PenPal World Reviews 47

Penpal world is a awful useless site.
I have made account on this site they
approved my profile.
But I can't send messages only I can
Send comments.
I'm so angry on this stupid site. They humiliate users for nothing on the name of security.
Plz don't waste time and money on this stupid site.
Very shameful behavior and rude.

Worldwidepenpals is a great website for finding penpals! I found a good match for my hobbies and personality which i thought would be quite unrealistic. Although for me the website was restricted even though i did not give any personal information or violate any rules? There is no customer service and so i cant talk to my penpal and might potentially lose contact with them. Can this issue be resolved? I hope so

I noticed that this site generally has a huge amount of negative reviews. But personally for me I would rate this website highly, because without it I would not have found my penpals. I am grateful for our online companionship that is almost been going on 6 months now! And also looking forward to our future progress.

I do not solely blame the site and the owners itself but the people that join it that make it a more negative experience for others. It has come to point where I only solely talk to my penpal now, which is kind of shame but just the way it is. You have to be wise and sift through the time wasted, spammers and people who genuinely want to chat. I do have another penpal (from this site) who I have also built a 6 month going online friendship with, but he has felt he could not longer use the site with such troubles and we have maintained our friendship through email.

Again others have resulted to email with me. But unfortunately lost contact over time. Also it is whether you solely want to commit to this whilst getting on with your life. Because if not than communication breaks and I would not blame the website for that....

If I can give this site a zero star I would. I had just deleted my account because so many of the accounts had no photos, 2nd I tried messaging some other users and it would not allow me to when I still had some credits and I tried to seek help but I have to be only a VIP member to get help. I am not happy with Penpal world. I wouldnt recommend signing up with them.

I made my account 3 months ago, and sent you an email about my issue 5 days ago.
My account (UserId12247275) is still blocked and unapproved.
Please help, thank you.

its a stupid run site with too.many.adds.

after 26 hours my account still hadnot been reviewd, so i deleted it again.
looks like idiots run that site.

I have been in penpal world for many years free account , 2 days ago I decided to VIP, and paid with PayPal big mistake, account has access restricted, I tried to communicate with support no answer. I need my account open or my money back.
PayPal said tried to solve with you but no good costumer servise. I need penpal answer

I’ve been a member of PPW since around 2019. I was particularly interested in writing letters ( snail mail) and not email correspondence. I approached a number of people successfully and was approached in turn so did make a few friends over that time. Some have petered out and some have remained and that seems fairly normal. I did get approached fairly regularly by men who ignore the fact that I only want to write letters - they’ve been tedious and were blocked. The only time I ventured into email correspondence as an experiment the guy sent a D pic. If you’re going to venture to meet strangers on the internet you have to have your wits about you. Make strict rules and block anyone who ignore that. Since the recent updates I have no idea what’s going on with the site - I won’t be re-writing my profile so if that’s all gone I will delete it all. I have to say at the moment it looks a mess.

I wanted to have some genuine, honest communication with others, no dating, but what I got were men who sent amazing messages and then subsequent messages all the same story - they live in S. Carolina but work in Vicenza Italy. And they all have a son named Darlington. Wow! It's disgusting how every single turn leads to scammers! You can't trust ANYTHING! Interestingly enough, they think they're the only ones sending this lame story???? Not too bright.

i used to kinda like this website, but after the update recently, i lost my profile and i don't like the idea that we must put our number ( the email should've been enough, no need to input more sensitive data)
idk, maybe it is time to say good bye?

I used this website for several years and can now confirm that my experience has been rather negative for the following reasons:
1) The website says it has over 3 000 000 members, yet I always see the same ones and there are maybe 200 active users per day who show up on my search results (wide parameters, I should specify, like 18-35, both genders, etc).
2) I don't feel safe. The website doesn't feel secure.
3) Too many inappropriate profiles and comments from older men on young women's pages.
4) The website's administration doesn't seem to exist at all and they do nothing to solve dubious people's behaviour.
5) Finally, the straw that broke the camel's back: after the major changes recently to the website, my account disappeared and there's no way to log in. I created a second one and can't log in either.
Farewell, PenPalWorld!

Too many men have their age setting for penpals to 13 year old and up. I think that a grown man should not befriend someone's teenage child. It has pedophilia vibes all over it. I know you have settings for no adults but children get by their parent's rules. I think that it is the business owner's job to be socially responsible and protect children by not giving an adult the option to penpal a child under 18 years old. I still think an older man should not even lure in an 18 year old but the law is the law. I hope you put a stop to this dangerous loophole. By the way, I have been a member for five minutes and it's outrageous to me.

I can confirm the inactivity of the moderators as already described by Lisa Lee.

