Skattiejag.com review

Skattiejag.com is a dating website for people living in South Africa. The portal is available both in English and Afrikaans. The landing site has an adorable background filled with Love Hearts. It all seems pretty innocent to begin with. We can also see a few featured profiles that seem rather believable. The platform was developed by an old acquaintance of ours; a company called The Dating Lab LTD, from Jersey, in the Channel Islands. We’ve written other reviews about them and their other platforms that are geared toward a South African audience. Our experience with them has consistently been underwhelming.

As harmless as this website may seem, the Terms and Conditions do not allow users to get carried away by a romantic fantasy. However, the operator is fully aware that most people never read legal information. We also found out that any profile registered here will become available on all other websites managed by this company. This means that they all share a database of fictitious profiles to build up their fake chat rip-offs. Furthermore, there is not much to do here with a free account.

Skattiejag.com may not look suspicious to the untrained eye, as it appears to be a sweet opportunity for finding a compatible match in South Africa. However, we have a fair amount of experience with its operator, The Dating Lab LTD, from the Channel Islands. We set up a temporary profile for our review and analysed the Terms and Conditions.

Believable profiles

It was surprising to see that the profiles we encountered actually came across as believable. There were no obvious photographs of models, and the bios contained spelling mistakes that were very human. We even wondered if some of the profiles were real. The problem is that even if these were authentic, they were indistinguishable from the fake accounts we were warned about in the Terms and Conditions.

Therefore, we can’t really say this is a 100% fake chat service. There is the possibility that the company may have gotten creative with its fictitious profiles. There is no way to know for sure. This lack of clarity is typical of dubious operators. It does not provide a good enough foundation for an informed decision to possibly purchase a premium membership.

Excerpt from the GTC (as of 10/08/2023)

The Company does not verify the accuracy or truth of any information published by Members. Be careful in dealing with other Members.

The Company reserves the right to excerpt content from profiles, including the Member screen name and photo(s), and feature them in promotional material. By creating a profile you grant The Company permission to publish your profile in any of our partner sites […]

If your profile becomes one of the most popular profiles on the site, then it may be randomly selected to appear on the Home page of the site as one of our “Featured Profiles”. These featured profiles may additionally appear on sites operated by selected media partners as part of their promotion of the dating site.

Stay safe

The Dating Lab LTD admits that it will use its users’ profiles on any other website they manage. In fact, users could be featured as one of their favourite profiles on the landing site. This is very disturbing since they won’t be asking for the user’s permission at all. Their faces may end up fronting some kinky website we have never heard about. This could harm the user’s reputation by putting us in an extremely compromising position. Contrary to the promises we found on the landing site, this operator is anything but discreet.

Tricky subscription

Another important aspect to consider is that the subscription gets automatically renewed when the membership period ends. This is pretty risky, especially since we have found some worrying reviews by former clients. They accuse the company of creating dating scams. Many subscription rip-offs become extremely challenging to cancel, and it turns into a nightmare for the user.

Skattiejag.com is apparently a dating portal for South Africans looking for love. Many of the profiles seem real, but we know for a fact that the website contains many fake profiles that are managed by the operator, The Dating Lab LTD. This company from the Channel Islands has created numerous dating scams in the past. Even if some profiles are real, they are indistinguishable from fake ones. Therefore, it does not have enough positive aspects to recommend its dodgy website that runs a recurring membership.