• SearchBug

SearchBug

Overview

SearchBug has a rating of 3.52 stars from 21 reviews, indicating that most customers are generally satisfied with their purchases. SearchBug ranks 17th among People Search sites.

  • Service
    6
  • Value
    6
  • Shipping
    1
  • Returns
    1
  • Quality
    5

This company responds to reviews on average within 2 days

Positive reviews (last 12 months): 0%
Positive
0
Neutral
0
Negative
1
How would you rate SearchBug?
Top Positive Review

“Awesome”

Dana S.
4/23/22

Coming to this site for over 15 years as a Private Investigator it has served me well. Recommend this company from day one. Prices are great and pay as you go can't beat that. Their data has always been more accurate than any other sites I have used. Love you guys and will continue recommending and using your services. Dana S.

Top Critical Review

“Questionable quality”

Tio K.
8/12/23

They were responsive at first until my refund was issued. They refused to answer my questions later, and I don't know whether the search was legitimately done. Wouldn't recommend them to anyone.

Reviews (21)

Rating

Timeframe

Other

Thumbnail of user tiok
1 review
0 helpful votes
August 12th, 2023

They were responsive at first until my refund was issued. They refused to answer my questions later, and I don't know whether the search was legitimately done. Wouldn't recommend them to anyone.

Thumbnail of user searchbugs
Searchbug S. – SearchBug Rep

Hi Tio,

We have been unable to locate your Searchbug account based upon the information provided: "Tio K.". Please reach out to us directly to get this resolved, we are in the office Monday - Friday from 6:00AM - 5:00PM Pacific Time at 800-990-2939 or via Live Chat.

Our friendly and responsive customer service specialists are standing by to help resolve this situation.

Hope to hear from you soon!

All the best,
Searchbug

Thumbnail of user kathiep5
2 reviews
14 helpful votes
September 6th, 2018

I am trying to remove my presence from the internet & have been pretty sucessful. Until I got to SearchBug.com. It is hard to imagine that it can be LEGAL for a website to operate like this! Why is it ok for them to sell me the right to remove my information from their site? Does anyone EVER get a free listing, which they say can be easily removed? Where do they get permission to list me as a Premium listing, which, of course, will cost me $20 to have removed? I cannot imagine that his can be LEGAL!

Thumbnail of user searchbugs
Searchbug S. – SearchBug Rep

If you are trying to remove yourself from the internet there is an article on CNN here that can help you. https://www.cnet.com/how-to/remove-delete-yourself-from-the-internet/

With that said, there are no laws that require public records research companies to obtain permission to gather public records and present them in a readable form online for sale. This is exactly like the old printed white pages from your phone company. If you wanted to be “unlisted” from 411 or the white pages you paid the phone company a fee.

There are no laws being broken nor is it illegal for a company to collect a fee for doing work. We charge a fee since it takes time and effort to block records from showing up since we don't own any of the data. It's obtained from all over the interent. Don't want to have your information online anywhere, follow the steps in the article above. It's really unfortunate that people can give any company a bad rating and complain about them without merit or even being a customer.

Anyone can get personal public information simply by visiting other public records information providers, or at the city or county office, especially if you own property or file any public record documents. Due to the Freedom of Information Act, it’s all quite legal.

We charge a fee to “block” records from the premium data from showing up on the website since it takes time and resources. Our staff must spend time and effort to block records. We have a posted Opt-out policy (which is not required by law) for anyone that wants to be blocked. Legally we don't need to offer a way to opt-out due to the Freedom of Information Act but do so as a courtesy and hence charge a fee due to the administrative costs.

Our data comes from many sources which are of public record stemming from the FCRA - http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/031224fcra.pdf
Further information that answers all the questions on the attached document can be found here: http://www.privacyrights.org/ar/infobrokers.htm
This is a list of online data brokers that sell similar information - http://www.privacyrights.org/online-information-brokers-list

As a courtesy, which could have been accomplished by simply calling our toll free 800 number we would like to offer to block your information from showing up on our website without a fee, but we do not have enough information to do so. If you’d like to email support with a copy of this review and a screenshot of the information you would like blocked, we’d be happy to help you as a courtesy. However, starting sometime in early 2019 we plan to remove access to all the previews so no one’s information will be shown publicly. We hope that provides you with some satisfaction.

Thumbnail of user iy3
1 review
3 helpful votes
September 17th, 2018

Overcharged me while they didn't provide any data and didn't want to refund cuz there is a min. What a bad experience

Thumbnail of user searchbugs
Searchbug S. – SearchBug Rep

Unfortunately, we are unable to locate this person as a real customer since they only left initials. We work hard to help customers understand what they are purchasing and some just don't take the time to read through our website, call our support line, or send us a chat message to ask questions prior to ordering. Then, when they are disappointed with the results they ask for a refund not understanding they purchased the wrong service for their needs.

