Has anyone used any of those agent contact services that claim to send letters to agents. Like this one here:

http://www.talentmailer.com/

Would be interested in hearing if it was a total waste of effort or if there was some value.

I don't know, my skeptic radar goes way up on this and tells me to tell you to be very wary of giving your money away on a doubtful premise.

Who are these people? At the very least if they have all these contacts a lot of them I imagine would be production companies who do not accept unsolicited material and you're paying them to do something that is never going to have a positive result.

After you’ve submitted your information and selected your service, Talent Mailer will email your query to over 400 screenplay agents, or, if you choose, over 650 Hollywood producers and production companies.
How much do I pay if I want both? ;D

Who are these people running the show, btw? As per usual with this type of thing their 'About Us' tells me nothing about who they actually are. Former Agents and Producers. I could write that and pretend to be that. Why can't they tell me what agency they used to run or what they've produced in the past? It would definitely add some credibility to the claim.

And then their testimonials:

Mike says: “. . . the next thing I know he was offering me $50,000 up front to obtain the rights to my movie.”

Making money off people with dreams and aspirations is the easiest thing in the world, it seems.

Skeptical, see... But to be fair, maybe I'm wrong. I'd want to know someone who actually used their service though and benefited by it, before I gave them any of my money.

Don't trust them. You can send out 650 email queries yourself. It's also better that you tailor each email rather than having a standard one. It's very time consuming but it's the only real way.

"The road to riches is paved in unrelenting hard work." - Lucas Grogan

Thanks all for the advice - the direction seems pretty clear - appreciated.

Always be suspicious if a 'legitimate' business pays extra for privacy.

https://who.is/whois/https://www.talentmailer.com

It doesn't cost much, but you still have to consciously select it.

Quoted from DustinBowcot Always be suspicious if a 'legitimate' business pays extra for privacy. https://who.is/whois/https://www.talentmailer.com It doesn't cost much, but you still have to consciously select it.

Oh - cool - thanks for the link