I've dabbled in citation services myself. Paid anywhere from a tenner up to about fifty quid, depending on volume - the higher end was for a couple hundred listings. Pretty hands-off experience, just handed over the details. I recall they set up a Gmail account for verification purposes and handed me the keys afterwards.
Looking under the hood of the SEMrush offering, it covered the major players. Some of the secondary listings looked a bit ropey, but nothing verging on spam. Quality depends on how many you request, I suppose.
The real value in these submission services is quality control and the ease of pushing updates later if your address or phone number changes. I flirted with the idea myself, but the upfront friction and the recurring fee put me off.
My guess is they wouldn't actively dismantle the profiles if you cancel - that would be a bizarre business model. What I'm more curious about is what happens to ongoing access. If the agency owns the listing logins, you might lose the ability to manage them later. That's the quiet risk nobody talks about.