I reported a person who aggressively insulted me in response to a friendly message...and to put it in perspective, I must have had thousands of online contacts in my life, but nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Despite all the self-criticism, there was nothing in the message that would have justified this tone of voice. I assume this person unloaded their own frustration onto me at that moment. I reported it and after several weeks the person is still online regularly. What should I think of a site where you can attack others in a hateful way for no reason and there are no consequences? And it's telling that you can't contact the site operator in any way to ask questions. There is no way to contact them. A site where anarchy reigns is not a site where I feel comfortable.

DO NOT USE THIS WEBSITE
I put out ALL my information and did the sign in properly and it WOULD NOT let me in. I think this website is just a time waster and I've heard a few saying that the so called "pen pal" isn't real so don't trust this.

Another site that used to be decent. As some other reviewers pointed out, something is now wrong with this site. No way it has even has a small fraction of the number of users claimed, and I was hit up by a scammer almost immediately who wanted to move the conversation to whatsapp and romance me into losing money. They claim 3 million members, but it seems more like a few hundred and I am not sure even most of them are real. Waste of time. Avoid.

What a garbage site. I am told that I have received messages and to "click here to access them." Oh yea, that don't work, and I access NOTHING! Do the world a favor and shut down your crappy web site.

As a mature female I sincerely feel that this specific website platform positively attracts scammers & crooked dishonest folk of all kinds thus making one feeling deeply uncomfortable not to mention extremely unsafe. I'm pretty vulnerable as it is nowadays having experienced a lot of traumatising experiences throughout the course of my life(survivor story of my life).

It really is disheartening to find you can't reach out to the coordinator / business owner in any way. Luckily I'm on the ball but can see quite clearly how a vulnerable individual could be caught off guard & the owner does nothing to stop it. My only solution would be delete the account as the sheer volume of scammers on here is really disheartening and disturbing. Also like to mention I can't help but notice how both men and women do use it as hook up dating site despite the rule of being strictly platonic friendship.

The scammer conveniently pauses their account presumably to avoid being detected. Far from user friendly.

Recent Updated review today : My specific experience on this so called correspondence platform echoes other reviews & I feel it really confirms what we know about humanity in 2024, it seems all the shady, crooked manipulative abusive types are on here to such an extent I had zero option but to delete existing account(I was recently blocked by 2 fellow UK citizens one male,one female for no valid reason whatsoever other than to read intro profile blurbs - as a sensitive person that deeply affected myself to call it a day with the shifty, shady & quite frankly ***t** characters that seemingly lurks into what essentially would be a conducively good place to connect & correspondent with decent people from across the world only to find rude & arrogant people of my generation or worst older that *don't have the good manners, etiquette and common decency to reply to your nice messages via the private inbox, I was deeply shocked at the disrespectful behaviour of a number of mature age wise not an ounce of EI between them). * They just choose to ignore you, what's deeply disturbing is that they are Generation X generation or older.

Joining an actual physical / activity
club is the ONLY option, please stay safe lovely vulnerable people, we are easy prey to the crooked currupt manipulative user & abuser toxic types. Online correspondence is not your friend 💯

I had my nephew sign up with my help, which we properly made a profile including picture, too. today when he tried to log-in only to find out that he's been banned from the site for no good reason, when he was able to login we notice that men/women are making comments to minors, but minors are not allowed to comment to adults, and also notice that a lot are banned, eventually all users will be ban from this site. I do NOT recommend this site
EDIT/04/14/24: The owner's name is Jakob Herrmmann, jakob at pen pal world dot com

I used this website between July 2018 and November 2023, so I had a wide share of experiences. I did, however, notice the fall of this once great website, starting from 2020 or so. I used it for years (would log in almost every day) and got in touch with no more than 30 people, kept touch with only one long-term (we're still excellent friends). However, scammers are roaming freely and there's something fishy going on there. There's supposed to be millions of users, yet I always would see (at best) a hundred regular users fitting my very wide parameters (age between 18 and 40, both genders), and interestingly, over the years, you often see the same and, even more fascinating, they won't reply if you try to contact them. The few normal apples I found and got in touch with (when I was lucky) tended to be either disinterested, or even arrogant. The last one, in November 2024, was a huge disappointment, and she almost scammed me. Right before her was a Swedish psycho who openly insulted me through PMs for literally no reason whatsoever. Out of 5 years on this website, I made only 6 friends, and I only have one left, like what? As a comparison, I used to go on an international penpal Discord server, and I'd get messages (from decent people) up to 7 times per day! I grew tired of wasting my time on PelPalWorld and am truly disappointed, as this website had such a potential. By the way, let's not get started about moderation's fishy behaviour, which thanksfully didn't affect me but I did see it happen on (how strange) the rare decent users. Good bye!

So the website seems a little basic, sure. But I can't expect much from a site that offers a free service. My biggest complaint was lack of information. Nowhere that I found could you contact anyone who runs the site. There's mention of getting a Hotlist once you go VIP, but nowhere does it mention what that is. Benefit of the doubt its an oversight, but it feels sketchy so I deleted my account minutes after signing up.