I need a community consensus on this just to make sure I'm not making to much of this.

I work for Company A. I'm extremely unhappy with Company A and so I've been trying to find employment elsewhere. I've been struggling with it and someone was kind of enough to tip me that my reference for Company A couldn't be verified.

So I decided to call the company number that I was given for employment and income verification. I couldn't get anywhere and so I had a few others call it to make sure it wasn't me. The voice recording referenced a website. So I went to the website. Low and behold you had to register. I started the registration process using my side business name. In order to check any reference I have to pay $14.

From my point of few, I feel like the company I work for is not only making my work place a nightmare but on top of it all they want to make absolutely sure that I can't leave by at least providing a means of saying "yeah she worked here from this date to this date". My close friends and family are of course on my side. But it's not giving me an objective view.

When I talked to my company to verify everything (so I'm not misinterpreting this) they told me that references weren't important. And that I should just include my first and most recent check stub if the company wasn't willing to pay to register. Even so this just isn't sitting well with me.

Isn't the company I work for or have worked for obligated to at least confirm employment without making someone pay them for it? Or am I blowing it out of proportion and that I need to just take a breather and chill on this?