Some process servers guarantee that a defendant will be served for a flat fee with unlimited service attempts. First of all, there's never a guarantee that a defendant can be served. You may have bad information. The defendant might never be home or when they see a stranger coming to the door, they might refuse to answer.
Process servers who have to go out to the same place multiple times aren't making much money. And those who guarantee their service will be done or else they won't charge you aren't making any money at all. In fact, if you break down the time involved in preparing for a serve, driving to a serve, documenting the attempt, performing the serve, and preparing a proof of service for the court, it takes a minimum of 2-3 hours per defendant to actually do the service right.
Some process servers cap their attempts at 3 tries for one low flat fee. If you consider that they may spend 6 hours trying to live up to that expectation, they're really making less than minimum wage to help you. Is that they guy you want serving your important case? We don't think so. You may be surprised to find that many of the "attempts" these guys make are false.
We provide a fair and honest service at a reasonable price. We document all of our attempts with photographs and video recordings. If there's any question about what we've done for our clients, we have the evidence to back it up. Can a cheap process server make that claim? We think not.