I've got no problem with upsells so long as the website is up-front and honest about it, and doesn't try and trick members. I don't have as much of an issue with pre-checked cross sells as other members here, but this is beyond the pale in my opinion, and I'd never give a website that's basically disguising the cross sells the time of day.
The fact it doesn't even say "you're about to do this, and it will add $X onto your membership" is absolutely incredulous.
I appreciate times are tough for the porn industry, but alienating the people joining the sites is not the way to go about business. While times are tough for the industry, they're also tough for consumers and trying to pick-pocket members is nothing short of shady and I'd never entertain websites who use such underhanded techniques.
Wow, all of these comments about their upsells by stealth are incredible. Never heard of such a cynical way of tricking people out of their money.
I really hope someone writes an up-to-date review for Bang Bros, as with this comment, the comment by messmer and also by whowho, 85/100 seems grossly generous now!
Ah OK, still working my way through the site so it might be a coincidence that most of the stuff I've downloaded just happens to be the non-exclusive stuff from Evil Angel, Dog Fart, Mommy's Got Boobs, Brother Lover etc. Hope you appreciate that it's quite hard to tell without downloading, particularly with what I was saying about the previews.
Will be a member for a few more weeks yet, so will happily revise my review/score.
Hope you can take the other points in my review on board, it wouldn't take much at all for the score to be a lot higher in my opinion, especially separating the screenshots from the photoshoots and tidying up the navigation options :)
Current Member for over 1 month (at the time of review).
Pros:
- Tia is gorgeous with an athletic figure
- Tia many, many, many niches (solo, DP, BJ, gangbang, bondage)
- Dated updates once inside members' area
- Billing via CCBill with no cross-sells
- Mix of photos and video (with a bias towards videos)
- All content downloadable with ZIPs available of galleries
- You can browse by most recent, most popular or by title
- Members can rate and comment on updates
- Mix of male talent which adds variety
Cons:
- Not all content is exclusive - many updates from Evil Angel etc
- Content varies wildly in terms of quality
- No choice of quality/format when downloading video
- No indication of quality/file size before downloading video
- Gallery content varies - screenshots mixed with photoshoots
- Navigation needs refining - cannot browse by niche
- Fairly generic preview area with dated updates
- Update schedule can be erratic
- Automatically generated username/password (might annoy some?)
- Some file sizes can be huge (over 1gb)
Bottom Line:
Tia’s website is a great example of being a website where you join for the girl, not just for the content.
She's a gorgeous South Korean with a beautiful complexion, athletic figure and large, fake boobs. She covers every fetish I can think of; solo, lesbian, blowjobs, deepthroat, hardcore, DP, gangbangs and bondage.
There's currently 197 videos (including webcams), and 234 galleries of varying size and quality (to the extreme) but probably averaging around 100-150 pictures. In addition there’s a webcam archive (35 videos, approximately an hour long, but these also appear along with video updates), an online store, short bio, Tia’s wishlist, Diary and VOD from AEBN.
In addition to Tia’s content, you also get access to: 88Square, All Asians, Asian Sex Club, Cherry Girl, Filipino Fuck, Keira Lee, Naked and Live, Pink Affairs, and Tera Lee. The solo sites are good with a comparable amount of content to Tia, but IMHO none of the models hold a candle to Tia.
Content is separated into three main categories; Photos, Movies and Recorded Webcam Shows. In each category you can sort by date, popularity or by title. There is a mixture of talent both male and female. There's also a few Fan Fucks which appear to be genuine.
There are 20 updates per page with a thumbnail, the title, running time, and when the update was added. When you hover over the thumbnail, it animates as a slideshow previewing the update – the problem with this is that if it’s a long video, only the first half of the video appears in what is presumably an automatically generated preview so it often doesn’t really give much of a taster of what the video’s like. All content is watermarked, often twice with Tia Ling’s watermark, and the watermark of the site the video was shot for (eg, Evil Angel). On lower-quality content this is quite intrusive.
