Horrible Experience!
I usually don’t leave bad reviews unless I really have to. My experience working with Anton at Black Seal has been an absolute nightmare. I first contacted him on July 7th to process my apostille for my FBI Background Check. I needed this document for a meeting I had in the Spanish consulate at the end of September, and he assured me I had plenty of time to get it by then. Unfortunately, I had to miss that appointment because the document didn’t arrive as promised but, luckily, I was able to schedule another one for a month later on Oct. 25th. These were very important appointments that I needed to attend in order to stay on track with my legal process. After missing my first appointment, I tried consistently to get in touch with Anton about ensuring I had the document in time to make the rescheduled appointment. He repeatedly did not respond and was no help when he did.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to call the state office myself to try to resolve the situation. It took me about 15 min on the phone for them to issue a completely new case which they shipped that same day. I had the document in my hands less than a week later and I only paid $20 for it. The state office representative that I spoke with told me that my document that Anton had sent was taking way longer than it needed to (so far 16 weeks) because he sent it along with other people’s documents that are more complicated and take longer to apostille. She shared that the state office is very clear with 3rd party companies that they should not send different people’s documents together — she said that my FBI Background Check would normally have taken only 3 weeks if it had been sent alone like it was supposed to be. She said the state department never recommends using 3rd party companies for apostilles for this exact reason.
I tried to call Anton once I got the document (from my efforts, not through his service) to explain how I solved the problem and it ended up taking me a total of 8-12 phone calls as well as numerous texts over the course of 2 weeks to get him to finally answer. I explained the situation and asked for a refund of my $150 I had paid him on July 7th because his service did not work as advertised and caused me to lose a month of progress on my citizenship case and more money on top of what I had already paid him. Anton refused to listen and even said that what they told me from the state department was not true — despite the fact that I finally had the finished document in my hand. And then, unbelievably, he cut me off mid-sentence and hung up on me!
To this day, I still don’t have the apostille that I submitted through Anton. It’s been 16 weeks and counting and, had I stayed the course, I would have now missed 2 important legal appointments.
Moral of the story: do NOT use Black Seal Notary for apostilles. You can do it yourself and save a lot of money and time!