Horrible !!! Avoid!!
Ok, now that i have that out of my system I can write an honest review of PVS. I travel quite a bit, both as a tourist and for business. For most countries it's usually easier and cheaper to deal with the embassy directly than to use a service like PVS. These types of companies survive by playing to a persons fears and charging you for things you could, and probably should, do on your own. For example getting a passport renewed. For a fee PVS will "assist" you in filing the paperwork with the State Dept. Sounds good right? Except that anyone who can read/write english can do this on their own and save the $20-50 they will charge you for their assistance.
They will hand deliver your documents to an embassy as part of their service. Again, this sounds nice except that delivery confirmation from the USPS does basically the same thing for a few dollars. This in particular, is the start of my personal issues with PVS. I was traveling to one of those scary countries that requires a visa, and forces you to deal directly with an intermediary company. I choose PVS, mainly based on the stellar rating someone on yelp had given them. From the start the experience was unnerving to me. A quick visit to their website revealed that the company is either really small, or really disorganized. They have one email address for as I counted at least 5-10 employees. Their fee structure contained a lot of "service", "handling" and "embassy" fee. So you would think this means that they examine your documents, make sure everything is in order and then work directly with the embassy right? Nope. It literally means they will put all of your stuff in an envelope, like the one you just mailed them, and drop it off at the embassy for you. Yes, that's right I payed $200 for my passport to have a cab ride across town.
Then in theory it sits at the embassy , until PVS decides to check back on it. Or in my case it gets "misplaced" and two weeks later when you call to check on the progress they inform it's been lost. Not, mind you, "I lost it" or "we lost it", just "it's lost." As if my passport, missing me, had decided it was time for some kind of homeward bound adventure and escaped into the night. So they offered me a refund right? Nope. They must have offered to replace it right? Yes, for the standard State Dept. fee plus $50.
So why would the embassies require you to work with such a company? It's actually quite simple...money. They've created a monopoly that you have to participate in if you want to visit countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc. The service companies make lots of money off of you, and the embassy folks get some share of it (I'm guessing, I have no proof of this just so we're clear). And what can you do...
I expected to get screwed over by them on some level, that's kind of the price you pay to visit some places. But, what they put me through was just ridiculous. I can't vouch for any other passport services, but I can definitely tell you that PVS is not the one to use. read more