Clicking into the update, you get the option to rate out of five, leave a comment, add to favourites or suggest category keyword tags. Not many people rate or comment, and I’m not sure what the ‘suggest category keyword tags’ feature is, but this too doesn’t seem to be utilised.
On video updates, you can watch a Flash version on the site, or download an MP4. The Flash video doesn’t allow you to skip to any point while the video is loading (as Youtube would). This is a bit annoying as you can’t really use the Flash video as a preview prior to downloading. MP4 is the only format available on the site, which of all the formats is probably the best. There are no other formats available, and there is no indication of file size.
Be warned; some videos have a huge file size. The latest update had a 790mb file size with no option to download lower quality videos. Download speeds seem good, though, and there’s no apparent download limit. The average file size is probably around 400mb, though, but the trend lately does seem to be weighted towards larger file sizes.
Tech specs for the videos vary as most are not exclusive to Tia, but newer updates are 1280x720 and older ones being 720x480. Cam shows, which although appear archived on a separate page, are also mixed in with the other videos. The file size for these is around 40mb, and are 320x236 with the video being very juddery.
Like the video content, the quality of galleries varies dramatically. The average gallery size is probably around 100, but there’s galleries with fewer than 20 images, and others with over 300.
The biggest complaint I have, and it’s quite a big one, is that galleries comprising of screenshots are mixed in with photoshoots resulting in a huge gulf of difference in terms of quality. Ranging from 640px on the longest side to 1280px, nothing blew me away quality-wise, and frankly the majority was disappointing. This is definitely a video site, although there are nice galleries if you look hard enough.
Navigation is generally OK, although it definitely can do with refining. There is a search box at the top of each page, with a category drop-down. The only category listed is ‘stockings’. It’s a shame you can’t leave the search box blank and select a category (eg, Blowjobs) to see all blowjob videos. I suspect the functionality is there, it just hasn’t been set up.
The update schedule is generally once a week. All content is dated and forthcoming updates are displayed on the homepage with screenshot and when it will be appearing on the site. Although the site has a history of regular updates and all content is updating, there haven’t been any updates since the end of November, with the next update due in early January.
Tia Ling is a natural talent and I’m a huge fan. She is confident, exciting and is incredible versatile. None of her content is formulaic - for example her BJs range from slow and sensual to a full-on face fuck. Her site is a dumping ground for her content, so although many of the videos are incredible, the content is a huge mix. Some exclusive, while a lot of it isn't.
Two; Internet Explorer that came with the computer, and Chrome which I installed. Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of Chrome as it seems to lock up quite a bit.
To be fair to potatohead, that page is quite misleading.
It says on there several times that the billing agent is Epoch and doesn't make any reference to VXSbill. I would have thought it would have said under billing on the left "If you joined via Epoch, click here, or if you joined via VXSbill, click here" as it makes it obvious that there are two billers.
I know it's mentioned on that FAQ page, but I must admit it wouldn't have necessarily occurred to me to look there, particularly as the Help page does imply there's only one biller.
Hope you don't think I'm having a go or ganging up on you, I just thought you might appreciate input from the point of view of a browser :)
Hopefully the webmaster will reply as I know they have replied to reviews before. Pre-ticked cross-sells are basically taking advantage of people not noticing the upsell so it isn't fair, really, but I'm pretty sure if I'm understanding correctly there is no more regional pricing.
Oh OK, that's odd! I was going by the prices on the CC Bill page - when I click the US flag it says $31.36 and when I click the Union Jack it says £20.44. Admittedly the previous join page without the local currency is not helpful.
This website caught my attention and I saw comments about regional pricing, but it looks like they no longer do regional pricing which is a positive step as it's $31.36 or £20.44.
Thought it best to post a comment to address the earlier comments left. The website looks pretty good so have definitely added to my watchlist for future membership.
Sometimes I'm happy and I feel it's a beginning of a new and exciting chapter. Sometimes my gut feeling is that it's the beginning of the end. You kinda get a sixth sense as to when it's 'right' for a model to go hardcore.
