Hi Solitaire,
I put together an article-ish a while ago about finding a decent agency; it's in the Articles section, or just click
here.
As Lorissa has mentioned, and as I wrote in my article, the best way to check an agency out is to contact them and start asking them questions. It sounds like you're perhaps concerned about not knowing exactly what a good agency should be like, though? The scam agencies
article on the main site has a few tips, but basically:
* A good agency should want to meet you in person; they should be concerned about answering YOUR questions and proving to YOU that they care about your safety, your income, your boundaries
* This sort of agency is extremely rare, although they all do pretend very well
* The person you meet should be polite, professional and respectful. If they mention 'business partners', you should probably inquire further and be prepared to run a hundred miles in the opposite direction, although they may just mean receptionists, which are generally short-tempered phone-managers who play favourites, lie to you about clients (or withhold important information i.e. that the client takes drugs/pressures for bareback etc) and generally make agency work ten times harder than it needs to be
* Bear in mind that no matter how professional and friendly the agent seems, they are in fact (i.e. in the eyes of the law) a criminal - they are a pimp - and so do not ever give them your full real name, address or any other personal details. If you want to do incalls from home, better to do it independently because if you give the agent your home address, they will be texting it all over town to anyone who makes even a vague inquiry/fake booking/etc. As an indie, I would NEVER text my address to anyone, but you can often see from reviews of agency girls: "I rang the agency, booking was really easy to set up and they texted me the address"; you can only hope that that address is for a shared incall flat and not anyone's real home after such non-existent screening + confirmation procedures!
I'm getting all verbose again because there really are no limits to the ways in which agencies are not to be trusted. I'm sure that you're getting my general gist, though, so will just finish by saying: For the love of God, get your own security buddy (either through this site or anyone you know in real life who cares about you) because agencies - what with being totally illegal and whatnot - are really in no position to help you should Serious Trouble (God forbid) arise, even if they had the best of intentions. If you get robbed or assaulted, you need a real friend that you can call who will support you while you go to the police. A pimp is not going to be able to help you there even if they wanted to.
Oh, but there's good news.
It looks like you've got a strong gut instinct, which is quite essential in this biz! You're clearly getting a bad vibe from this particular agency even though perhaps it's hard to put a finger on exactly why - this is exactly the sort of feeling you need to listen to! If you feel bad or uncomfortable about something, turn and walk away immediately - even if it's a ?300 booking and you're desperate. Always walk away if you don't feel right. This is the only thing that will really protect you from the various different sorts of weirdos and nutters out there - the vast majority of genuine clients are absolutely lovely, for sure, but that doesn't mean we don't also have to fend off
other sorts of people constantly, too.
Again, apologies if this is too long and also if there's a query that I missed. I agree with Lorissa - better to keep looking for a better agency (have you been checking the punter forums/reviews etc? It's obviously not the most helpful PoV but it's better than nowt!) and if you've been waiting for more than an hour or two for an agent to get back to you, that's pretty much all the time you'd need to set up as indie anyway so do keep reading the resources here about that, too.