sittercity.com deceptive Chicago, Illinois

We moved to a new area and didn't know anyone. We have 2 children and occasionally we need a sitter for company dinners, etc.  I thought that signing up on a babysitter service would help us find childcare when we needed it. I saw that background checks were done and it made me feel better spending the annual fee, knowing that they had done some checking on those who signed up on their site. I found a coupon online and signed up for a year..because for the "free" trial I could see babysitters but couldn't contact any of them.

We found someone that we potentially wanted to hire to babysit for us and the site asked if I wanted to do a current background check on the person we were looking at.  I paid $14.99 for the basic background check.  It did not tell me that I was paying for a background check that I wouldn't get to see any of. Nothing.  I do not know what criteria they have for "passing" the background check.  I understand that some of the information is personal like ssn, etc. and I didn't want to see that but I paid the money to do a background check on a sitter that SHE gets the benefit of (it shows on her profile that her background check is current).