We've been online for 20 years and have thousands of satisfied customers from small businesses to Fortune 100 clients. When users understand what they are ordering or ask for help before ordering, everything typically goes smoothly. We are only human and sometimes expectations aren't managed properly or met, and customers find it easier to blame us, then realizing they didn't read or follow instructions.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience. I'm sure we offered you some sort of credit on your account since we pride ourselves on satisfied customers and would never want to have a disappointed client leave a bad review. We would also help you with your next data set to clean your list if that is the service you ordered. If it was a premium lookup or an assisted order from an investigator we don't know since you only left initials and no way to contact you here. Why not send our support an email or call us so we can help you. Our minimum for a batch is only $7 and our minimum on premium records is only $2.50 so we are happy to offer help and account credit for future orders. When using our website, please read everything or call us if you're not 100% sure of what data you need.

Thumbnail of user denised100
1 review
6 helpful votes
November 13th, 2017

I gave them a social security number and they still couldnt find the right person. They shouldn't get peoples hopes up they should be ashamed of them selves. Everyone should post on facebook that it's a scam.

Thumbnail of user searchbugs
Searchbug S. – SearchBug Rep

Hi Denise, Thank you for updating your review to reflect the efforts of our staff. We try to go above and beyond and I hope that came through with the followup information. We do appreciate you taking the time to update this. If you're able to remove this one, we'd really appreciate that but I''m not familiar with the Sitejabber policy. Cheers!

Thumbnail of user disgustedhorrifieda
1 review
7 helpful votes
May 22nd, 2017

This is a horrible company that should be ashamed of themselves. They display people's personal info against their will and endanger their lives and peace of mind. And want to charge innocent victims money to remove information that they should not be displaying in the first place. Disgusting, horrible scam! Sickening and disheartening. There should be laws to prevent this kind of awfulness from taking place if there aren't already. Info should be removed without wanting to steal money from innocent people and without wanting to pry further into innocent people's lives. What a sick scam!

Thumbnail of user searchbugs
Searchbug S. – SearchBug Rep

Hello, thank you for your feedback. We are not able to find you as a customer and we are unable to know if we had recently been in contact with you because you have not supplemented this review with your name. We would like to get in contact with you to address your concerns about the information that we are able to provide as well as our removal policy and process. Please allow us to address your issues by calling our support team at 760-454-7301 M-F 7am-430pm PST or by sending us an email at Support@Searchbug.com. We hope to hear from you! Thank you and have a great day.

Thumbnail of user normanc12
1 review
3 helpful votes
May 27th, 2015

I got to Searchbug through a YouTube spot supposedly teaching how to spot lookup scans. I entered the number I wanted got nothing although I could get a report for blah, blah… second number was my own cell phone # ditto. Then I entered my home landline, which is listed and I got the same as above. If they can't get you a listed number they they are just as incompetent as those that they were critiquing

Tip for consumers:
Don't

Service
Value
Thumbnail of user searchbugs
Searchbug S. – SearchBug Rep

Hi Norman,
I completely agree. We have recently added a lot of new data providers and the phone lookup system has been completely revamped. I invite you to try again or private message me here with the numbers you're looking up and I'll run them for free to see if the results are better than your first attempt! Thank you!

Thumbnail of user robertp58
2 reviews
6 helpful votes
December 22nd, 2015

Searched for myself and two close friends. All information was ancient and 50% was inaccurate. Latest info on myself was over 20 years old. DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY!

Thumbnail of user searchbugs
Searchbug S. – SearchBug Rep

Hi Robert,

Thanks for your review. I'd like to address your concerns but can't find you as a customer in our system based on your profile here on sitejabber. Did just run free searches which are only published records. If you paid for searches, I'd like to know what searches you performed so we can see exactly what happened here. If you could contact our office at 800-990-2939 or send support [at] seachbug.com and email and let us know your account number (or even reply here with a private message with a contact phone number) we'll call you to make sure you're satisfied. We are only successful if our customers are happy. We'd like to look and see exactly what searches were performed and if you did pay for searches, I'd be happy to issue a refund if you're not happy. Please contact us. Thank you.

Sitejabber for Business

Gain trust and grow your business with customer reviews.

From the business

SearchBug® is a professional online service for finding and investigating people, businesses, addresses, phone numbers, conducting social security number verification in lieu of e-verify, and much more.

The service is used by collections agents, consumer credit specialists, financial institutions, government agencies, health and medical offices, real estate and mortgage professionals, Mobile Marketing professionals, investigators plus many other businesses and professionals.

Some Searchbug clients use the service to verify information on their customers and trace current contact information for hard-to-find people for debt collection.

Many professionals also use the service to keep customer lists up-to-date using list cleaning services or append customer or business information via batch processing or our API and XML gateway (optional JSON & JSONP available).

Many Consumers are also using the service to find missing relatives, friends, help recover debts, free text messaging, and conduct property searches to get detailed of sales data for real estate investments.

Payment Options: American Express, Check, Discover, Invoice, MasterCard, Visa.

Business Hours:
M-Th 8:30am-4pm, F 8:30am-3:30pm, Sa-Su Closed (Also by Appointment. Order Online 24/7/365)

Company Representative

Thumbnail of user searchbugs
Searchbug S.
Typically responds within 2 days

How do I know I can trust these reviews about SearchBug?

  • Sitejabber’s sole mission is to increase online transparency for buyers and businesses
  • Sitejabber has helped over 200M buyers make better purchasing decisions online
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