entered briefly after me, and sat directly opposite us, at the bar.

In the beginning, Alex was very nice, we spoke on a lot of different topics and the conversation flowed really well. I could see Jelena keeping a close eye on me, and with good reason because soon things took a wrong turn.

Alex wanted to know if I’d done this sort of arrangement thing before, and I felt my gut instinct telling me to say yes. So lying hesitatingly, I said yes, and he asked me what my “terms” were. I wasn’t clear what “terms” meant, but I said I was definitely not looking for anything intimate, and definitely something platonic with a monthly allowance, as that’s what girls got from what I read online. His face changed instantly when he heard this which did not look like a good sign to me, so I glanced anxiously at Jelena.

He said that if I didn’t want to sleep with anyone, “why the hell did you want to meet me? Did you expect just money for nothing?!”. I told him that I did not want to sleep with anyone, even less so for money, I wasn’t that kind of girl! He then proceeded to immediately get up from the table and told me our meeting was over, and threw an unnecessarily large amount of money for the bill, and told me to leave as this would not work out without me respecting what he wanted from me.

At this point, I was so upset, that I left with Jelena not caring if he’d found out she was my friend all along. My experiment/experience was definitely not a positive one with this sort of “sugar” lifestyle, but I’m glad that it happened to me so I can share that it’s not as easy to come across understanding “sugar daddies” that are willing to just spend time with you because they appreciate your company.

It would be beneficial to all women willing to seriously try out these kinds of websites to think twice about the risks involved.

Words: Simona Dimitrova

Images: Davids Kokainis on Unsplash, Johnathan J. Castellon on Unsplash, Luke Southern on Unsplash