The Work Number review: I hate this service... Customers last 82

I run a small supportive housing department for a little non profit in a small town, to the person who is in support of "The Work Number" understand that not every company and entity out there has the money to spend on this service every time an employment verification is needed. Furthermore the government does not accept pay stubs and w-2 as employment verification as those display past pay and we are regulated by the government to base income on current and projected pay. So please stop being so blind by TWN propaganda, it is a horrible injustice for employees who are working at company's that use this service. I agree that this should be illegal and it is a scam and it hurts the people that need the help the most. These cost should be charged the the place of employment for the service not the third parties that need the verification to help the employees.

I tried to verify employment of an Ex-Citibank Bank employee to find out that they use theworknumber.com. After 30 minutes and 2 knuckle heads later I found out that I have to pay to verify something that should be free. The person I talked to did not care about my concern and would rather me not hire the person than to provide the basic level of information. I then called Citibank and after several attempts to get a human and then acquire a HR number, I finally managed my way through their maze of a system and got a human on the phone. More of the same attitude. I had a person that I needed to check references so they could get a job with my company and their only fault is that they worked for Citibank. They had to talk to the Citibank employee and give him the 3rd degree to then just give me the dates he was employed. Worst employment verification of my life. The employee left their due to "lack of integrity in the company". After my dealings with them I can understand. Citibank and theworknumber.com are going to cost many people their jobs. In the future I will not waste my time trying to verify employment if they are tied to theworknumber.com which will exclude them from eligibility to work with our company.
If you are a company thinking of outsourcing your employment verification services to theworknumber.com, know that your reputation will be tainted be associated with them. As Citibank is now tainted in my book.

I agree, they've hung up on me a few times with the "sorry i didn't understand what you said" automated response. It almost feels like they're doing it on purpose because I am totally silent. It's impossible to get through to their service line too, it is perpetually busy.

useless company. if your employer tells you to use this site for your needs you are screwed. sorry.

Attempting to verify my own information has been maddening. My previous two employers (a combined total of 10 years) both use the work number as verification. My next prospective employer is a government agency, so hopefully they will have more luck than I have had just trying to verify that I work where I already know that I work.

How did this scam ever get started? I'm considering litigation against both of my employers that utilize this "lack of service" because to me it feels less like verification and more like a company that keeps you from looking for a new job. Black balling employees through a nightmare of paperwork and incomprehensible menus that loop over if you try to cut through them.

I will say this, from now on I will not accept employment with any company that utilizes "The Work Number" as it is a telling sign that the employees of that company are nothing more than numbers to their employer rather than people.

The Work Number is a for-profit service from Equifax, so that says it all. I advise anyone having problems with them to use available legal resources:
1) The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. www.cfpb.gov
The Work Number MUST provide a free reporting annual to you, and they must follow the Fair Credit Reporting Act [FCRA]. File a complaint with the CFPB, if they are not correcting inaccurate information that you dispute.
2) State Employment Law - Check with your state Attorney General to determine if there are local laws they must follow.
***NOTE: Most employees don't realize they consent to their salary information being sent to The Work Number when they sign up for payroll distributions through outside payroll vendors, or permission forms given by their employer. The language is conveniently hidden in the bulk of new hire forms.

I own a single home (not multiple homes/apartment units) which I am trying to rent out. I have a prospective tenant whose large company directed me to use "theworkphone.com" to verify employment. I find this very discouraging to jump through registration, verification and login and to pay a fee just to confirm that the person is employed there. Sorry to say that the prospective tenant will probably lose out because of this. I will probably as for a pay stub.

I hate this website. Im trying to get a job with the city of new york and they don't wanna pay the extra money to become a verifier so they have me jumping through hoops trying to verify my information. The Employer actually told me to sign up to become a verifier and to get my own information. Faxed all my info over to the work number and because the address didn't have the apartment number on one of my documents they sent me a letter saying they cannot complete my request for a copy of my data report. I have my login and password but the website won't let me log in. I'm going to lose a job i paid 90 dollars to get fingerprinted for because i can't verify my employment. I am so upset.

Companies need to know what a scam this is and should be advised to dump 'The Work Number' as a former employment verification system. Great companies that are making an effort to part with employees in a nice way (severance packages, re-training) are having that good feeling undone by having to deal with this unfriendly and unhelpful service that just turns around and blames that company. DO NOT rely on 'THE WORK NUMBER' as it may cost you a prospective job. I advise if you cannot get your company to work with you directly for employment/salary verification, use your tax returns to prove it instead. Do not further this scam by giving them money.