Ann Angel, for example, has been gradually working up to HC, and now has her new site and for me it seems a logical progression. She's not gone from being sweeter than sweeter than to taking it in every hole (!), she's gone HC but is still teasing and having fun along the way.
Some models, though, you kinda get the impression it's the wrong step for them, they go through the motions just to keep fans happy, then stop updating their website and go AWOL.
I've never been someone who complains when models don't go HC. I have softer tastes but love harder models like Tia Ling so have nothing against harder stuff.
But if a model is comfortable just doing nudes, I think it can border on disrespectful to expect them to go to the next level, and think it's unfair to pressure them into going hardcore.
So in this respect, I'm generally happy for the model, although there's always a bit of reservation and I always hope that they're making the decision because it's what THEY want to do, rather than what the FANS want them to do.
About the same. More in some respects as I have time off work and some quiet days to myself. Less in other respects as on many days I am out and about or spending time with the family.
I'm glad I'm not alone with being a bit scared by larger file sizes! It seems, though, the definition of what's too big varies which I guess is another argument for there being a few different options available.
The video length is about 20 min, and I dunno, I would prefer the file size to be around 250mb rather than 700mb. It feels funny to pick a site up on offering videos that are TOO good a quality, but it makes me appreciate sites like Chica's Place where there's so many options available that bit more :)
Have rejoined Tia's website, and thought I'd add a couple of bits in addition to my review from the last time I was a member.
Firstly, video size. A lot of the videos are huge, at least by my standards - most of the newer ones seem to be around 700mb.
For me, with a finite amount of HD space, this is too large. There's no options for downloading lower-quality videos and no indication of how large they are before downloading. I would definitely increase the rating of this site if there were different quality options available as surely I'm not the only person who is reluctant to download too many 700mb videos?
Secondly, I mentioned in my review about navigation whereby there's a search box and a drop down with different categories that doesn't work if you leave the search box empty. I suggested that this might be a work in progress but this doesn't seem to be the case.
In fact, the category list has shrunk and now only includes one category; 'stockings'. Again, this would really improve the rating of this website if you could filter videos by category.
Other than that, it's a really good website and with these refinements, it would be even better :)
I agree, I find the name borderline repulsive! It's like it's come from some random word generator where it pairs a type of animal with a bodily function.
Difficult one to answer for me. I generally don't sign up for trials unless I'm really on the fence about whether I'll like the site.
I think a lot depends on the size of the site. I can see smaller sites' reluctance to have a 3 day trial as let's be honest, most people would probably just rip the entire site, and I can completely understand why Webmasters don't want to make pirates' life any easier.
I prefer better preview sections with a clear, dated catalogue of updates and some indication of the quality members can expect inside. I think this is all I need for me to decide whether to join.
I think a 2-day trial is a reasonable length, though, 3-days is more generous. I think websites need to make it clear whether trials are all-access or not.
The webmaster of Bryci insists his system is infallible and that everyone here has not read the terms and conditions. Absolutely ridiculous, and although I'm sorry you've had problems too, I'm happy I'm not the only one to have problems.
It's a poll, it's kinda the point to ask a question so people can have a discussion about it :)
Mine's all digital and kinda hidden. Nobody else uses the computer so it's just in an unobviously named folder somewhere. It's not so much hidden but not easy to stumble across.
Probably 50/50 for me. I do love video because you get a sense of personality and can enjoy the model's technique a bit more maybe, but I completely understand people's point that with images you can just set up a slideshow etc of the bits you want to see so I like images for that reason, too.
Protecting Minors We are strong supporters of RTA and ICRA, two of the most recognized self labeling organizations. Our site is properly labeled to assist in the protection of minors accessing inappopriate content. For information about filtering tools, check this site.
DISCLAIMER: ALL MODELS APPEARING ON THIS WEBSITE ARE 18 YEARS OR OLDER.
To report child pornography, go directly to ASACP! We're proud to be a corporate sponsor.
Have concerns or questions about porn addiction? We recommend this helpful resource.
