If you are serious about finding a pen-pal, you are able to accomplish it on this site after lots of trial and error. You really need to put time and effort into it, but that should be a given, in my opinion. Your goal is it to find a sincere, real pen-pal. BUT it definitely requires you to notice scammers/have experience online and with pen-paling. You're going to waste some money on postage, and time and efforts on letters which will never be answered. But that's, unfortunately, normal on all pen-pal sites.

They have a "most post sent" category on their site, on which I turned up in the "top 10 users", which should clearly show that I tried hard. That being said, I wish I took all these bad reviews on different platforms serious before signing up in July of 25. They're all correct.

The very first issue already occurred the day I signed up. I'm extremely passionate about physical mail so I took very good care of my profile and the text/information. I filled out everything they asked me to, to the very last available character. Added a photo of myself as well. I received an email, telling me my profile needs additional information.
I answered to the email, asking for help. Reiterated all that I already wrote, it was more than what they asked for. I got no more replies, but my profile was then accepted. (Photo)

Then, when finally browsing through other profiles, I saw that hardly anybody had filled their profile as much as I did. Weird. I had a bad, underlying feeling since signing up, but was serious about finding pen-pals. But the last drop in the bucket was, (this month) when a complete stranger on the site acquired my private postal address without messaging me, without asking for permission. According to GPF's rules, you're supposed to write for about a month to each other, before exchanging addresses. In my opinion, that rule does not make sense, since a scammer has all the time in the world, so a set amount of time does not change their goal - and also, why have that rule when strangers can get your address without you knowing? Anyhow, that's one of their rules.

I actually, thankfully, received a letter from said person and wanted to message them back online, making sure they are aware of the extremely long deliver-time from my country to theirs. (Germany to the US, can take up to 60 days.) And I offered to send them my letter via Email, should the waiting-time be too long for them. That's how their outdated system apparently blocked my messages for a couple of days. Because I am not allowed to exchange Emails with a person who already has my PRIVATE POSTAL ADDRESS. Again, in my opinion, that does not make sense.

I took this is a sign to finally delete my account myself.

Other things that I noticed:

- Workers approve profiles which, regarding to their own rules, should not get approved, i. E. not using your real name in online-name, or looking for more than platonic friendships in profile texts, etc. (Workers/Admin like to blatantly accuse you of lying when stating that fact, when it's so easy to find out for yourself. Quite unhinged.)
You're also asked to fill your profile thoroughly, but as stated, every second profile you click on contains of five or less sentences.

- Scammers run rampant, during my time on the site it was mostly young men from India. You can also find AI profiles plus AI-written profile descriptions. If you're from an older generation, you might not notice it so easily.

- Generally, men often are looking for romance, though rules say that is not allowed.

- You might also have to block people 70+-years old who talk about sexual experiences, that happened to me twice. At least the block-function works fine.

I first went on to another review-site to leave my impression, where I received two very unhinged answers from whomever is writing these replies. Blatantly lying, so much so that it makes you think of their well-being. I'm not writing this to be funny. They also accuse you of contradicting yourself, while they do exactly that. They also complained that my review was so "extensive". Personally, I would hope for reviews like this, even if negative, instead of one-liners, but that's me.

GPF clearly wants the site to look like morals and standards are higher than on other sites – and that is not the case. I tried and used many these past 15 years. I feel as if 8 months are plenty enough to honestly review this website. I'm also clearly not the first person commenting on the same issues.

I feel as if their replies and also the way they flippantly/half-heartedly reply to your private emails speak volumes. And I should have noticed it earlier. It just gives off such an icky feeling, when everywhere it's talked about a "friendship club" and that you "should be kind" but then the ones in charge communicate in such unprofessional ways. It's a silly little pen-pal hobby, but I still would like to leave this review, because it all left such a bad taste in my mouth. Thankfully I did not spend money on this "service".

(I am adding two screenshots of automated Emails I received from GPF, with my user-name in it.)