I have been unemployed from General Motors for over six years. I have put in over 1, 300 applications for jobs in that time. I recently discovered the Work Number. I downloaded my report. If they are charging $50 a pop they have already made $65, 000 from just me. Keeping my out of work means that I will keep trying and keep making money. My report does not say the place that I worked, which is part of my real record. The say I was there 21 years less than I was. The history data is incorrect. One month it says that I made $196, 150.47, $71, 143.23 and $65, 723, 19 all on the same pay period. The last amount was $70, 780.21 for the same month. When plotting their record for the time they do provide I go up by $3, 000 in one year and down by $5, 000 the next. These numbers are totally random. I have had some really nice jobs that were down to salary, benefits and starting dates. My first interview six years ago I was in my new office, sitting at my new desk. Every single time my being hired was pending my 26 years of work background checking from the work number. I would thing that when they reached the $65, 000 level is referrals something was wrong.

I am a department manager for a mid sized company who interviews and hires for my own department. My industry as a whole has high turnover, and we are no exception. We also have a wait list of applications that I haven't enough positions in the field to fill. I don't get an "employment verification" budget. When I run into applicants who have former employers that say they use the work number I simply file their application away and write that their former employer was unable or unwilling to verify their employment.
People absolutely have lost employment opportunities due to the work number and companies who contract with them. I would say in the last 5 years, I have discarded 100+ candidates due to the work number. Were they potentially great employees? Maybe. Maybe not. They were good enough for the job we have to do- but so was the next person in line. We aren't designing rockets or performing surgery. We're pretty much numbers driven and I am paid based on meeting those numbers. Not all employers are looking for amazing human beings to revolutionize the industry we work in. Sometimes you just need someone who can scrub a toilet for a month.

I own a small background checking company and we are forced to work with TALX/The Work Number. It's dreadful. They just increased our price from $16.75 to $27.95 per verification. That's insane! that's not even close to market value for that kind of information! A credit report costs between $1 - $5 and that a complete credit report. So to charge $27 for some dates and salary information from one employer is just nuts! My clients do not want to pay that ridiculous fee! Who would? But how else can you verify the information? I saw some people talking about W-2's and tax returns and that's a good idea but some employers won't accept that as verification. They have a monopoly on that information and it's hurting so many people! I just read through this board and I'm shocked at how many potential candidates are looked over for jobs and consumers passed over for loans, all because of this terrible company. They need to be reported to the EEOC and FTC. There are clearly some violations occurring on a daily basis.

Corporate rip offs, Large companies that use this service for Employment verification are horrible. The work around is call the store directly if you can't go there yourself is talk to someone in a dept. Not the service desk area. save yourself $ 27 If you do it right you will get the info you need.

We always try to contact the employer directly if we have any issues, but those employers are prevented from discussing employment history with us or anyone else via the contract with The Work Number. Many have told us "We'd really like to help but we could get in trouble if we say anything. You have to go through The Work Number." But after reading this board of complaints, I feel my issue pales in comparison to what the consumers are dealing with.

The Worknumber is unable to find my information even though the company I was seeking information from explicitly informed me that my account was purged with them, and I needed to contact TheWorkNumber company. Of course, The is a PIN that I may or may have not setup that is required to access my information. and TheWorkNumber is not able to reset it because they cannot find any record of my working for the company specified. They have my SS on file of course, but can't reset a stupid PIN number so I can get access to my own information. This is definitely a horrible company who needs to get there sh** together. Employers really need to stop using this company because they are messing up alot of things for alot of people.

TWN employee answering these complaints obviously has only excuses; you explain all of the reasons why as if these are intuitive or helpful. They are neither. Your job is to resolve issues, not to explain why we shouldn't have them. The fact is, this is the most inconvenient, unreasonably complicated, impersonal and unclear process I have ever been involved in to get a very simple verification letter. When you're used to simply filling out an electronic form that takes 30 seconds and you have to be on this website for half an hour, create an account and a profile, get on the phone for another half an hour, argue with your HR department, come back, get incomplete information, talk to customer service reps who barely speak English all over again, waste time and energy and then pay for this awful service, JUST SO YOU CAN GET A VERIFICATION LETTER... It is absolutely ridiculous. Your explanations are even more infuriating because I can tell you believe this. You think this is reasonable. This is insane. What horse crap.

