First, as a newbie THANKS for all the great Q & A posted by others. Now my question. It seems that there are several ways to contact and research providers. Looking at reviews by area code helps with local finds and my guess (is this right?) that if a provider has many recent positive reviews... she is probably a fine companion. I also went (first time) to the regional board and saw several postings like "coming to your town" They suggested that I check the TER reviews but I haven't figured out how to search by provider name or website(???) I know this is not an exact science but if someone could spell out the typical search paths and reasonable research practices it would be a help to all newbies. Also is there any way to search for providers who really enjoy introducing somebody new to the hobby?
Thanks
On that page you will see all kinds of filters that you can use to narrow down your search, but the key ones are, if you know the provider's name and city, to fill in just those two filters and then click "search"
I field will appear with all the providers with that name in that city.
You can then open them one by one until you find the person you are looking for.
You can tell if they have good ratings and yes, that is a very good indication of the likelyhood of success, but it does pay also to get VIP status so that you can actually read the reviews and see if this is the gal for you.
Thanks a ton and I plan to do the VIP thing.