Sterling, A First Advantage CompanyReviews of sterlingcheck.com

Read the one-star reviews here, they are the real deal. After the experience of myself and colleagues I could not believe the overall high rating Sterling has so I looked more closely and this site is flooded by obviously fake 5 star reviews. Do not fall for this, Sterling is utterly incompetent and awful to deal with. If I were able to give them negative stars I would. My employer was acquired by another company and we all had to submit to a background check which was handled by Sterling. They first had us fill out a detailed form with our education background and past 7 years of employment which we did, then the emails from Sterling saying they could not verify the information and asking us to do all of their work for them and send them years of W2's (DON'T DO THIS!) to prove we had worked for these companies. They even contacted my high school and when the school had no record of me they told me I needed send them a copy of my diploma. Now mind you I graduated more than 20 years ago so it is no surprise the school administrators didn't remember me but I sent them the diploma to humor them and then 2 days later they again emailed me asking me to send them my diploma. My colleagues were reporting similar experience and finally after reaching out to the HR representative we were told to just ignore their emails. Sterling is straight up fraud, they make only the most trivial effort to contact anyone at your former employers and schools and when that doesn't work they immediately demand that you do their job for them and prove your background information yourself.

Update: Received my second bill for services this past weekend. I sent out another round of emails and got an auto reply with another case #. I followed up with the hospital and, of course, no one from Sterling has been following up. This is after I was assured that Sterling would be paying for this pre employment drug screen. I don't know how they have managed so many good reviews. It's suspicious. Anytime I have called or emailed no one has any records of my last contact and nothing has been done about the bill. I have determined that I dodged a bullet with the job that wanted to use Sterling services, since they are also unable to get Sterling to do anything about this. Also- I was contacted by Sterling through Trustpilot. I chose not to respond until this had played out. At this point, why would giving my personal details to who ever is monitoring their reviews be a good idea? Why can't the people answering their phones and direct emails actually do their jobs? Tells me they spend a lot of resources on image, but not so much on the execution of their services. Original complaint: Sterling sent me to get a pre employment drug screen. The clinic (Sterling's choice) didn't have an account with Sterling. I had to track everyone down and continue to follow up on everything because every time I called Sterling I had to start the process over (no one seemed to have a clue what I was talking about). In the end I volunteered to take the test again at a different facility. 3 days later I get a call from my prospective employer saying I will be missing my deadline to start due to Sterling dragging their feet about my testing. Wasted 3 weeks of my time over this mess and now I have to wait until January next year if I want to catch the next start date. Oh, and I get to do the testing all over again. I'm thinking I'll pass and I will pass on any employer who is using Sterling in the future.

First of all is very frustrating how they running this background check for every company separately, i mean in one week i had to complete 3 times the same forms and go to the post office and pay to check my id also 3 times ( waste of time and money) On top of that is been 1 month and I'm still waiting for my results, no answer to phones or emails .

Sterling is the world’s worst company and DO NOT reply to emails at all, DO NOT pickup their phone, absolutely rubbish and waist of time.

Probably the worst background check company that I had to use. Called them numerous times, I waited over 45 min and no answer. Emailed them several times and got candid response after 4 or 5 days later. I appreciate Covid has had an impact, but the level of communication is unacceptable and they should do better!

I've never EVER had such an issue getting a background check. Dealing with this company has been such a pain!! Every day since filling out my initial application, they've reached out for "more information" -- isn't it their job to contact employers!? I'm SO confused as to why they're asking me for PayStubs from 2015! This company is a joke... They're being paid to provide a service yet require so much of your time to help them do their job.

Customer service is appalling

Extremely unsatisfied with this company! Been trying for 10 days to get through to them via phone, in queue then cuts you off after 20 minutes! No response to emails I’ve sent, now I’m in limbo with work! Thanks Sterling