OK, so I don't use providers very often, five times in the last 18 months, well my issue is, of those four providers (I saw one twice), one retired, one no longer uses eccie and the other was recently banned (very curios why she got banned) so with four reviews and only one remaining referral, am I still considered a newbie? Or do I just hope for the kindness of a provider to take pitty on me.
Me personally I do not screen via reviews. I do look at your reviews to see some of the ladies you meet to first make sure I feel we will be a good match. I must speak to the provider her self. There is a huge list of newbie friendly providers that will see you with limited references or alternative screening. P411 is great because at least on there the provider herself verifies and gives you and okay. A lot of ladies come and go and disappear from this site but a few still keep accounts open on that site.
You may need to go with providers that have alternative methods of screening. That's how I started out. P411 may not be a good investment for you since you hobby so infrequently. But, it may be an option you need to consider
I'm not that frequent of a hobbyist myself, but P411 has been helpful to me. I think of it this way: I pay the equivalent of an half-hour session to save myself multiple hours of booking hassles and complications.
I'm also a bit on the paranoid side about how my personal ID information could end up in the wrong hands, so reducing the number of times I have to submit RW ID info is worth a yearly investment to me.