Sorry but my company is NEVER going to pay to verify an employees references. This should be a FREE service where recruiters/hiring managers can call the company directly to get dates of employment and job title. It is absolutely absurd to pay a membership fee monthly just because a small percentage of companies hold the information hostage. I would rather take my chances hiring someone and see how they do in their probationary period. References seem to be a huge waste of time anyway since you learn nothing about the candidate from the company and only favorable information from personal references. This is a massive scam and I don't think the service should be forced on people.

Even Costco contacted the service with thenumberworks.com, and that really sucks. How am I going to ask the verifier to pay for the verification letter? It's ridiculous service. I dont believe companies really do business with them. I will never get my verification letter from them.

I agree that one the work number is a scam and should be stopped and "TWN_ex-employee" is a lying paid troll. Who else but a paid troll would take such a vested interest in writing a book of BS defending ###. I am not sure how a crappy company with horrible customer service obtained a virtual monopoly on employment verifications's. 30 dollars minimum to hit the button whether you get correct information back or not and used it last week and no information on a second employer came except a name and yet 60 bucks for a paper I can't even use. Someone could surely undercut this sham, but Equifax needs to keep supplying jobs to people in India pay them crap and make billions in profit.

This is an appalling service. My bank (for a mortgage application) isn't willing to meet their requirement to set up an account and submit a payment to access the my employment info. There's an employee login option so I was going to use that to get the info but I haven't been been able to log in for 4 straight days so far because they are doing "maintenance'. Calling customer service is a waste of time. They keep telling me the site should be up in a couple of hours, try back later or use the voice service to request a report - which they will mail you after their 15 business day processing window. Every time I call in, regardless of the reason, they require all my personal information including my full SSN before they'll talk to me and they are physically typing it into their systems every time. From a security standpoint, this is insane. Interestingly, their verifier access - i.e. the one they get paid for - is still available. I tried calling that line instead to see if they could get me past the blocker, but no dice. They claim they can only release the information to institutions who set up an account and pay the fee. These guys apparently have no useful options for dealing with their own, self-imposed outage. Getting my mortgage should have been a walk in the park but it's hard to to convince a bank to lend you hundreds of thousands of dollars when you can't verify your employment and income.

I hate this company. All I need is my salary verified and they give me 4 security questions that don't apply to me then after 3 calls they lock me out. What a complete waste of time. They tell me to call my HR dept. If I had a HR dept why the heck would I use www.theworknumber.com.

This company is a complete piece of garbage. Useless customer service -- you can't even PAY them to get information for them that should be free in the first place. I filed a complaint with the FTC for unfair consumer practices, and everyone else here should, too!

I requested a copy of my work history as it may be needed for a background check for a new employer. I sent my form with 2 forms of id, drivers license and utility bill. A week later I get the background check in the mail, and it's for the wrong person! Luckily for the unknowing person, I had requested my SSN to be x'd out, so only the last 4 numbers showed up.
When I called to tell them they sent the wrong person's information and that's a huge privacy breach, they only cared if I wanted them to resend me my information. I said no, it's a problem you sent me the wrong information they hung up on me!

This is the most ridiculous service I've ever seen. I work for a staffing agency and we try to process our applicants quickly so we can get them to work. The price this stupid company wants just to give a start and end date for someone's employment should be illegal. We need to find a way to shut this place down.

This is disservice to all employees.

For a quick employment verification it is horrible, tedious and terribly inconvenient.

This website sucks! All I need is single paper confirming that i'm employed with my income. And nothing (create Salary key, Instant Employment Data report) in their website was working. So I called them and they asked me to repeat the same steps i followed and it still didn't work (duh!). So they are asking send an email to Equifax, and they cannot help. Seriously? Now, i'm afraid because of the delay that my Mortgage might fall through.

The site used to be helpful. They went out of their way to make it more difficult. Instead of searching by Social Security number and getting results, you are forced to include a SSN and Employer Code in order to find out information for a single employer. $41.95 per Employer Code gets pricey if the person has worked at multiple companies that use The Work Number. It used to be one flat fee to verify past employment. Now it gets really expensive to verify more than one employer. Even a single employer is really expensive.

