US Search

I paid 1.98 to search for an old friend. Got NOTHING. Now they have taken 19.95 out of my bank and I am LIVID. How can this even be legal??? DONT USE THESE SCAMMERS

We have probably used their service once. Then, all of a sudden, a monthly charge of $ 19.95 started to show up on my credit card. We don’t recall subscribing to their services, but we did give them our credit card number. We think this is either a scam or the website is so unclear you don’t know what you are getting into when you use their website. I would stay away from a company like this.
On the website of this company (
), the mailing address is a P.O. Box in Bellevue, WA and that is consistent with the location of the monthly charges that appear on my credit card. However, the
record shows this company to be in California as is also indicated in a simple WHOIS search for the domain name.

US Search was running a promotion for buy 1 background check and receive a 2^nd free. We purchased that for $ 34 (or $ 17 each). Two months later, I noticed two reoccurring charge of $ 19.95 for a monthly subscription. No where did US Search indicate we were signing up for a monthly subscription. I would not recommend this service based on their unethical business practices.

I joined US SEARCH to try to locate members of my church who have moved out of the area. The first name I entered came back living at my address. I repeated the search because I thought I may have made a mistake in the entries. Same result. I called their customer service and spoke with a young woman who said their information came from public records and that the person I was searching for must have lived at my address at one time. I have lived at this address for 30 years and the person I was searching for has never lived here. I immediately instructed her to cancel my subscription, refund any fees they charged, and not make any other transactions on my credit card. I then canceled the card and put them on the fraud list at my credit union. BEWARE. US SEARCH IS A SCAM.

This company sucks. They don’t give you any useful information. Although you only order one-​time service, this company still charge you as membership or subscription. There is no way and link that you can cancel it, unless you make calls to your card company.
Beware this company. Very terrible service.

They auto billed my account without my consent!

What a rip off! Paid for a search that had the right person but lots of wrong info I was searching myself). Had to pay for 2 for 1 search (so $ 39.95). Search was limited only to the state I live in (versus all the states I have lived in) and gave no other info than what I could have found myself. On top of that (and without my approval), I was overcharge $ 19.95 on my account. When I called I was told that I had agreed to unlimited monthly background checks and the monthly charge associated with it. I had not! They did say they would credit me within 5 – 7 days (with no fuss) — but how many people don’t catch this until they have been charged for several months?

I paid for and received a one time check on an individual. It cost 14.95. Imagine my surprise when a charge for 49.95 showed up a week later. I NEVER signed up for anything that cost 49.95. Thank goodness I check my accounts daily. They have outsourced their customer service so I was told it would take 5 – 10 business days to have the money returned to my account. They suggested that I take ‘no further action’. I’m not sure if this statement was due to a language barrier, but it was slightly threatening. So, now I am out $ 50.00 for 5 – 10 business days.

I had a search done on my boyfriend. I sensed hat something was out of line w him. The search came back all clear and everything he told me was the same in the results I received from them. Results said he was never married. A year later I found out that he was divorced and has a child w her. None of this I knew !!! He did lie to me and I put my faith in this company and wasted all this time with a liar. Do NOT use them !!! If there was a spot for zero stars, that’s what I would chose. I’m soooo upset over the lies from him AND USSEARCH for not helping me. Girls, go to another company. Never even got my money back.

This was a total waste of money. I did a background search on my Dad (who I now very well). This «advanced search» came up with nothing — even though my Dad has been divorced.
The relatives were not accurate.
There was just nothing there.
Do not waste your money

We had to run a few checks for business purposes and I have to say the results were rather poor quality. For example, one of the national criminal records searches returned partial information on a criminal case but gave no crime, jurisdiction or date, just a case number and birth date. So we were unsure if it was a speeding ticket or an assault conviction that happened 2 weeks or 40 years ago. How is that helpful?
Also, the residence history was patchy at best. Some entries were city names only, and some had full addresses. Many had conflicting dates or no dates at all. It was basically a pile of randomly harvested data that was useless to us.
Finally, they tout that they will provide search social media connections for whomever you are checking out. That would be a cool feature if it worked, but it really doesn’t. Say you’re searching for «John Smith». They basically give you a link for every social media site + /​JohnSmith. Unfortunately this doesn’t account for the almost 100% probability that John Smith may have not used John Smith as his user name. Dopes.
On the positive side, they were helpful when I asked to cancel the service and didn’t give me the runaround that I expected. Basically 3 minutes and I was done with them.
I’m not sure if other background checks are any better, but US Search was a disappointment.

Spent 45 minutes on the phone to get a 25.95 refund. This was for a California public records search that they could not get, however I found it on my own. This report is hit or miss at best, perhaps I should say miss — don’t trust the data.

Just got taken to the bank, literally, be these ass clowns. They’ve been charging $ 19.95 for the past three months without me noticing after I already cancelled their so called «membership» that I never signed up for. Called them again and listened to the first two sentences of their pre-​scripted b.s. before channeling my inner d$ck and let out a verbal on-​slot of my bank this and attorney that.
Pay attention: The correct way to get your money back is to let them know your bank will be issuing charge-​backs to them immediately. This will light a fire under their rear. Every company that holds a merchant account and takes credit cards over the internet takes huge penalties for each charge-​back. Its usually like $ 20 per charge-​back. Eventually if they get enough of these their merchant account will be closed. So if you too were taken be these crooks just call up your bank or even better fill out their online dispute form and mention how this company is fraudulent and that you need their charges reversed.

Make sure you know what you are not getting! I asked for a search on a nanny that we were considering hiring. I paid my $ 25 and got the search results. With the results, I also received the following warning:
«Information in this report is derived solely from public records which in some cases might not be 100% accurate. Click here for a detailed description of the specific jurisdictions searched for each state.»
When you click through to California, you learn that they only search on 25% of the counties in California. The County that I typed in the search, as well as several surrounding Bay Area counties, were not available. They took my money knowing in advance that they didn’t have records in this area. They did not warn me as to the inadequacies of their records prior to taking my $.
I then called their sales line and they told me that they had all criminal records in California. This is not true. Again, they don’t have data on 75% of the counties in California.
After three escalations and threatening to call the Attorney General they finally agreed to refund my money.

As most of the others here have stated, this company at best is unethical in its practices and at worst criminal. I needed a record, which they said they had and would sell for 99 cents. A few days later, I was told that they did not have the requested record, so they would give me a «free» one when I needed it. Then the charge for 19.99 started. I don’t expect these things, so the charges have been coming for a few months. I called to cancel today and they said they’d credit my account, but what if I hadn’t noticed it?
This is the second organization I’ve encountered in the past several years that has used this practice. It really should be illegal!
Post notice: For full disclosure, after contacting them, they did reverse the charges to my card. Since I abhor the practice and only received this refund due to a call by me, I have not changed my rating.

This is the company that runs an online search service, including reverse phone lookups, reverse address lookups, and background checks. Beware that their ads with initial offers of 95 cents for the first lookup come with a BIG hook: you automatically are signed up for a $ 19.95 PER MONTH account for premium search services! It’s in the fine print, but boy, they sure bill you for it, and that’s not fine print at all.
Don’t fall for this crummy scam. If you doubt what I say, try a reverse phone lookup and click on their ad – you’ll soon figure it out.

Outstanding service and fantastic legal team. Used them a few times with outstanding service. Highly recommended for those in search of lost or loved ones!