Drift Reality

Update (9/29) - So a few hours after this post initially went up I was contacted by someone from the Intelius PR department, expressing concern with my experience and an interest in having a conversation about it.  We talked today and our conversation went a long way towards changing my perspective of Intelius (for the better).  We talked through the product issues as well as the customer support issues.  I feel less upset about the product issues - these are always a work-in-progress, especially for a fast growing, young company like Intelius.  I have a feeling they will get the product issues resolved.  However, the customer support issues are still a source of concern.  All that being said, the professional manner in which the PR department at Intelius addressed the situation was the perspective changer for me.

Let me start by saying that Intelius has some of the worst customer service I have ever experienced and I find their general approach to be confusing and unethical .  Here is why:

My family owns a couple of properties in the DC area and I was helping them do a background check on some prospective tenants so I gave Intelius a shot.  I had the tenant’s social security numbers and Intelius allows you to confirm whether or not they have any access to public records for the individual.

I ran my first search and it came up positive.  I was told that I would receive a list of information including "Home and Value Details," in the background report.

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So I went ahead and paid the $49.95 and received the full report.  In the section of the report pertaining to the property, I was surprised to see some pretty basic information including ‘neighbors’ and general ‘area data.’  One thing I didn’t get was ‘value details.’  For that, I was prompted to buy a ‘Complete Property Report.’

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Clicking on ‘Get a Complete Property Report,’ I was presented with a screen where I was told for an additional $13.46 I would be able to procure, "Property Details."

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Sound familiar?  Well, that’s because if you look at the original screen, I was told I would receive ‘Home & Value Details’ with the report.  Now, I was being told I needed to pay an extra fee to get ‘Property Details.’

Wait…it get’s better.

So going back to the original report, I was told that the individual did not have a record in the state where the search was run - but that there 1 criminal record for that person in a national search, that yes you guessed it, I had to pay an additional $26.96 to get.

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Of course, it is scary to think that you might be renting property to someone with a criminal record so I went ahead and paid the $26.96 to see what the record was all about and…wait for it….

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THE NATIONWIDE CRIMINAL CHECK SHOWED RESULTS FOR A DIFFERENT PERSON!!!!!

Yes, ladies and gentleman, on the report I ran for person X I was told by Intelius that the person had a criminal record.  When I paid Intelius to see that record I was then given information for a different person.

Now, all this being said - I would have been content if they had refunded my money after I explained the situation to them but I was rudely told by a very argumentative customer service representative named Jennifer (working at 11AM ET on 9/26/08) that Intelius simply didn’t do refunds.

I asked her to transfer me to her manager Jackie (also working at 11AM ET on 9/26/08) who repeated over and over that they had a disclaimer that apparently stated they were not responsible for any of the data provided through their service and reiterated that they don’t do refunds.

I responded, "That doesn’t give you guys the right to mislead customers into paying for information you don’t have," to which she basically repeated that their disclaimer explained that they were not responsible for any of the information provided through their service.

At any rate, Intelius is guilty of bait and switch in my opinion for claiming to offer "Home & Value Details," and then attempting to upsell the actual details.  Worse, their dubious criminal records check made me think that a prospective tenant had a criminal record when in fact the person with the criminal record was an unrelated individual.

Finally, their customer service showed zero respect or empathy and simply repeated "we don’t do refunds" like a mantra and didn’t even seem to understand (nor care) about the problems I was having.

Do yourself a favor and avoid Intelius. I think at this point, you should simply be very clear on what you are purchasing before you purchase.  Intelius does have a good collection of data but the different products are a little confusing.  Know that they will try to upsell quite a bit throughout the UX so make sure to pay close attention to every little detail throughout the process.

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