Too many problems to detail, however I experienced the following:
-incompetent staff resulting in original application being rejected by the NPB as incomplete (this caused the application to be re-processed at a later date with the increased NPB processing fees). Following the initial application mess up, they offered to pay for any additional disbursements, however they did not honour their commitment
-poor communication
-very confused staff (e.g. indicating they had spoken to me and had made certain arrangements, when we had never actually spoken)
-high turnover in staff
-poor customer service
-lack of response to inquiries
-poor timelines for responses
-did not contact me via my requested means (e.g. call or email to request information, and sent requests via mail from Vancouver to Toronto, taking up valuable time)
-did not honour my request to have my file transferred to the Toronto office after it was initially set-up (this would have saved me a tremendous amount of time in mailing information back and forth across the country)
-can never contact management to deal with problems. They appear to be hiding behind their front line staff
The bottom line is that I paid a significant amount of money to prepare an 'expedited' pardon request and finally after two plus years of dealing with this horrible company, I finally asked to terminate my dealings and to have them return my file in order that I could complete the process myself. They sent me the package with a letter saying that they had completed my application and that it was ready for submission to the NPB and thanked me for dealing with them.
After going through this process, I have learned a very valuable, albeit expensive lesson. Put more faith in my ability to do things myself. I suppose I went with Express Pardons in the beginning because I was trying to move past a very unfortunate and painful part of my life and as such, I was vulnerable and hesitant to tackle the legal system. For anyone else considering dealing wtih a company such as Express Pardons....THINK MANY TIMES FIRST....research all the available companies and information from the NPB...then act. There is good information provided by the NPB and it really isn't hard to get the information that you need to process your application.
Most importantly, if you choose to have a company assist you in processing your application for record suspension, etc. amd are considering dealing with Express Pardons....LOOK ELSEWHERE or you will be taking a very big gamble with your time, money and potential frustration!