Is spotlight.com Legit?

As a professional actor with 12 years of experience, I feel compelled to share my honest thoughts about Spotlight. Once a respected platform, it has sadly devolved into a money-grabbing scheme that offers little value to working actors.For what is essentially a glorified "badge of honour" to prove you can pay to be an actor, Spotlight is not worth the membership or time.The recent price hikes are nothing short of outrageous. At over £200 a year, Spotlight has become unaffordable for many of us who are already struggling in this competitive industry. What's worse, these inflated fees seem to yield diminishing returns, with low to no castings coming our way.Adding insult to injury, Spotlight has significantly lowered its acceptance threshold. The site is now flooded with inexperienced, unproven "talent," making it even harder for seasoned professionals to stand out. This oversaturation does a disservice to both actors and casting directors.All this has severely damaged Spotlight's reputation. How can we trust a platform that seems more interested in lining its pockets than supporting actors? With approximately 90,000 members each paying over £200 annually, Spotlight is raking in millions. Yet, there's a glaring lack of transparency about how these funds are being used. Where is this money going? What tangible improvements have we seen?Perhaps most frustrating are the rumors of hidden castings not available to all members. If true, this practice is deeply unethical and goes against everything Spotlight once stood for. Are we now expected to pay premium rates for partial access?In conclusion, Spotlight seems to have lost its way. Instead of being a valuable resource for actors, it has become a burden – financially and professionally. Until significant changes are made, I cannot in good conscience recommend this service to my fellow actors. It's high time we demand better from platforms that claim to support our careers.

Scam. Raises prices every year. No real insight in how the membership costs is valuable.

The cashier name something alora is a bit rude on customers especially on asian people! As long as the customers nit wasting your time be nice to them. Theyre your costumers and giving you sales! Dont tell them that they can not get more fabric because some are waiting on the line. Thats rude!

I got an email to renew the membership and clicked ‘renew’. I logged in and cannot find anywhere to renew. I tried to get support but you are forward to a zendesk powered article base where I tried to trawl through lots of articles that don’t cover what I need. I just want to speak to someone! Cannot find a telephone number anywhere.

Horrible experience. They do not allow you reschedule or get a refund even if it's an advance notice. They lie about the price advertised. I would look else where I lost $400 with them. Do not use this website.

The only reason an actor needs this is to serve as an actor's badge, although these days their criteria has dropped significantly, so being a member is no guarantee that one is a competent actor. The advice and news they give is little and generic, and most of it is focused on the young and urban generation of actors who are disconnected from the world. Very little on there for a simple jobbing actor, or for someone actually interested in how to make a living as an artist. The big jobs seem to be allotted behind the scenes, the little actors and agents are left fighting for scraps, and it's only casting websites that win.

Terrible customer service. I recently placed a click and collect order with a total of 15 items. After multiple emails for cancelled items and partial refunds I ended up with only 2 items to collect. These items were also buy 2 get one free however my free items were also cancelled and the special not honored. Upon adding up my partial refunds I noticed that I had not received back the full amount I was owed and after an emal, a FB post and sending the requested message I am being told that I need to continue chasing this up through other avenues!Apparently your customer service team is to lazy to refer and forward emails to the appropriate departments!Don't bother ordering online- support another reliable business instead

Extremely poor design and user experience. It has not moved with the time at all. It really needs to be updated considering the £157 subscription and it's the primary site for casting

I bought 2 tickets for Mystery Cirque Du Soleil for Dec 2023 and trying to cancel 2 days after, Brittany the agent, did not refund me the service fees, she says too bad, I lost $15.00 per tickets as a service fees. These agent are a Rip Off ... greedy people

Hmm. When they have a sale it’s worth buying stuff, but you will only get half of your products. Not very happy when I’m waiting a week for sheets sets, only to be sent an email saying they aren’t in stock by ore and that I will be receiving a refund. Other than that it is okay.

Lacking in Customer service standards, easy things like returning calls or at least replying to emails.

Been a member of Spotlight on and off over 12 years (at least 7) and all I can say is that it's been totally useless! I've had useless castings from it and the Casting Directors don't even view your profiles properly of which I did complain but always received the same reply that the CD's don't have time to look through all the applicants... well, why the hell bother posting a casting on the site then?? They choose who they want to go for the Casting, not necessarily who the Director may want to see. I have a pretty good quality profile on the site aswell with work I've achieved through other sites (Although they were mostly unpaid) which is why I became a member of Spotlight (to gain paid work). As you can tell, I'm very unhappy with this site, the Casting Directors and the Agents... all of which can't do a very good job in finding the best Actors for the job! I've seen newly graduated Actors get jobs straight away in TV but me? Nope. Nada. To say my career has been ruined by CAsting Directors is an understatement and I have now had enough and will not be paying anymore cash to browse and apply to castings as it should always have been free to do this anyway and even with a virus pandemic, they still have the cheek to ask us to pay for it when there's even less castings... furthermore, I think a lot of the Castings are fake, never get to meet any Casting Directors, so how do we know any of them actually exist?? Well... some do but I suspect many are fake names raking in money from us Actors so they can live in their houses comfortably without doing anything. Just calculate how much money a site like Spotlight make and you'll see for yourself.Almost forgot: I paid to be able to apply for the main castings in TV and Film but guess what? If you have no Agent, you can't view those castings! I think this is disgraceful as it's what I signed up for : !

Spotlight does have a wide variety of products at reasonable prices, however, I have had multiple customer service issues over the years. One time my husband and I walked from home and purchased about 5 relatively small items, and because we were walking home we needed a carry bag. The girl at the checkout apologised and said they only had large bags and we said that'd be fine. The manager then came and saw that she was giving as a FREE bag for small items, and we explained that we were walking and she did not care, she was not impressed. Cheap much?More recently I was charged $1 for a bag...again... I'm sure the bags don't cost them $1 each!I also purchased a number of towels. The first was a bath mat which was marked at $8 but it scanned at $12.99. She tried to charg me the full amount but I protested and the woman went and found the tag from the shelf and indeed it was supposed to be $8. Then she continued to scan the rest of the towels which had been on a shelf with a sign that said 50% off sale. They all scanned at a whopping full price and when she told me the total cost of my items i nearly died. I told her they were marked at 50% sale and she didn't believe me, and then she asked one of her colleagues and then magically my total halved! I'm glad I got my discount in the end but this is simply not good enough. All staff should be aware of sales when they are occurring!

I've always been treated with respect on Spotlight, the staff are professional and helpful.

Paid for membership over some years.... not worth it ...