I'm a landlord attempting to verify employment & income for an applicant. Normally I would contact the employer and do this over the phone, or occasionally via fax. Unfortunately the employer, UPMC (University of Pittsburgh Medical Center), has elected not to provide the information and instead referred me to this company—The Work Number.
I spent about fifteen minutes in UPMC's phone tree & talked to three different people before being sent to this online "service". I checked out the web site while spending another ten minutes on hold with The Work Number. The guy I talked to said that the charge for the income verification was $15. Or I could get a monthly subscription for $70/month. Seriously?
So I spent about half an hour so far just trying to verify the *employment* information on this person's application. Still not done, because I'm not going to pay for something that could be easily confirmed with a two minute conversation with a real person. Looks like I'll have to get pay stubs or have the applicant ask their employer to call me directly.
All of this mainly hurts the applicant, since at some point I'll just move on and take the next one. After all there's only so much time & effort I can put into screening each person.
It frustrated me enough to spend a few minutes on usacomplaints.com filing a report. Screw The Work Number.
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