Choice Trust is a well know site to get information on people and property. Things like liens, insurance claims and credentials can be found and/or verified. However, their system is fully automated and, I believe, borders on fraud.
I used them to get a C.L.U.E. Report when I sold my house — this basically lists any insurance claims I filed. I only got a paper that said "no claims" (as I expected), so I can't comment as to how detailed their reports are.
The problem is that I fund myself looking at a search-engine-looking screen that said "Find out about liens and judgements on businesses". I thought this might be useful sometime and I thought I'd give it a whirl to see how it worked. I entered in a company to see if it could find anything. I had a typo in the name and, so I had to re-enter it. Then I figured I might have the company's home state wrong, so I re-entered that. Each time, I got a "Company Not Found" statement. Oh well.
Then I found out, to my chagrin, that every click I made was auto-billing me! The industry standard is to allow users to input information, let them know if something was found and then ask them if they'd like to pay for it. ChoiceTrust's system must make a lot of money on typo's and other mis-input information.
When I saw the multiple charges on my credit card statement I went back to the site and found that there is an 8-point font messages that says "Even if a company isn't found, you'll be charged". But this isn't enough and their system isn't fair to consumers at it stands.
Although not outright fraud, I just wanted to post a message somewhere and let people know to beware. One typo and you're out $8. (In my case, there were several mistakes, a couple companies where I didn't know the home state, and even a couple that probably aren't in their database... Let's just say the total added up to a LOT!)
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