The Smith Investigation Agency Inc.

Great service and professional staff.

Great! Pending

They were extremely helpful and professional to deal with.

We hired this firm sometime ago and it was a complete waste of money. No return phone calls, emails or updates on my situaton.. Once they had the money in their hands, that was it. Moveon because this is not the company you want.

I am writing this review to strongly advise against the use of The Smith Investigative Agency for any private investigator needs. Simply put they are like many businesses these days; they are so grateful to offer services to you, make promises that sell you on their service, but in the end once they receive your money, things fall off quite rapidly. I was trying to find my missing family member, who is a bit of a social recluse. With aging parents who miss him dearly I went to The Smith Investigative Agency to use their services to help find him. I was a bit skeptical that they would have any success because of his lifestyle. I provided them with every last bit of information I could provide and certainly answered all of their question as best as I could. I remained skeptical but The Smith Agency assured me that they could find stronger leads and more detailed information, beyond what I could ever uncover myself. They were clear to me that they may not find him, but stated they would certainly uncover a great deal more than I could find on my own. So I decided to go ahead and paid them their fee. What a mistake!! I never received any updates unless I made the effort inquiring on the status of the investigation. Complete silence on their end, unless prompted, and then the excuses started. The first, and only bit, of information I received was a simple 411 search. I had done this already in a 10 minute internet search. They then made the excuse that this was sent to me mistakenly, as the investigation was ongoing. Nonetheless, I never received anything further information. To this point I had also never spoken to anyone on the phone; simply email correspondence. This should have been my first clue. I had then indicated that I wished to speak to someone on the phone to discuss this matter further. They preferred to keep this all done through email to avoid any miscommunication and to keep things well documented. I was quite displeased at this point and consented in writing that our conversations could be recorded on their end, but they preferred to keep things done via email. They then asked for further information. I had told them repeatedly via email (an email chain they failed to follow despite it being their preferred form of communication) that I had given them all the information I had prior to starting this process. This is when things really fell apart. I asked for my money back as they had not achieved even a fraction of what they had said they could. They advised me that there are no refunds, but wanted to continue this useless exercise, and again asked for further information. There emails were disorganized and it was clear that they weren't following the email chain to really understand what had been done (or not done). I could go on but for the sake of brevity I will not. All they could provide was excuses. I knew definitively at this point that they wouldn't provide me anything further, but they wanted to continue to make it seem that they were working hard for me and justify the fee I paid. Simply put, I got ripped off. The Smith Investigative Agency are amateurs. They took advantage of me and my situation, made promises they couldn't keep, and were very disorganized in the process. I ended the investigation and took the loss just to avoid any further association or communication with this company. I should have gone with my gut that they couldn't find out anything; I believed that they could. Any true professional investigator, I now understand, would have never taken on this case as it was too difficult given the circumstances I presented.

They were able to locate my long lost family member. I will be forever grateful. They were also empathetic and got back to us quickly. I would recommend them for family matters.