As a designer I also feel the need to defend our trade. With crowd sourced designs- like so many things in life- you get what you pay for.
If budget only allows for a crowd sourced design it's better than not having a professional identity. To get a high quality identity that will last your company it takes time and special consideration about your brand, market and mission. If you're considering using your first identity as a placeholder be sure to consider the cost and hassle of changing the identity once you've created tons of material using it.
It also depends on your company and whether it's a consumer facing brand or not. If your company is brand centric and you're investing a lot into it I don't think there's any substitute for carefully choosing a designer that matches your aesthetic and working closely with them to create something great.
If you are into going the crowdsourced route you may also want to check out CrowdSpring as an alternative to 99designs.
A good place to find designers is on dribbble.com and searching by "branding" or "identity"