This service is really annoying, my company gave me the info I needed to log in last year, it took more than a week trying to figure out the combination of numbers they gave as it didn't match the instructions given by "theworknumber" itself. I was finally able to log in switching numbers around on my own, and I used it for about 6 months. I needed to use it every 6 months, but every time I needed to use it, something changed and I needed to reset my password. It's been a little over a year and now it seems all my info changed and now I can't access the account at all without "informing my manager and/or calling 'theworknumber'". My manager has no idea what to do and the regional manager ended up just giving a physical verification of employment from HR as multiple other employees have also complained. Called the work number and everyone on here is right, THEY DON'T ANSWER.
I keep trying to reset my password thinking that's the problem, but I've come to realize that they are actually asking me to verify information on email accounts that aren't mine after I provide my specific "personal info"... Meaning, somehow my "personal information" for verification is being cross-referenced with THREE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PEOPLE? I know it's three different people because the email verification addresses and phone numbers are different every time. I don't think there's a chance big enough for a single company to have four people with the exact same personal information, but different contact info (unless there are three ghosts that live with me, share my email and phone number, and come to work with me).
Keep in mind, this company also HANDLES CREDIT REPORTS, I've checked mine to make sure there isn't any fraudulent activity. I don't know how my personal info can match to three other people so easily, SO WHAT'S GOING ON EQUIFAX?
No offense to my company, but they have shady dealings with THIS COMPANY, Aetna, the Hartford, and a few others that I am now wary of thanks to my experience dealing with these "partners".

I hung up after 50 minutes on the phone what a waste of money for anyone that uses them. It's a scam!

They don't answer the phone. Been listening to this stupid piano hold music for hours. I need this verification to close on a house. This is total garbage. They are terrible, but I don't have any choice except to try to make this work. If this house doesn't close because they won't give me my info I am suing them.

This shady company is operating a monopoly. It's an Equifax subsidiary. Have we already forgot about the scandal when they were breached?

There should be a class action against this company. As an employer, we are forced to pay their ever increasing price in order to verify employment. There are no other options.

I should be able to request my employee verification to be sent to a 3rd party, being unable to do this is causing me to not be able to buy a house because the mortgage company will not use this site and i cannot request so they are taking back their offer since I'm unable to obtain employee verification.

Sorry to inform all about Equifax and the other credit agencies to 'delve' into other venues like TWN. I have spend countless hours and funds speaking to attorney's about lawsuits again the credit agencies - it is fruitless and useless without basis of any organic fault that would stick in a legal court. I have my own company and luckily I have recorded calls with them and am now in the process of catching these idiots at some point.

If you put them on 'speaker' while you talk to them so other people can hear; they'll hang up. If you tell them you're recording the call, they'll hang up. As a company calling them, I can legally record them. If you are in a 1-party state like AZ, you can record any call without disclosing it to the 2nd party; as long as 1 party(you) know it's recording. Other states are 1-party also.

To top it off; if you call TWN, you instantly get GED-graduate workers on the phone - low level poor vocabulary workers trained on scripts, nobody else. All are obviously low-income and every one of the GED-grads on the phone were obviously from poor neighborhoods, poor backgrounds, belligerent and are given free license to be angry at callers - a total disaster considering these people have access to your SS# and personal data. No wonder there's breaches and ID thefts abounding.

My company failed our credentialing because TWN got angry that I called out their stupid GEDs on the phone and asked for supervisors. One of my staff signed up for TWN on behalf of my company and I called to check, which they said was prohibited as I was not the person applying; even though it was a company sign-up. Asinine, juvenile, and criminal. They then threatened that my company would not be credentialed because I was not an authorized caller for the account. After a supervisor finally got on the line, he assured me all was OK and we would not be denied. Today we found out we were denied credentialing at TWN.

The only viable option to sue TWN or the credit bureaus directly are per class actions. Federally, all it takes for a class action is 3 people on the same page to agree to be the leaders of the class in the suit. I'm looking for others, so pony up your documents, record your calls and be nasty to them. We will prevail eventually.

REGARDS;

Company Owner

I received an email saying my PIN had been changed. when I attempted to log in to see what happened, I was un able to log in. I, thus far, have not found any contact information regarding a human contact number to help sort out the problem.

This happened on 4/26/2023 at aproximately 15:30 PT

I agree! Worst website I’ve ever encountered. And that’s saying a lot!

Tried using several different devices (galaxty note 9 and 21 ultra, laptop, desktop) and same results everytime. Once selecting genterate report the wheel continuously spins for over 20+ minutes with no sign of generating any report. This site is outrageous and forget trying to speak to csr service as the 800 number is automated.

Amazon unfortunately uses The Work Number. As an HR rep here, we have quite a few associates who need employment verification. Our employment verification department used to fill the information out themselves, but how now redirected to The Work Number. They will not send the documents back to us, and they will not send them to the associate.