Most transcripts look fine until you try to edit with them.

Open the first 90 seconds. If you can't tell who is speaking, or the timestamps skip, the rest of the file is junk. You'll spend more time fixing it than if you'd typed the episode yourself.

What I check before I send anything back:

1. Speaker labels stay consistent. "Host" flipping to "John" mid-sentence is a rewrite, not a typo.

2. Timestamps land on actual sentence breaks, not mid-word.

3. Filler words stay if the client wants a verbatim cut. They go if they asked for clean read. Mixing both is how you lose a client.

If you're shopping a transcription shop, ask for a 90-second sample of your audio — not a demo reel. That's the only test that matters.