Sterling, A First Advantage CompanyReviews of sterlingcheck.com

I have been waiting 2 months for a basic background check for a job. Sterling customer service has been useless in helping and they give me a date and each week it passes and give me a new date a week away. I have already had 3 background checks from other companies come back including one from TSA while Sterling claims they are sorry but trying hard to complete it. 2 months for a retail job? Horrible

My current employer is using sterling to perform an ID check on me. They have delayed my start date because sterling didn't complete a background DBS check on time. I told them I had a DBS check already that was active, I still haven't heard back from them. They send emails with typos and reply late, they seem to not care at all about people Their mistakes have costed me money

This background check provider is GARBAGE. I have had them done elsewhere and NEVER has the customer support been this awful, and it's been 63 days for them to confirm incidents that self disclosed. This is a major negative impact for me. I cannot start work, and the support team won't even respond. I have not been rude to them either. Serious shortcomings for them to own up to. UPDATE: They will lie about time frames and when pressed with facts, just ghost you. Horrible. background started on 06-27-2024 today is 09-12-24 and STILL not completed...

They reported a misdemeanor that was 27 years old - in a state I haven't lived in for over 20 years - to the company of a consumer service I was part of - despite the company's explicit rules that they only go back 7 years and go off of what the client (me) provides as far as where I currently live. When confronted with this, their answer was essentially "well we have to share it if we somehow come across the info regardless of the policies." This completely has screwed up a consumer service I was part of over something completely irrelevant and 27 years old. Horrible experience and zero accountability on the part of Sterling.

Utterly useless and cost me my job. Yoti app or whatever is not even fit for purpose, i had to download this and fill it in just to be asked for documents that don't even obtain to being British, Yoti rejected it and made me go back to Sterling who denied my check. If the app had asked for actual documents like birth certificate or national insurance etc this could have all been over with, instead they waited until it got denied to then ask for it to which i sent them which still isn't good enough. You have a valid driving license, my birth certificate, my past workplaces IN THE UNITED KINGDOM as well all my education IN THE UNIUTED KINGDOM but this isn't good enough to prove my right to work here. Absolute disgrace, British citizen born in the UK having to prove over and over i'm actually British because these lot can't understand paperwork or how anything in the UK works, you gave me 6 options for documents and only 1 document i could upload was driving license the rest nobody would even have as a British citizen, never been so stressed out in my life filling this stuff in, i had a DBS check done by another company last year and that was so simple all they wanted was my driving license and birth certificate! I am now having to contact my workplace pleading they manually do the check and allow me to bring all my documents which they agreed to which satisfies requirements for a check in the first place! absolute awful company. Update - these were asked to do a "manual check" and its been 6 days and the report is still pending, i will be very surprised if i get the job after all this time, absolutely useless! Update - finally after ringing head office they told me my check was done, Sterling didn't tell me? it had been done for 3 days but my portal still showed "report pending" i will be very surprised if i get given the job after almost a month of waiting for a background check that other companies have done before in 2 days! really hope i don't ever have to do checks for Sterling ever again.

- Poorly structured uploads section. Contained 1 generic upload for each area, should be clear direction as to what to upload for each section. - Poor customer service, rang the help line to work out what 'further clarification' they required and was told that they cannot help with that and that it is a different team. Had to email an unresponsive inbox instead. - Dubious data protection. Asked repeatedly to send documentation via email to them rather than through their 'secure' portal.

I work for an electrical contractor and received a call from Sterling wanting to verify employment for a DOT client, which I agreed I could do and gave him my company email address. Only then did he recite a standard "this call may be recorded" statement and provided the name of the former employee to be verified. I told him that no person by that name had ever worked for us and that he should confirm he had the address, phone number, etc. correct as there are many other companies with the same name and/or variations of our business name in the United States (he sounded like he was in a call center in India/similar). He still pushed me to commit to a timeframe in which I would respond to the email he was planning on sending, despite me being adamant that he had the wrong company - he said he would "check with the requesting client" to see if the info he was given was wrong. Minutes later I received an email from Sterling that had a non-encrypted PDF attachment. After confirming it did not contain a virus I opened up the document to see a VOE form with the person's full name, SSN, DOB, etc. - someone who has never worked for the company I worked for! The previous company listed did have the same name as the company I work for but that was it - the address was located over 2,000 miles away, phone number wasn't even close to ours, etc. It is deplorable that a company in the business of verifying information would be so careless with people's personal information and so inconsiderate to waste their client's time, the applicant's time, and my time by failing to simply call the phone number listed on the form or do a basic Google search. I would never agree to give this company my personal information and the company I work for would certainly never hire them if we needed this type of service.

I have a background check pending as of July 20th to the present. The pending search is for Criminal records. After 18 days of having my completion dates revised continuously, my current date is Aug.13th, I am completely appalled by the complete incompetence of this company. I found my court records online in 10 minutes for free. If you are an employer reading this please for the love of God find a different company. If you are a candidate for a role DO NOT waste your time. Offer to provide your prospective employer with the records and by pass this headache of a company altogether.