What are good attributes of a surrogacy agency? What should I look out for to avoid? These questions get asked a lot in consultations with Intended Parents and Surrogates. If you are preparing to embark on a surrogacy journey, you want to make sure you are partnered with an agency that is looking out for your best interest to help you achieve the most successful outcome. In this Surrogacy Talk, Frank will discuss three green flags and three red flags to look out for when looking for a surrogacy agency to work with.
What are good attributes of a surrogacy agency? What should I look out for to avoid? These questions get asked a lot in consultations with Intended Parents and Surrogates. If you are preparing to embark on a surrogacy journey, you want to make sure you are partnered with an agency that is looking out for your best interest to help you achieve the most successful outcome. In this Surrogacy Talk, Frank will discuss three green flags and three red flags to look out for when looking for a surrogacy agency to work with.
Welcome to Surrogacy Talk with me, your fabulous host and family building expert, Frank Golden. I'll be talking about surrogacy, IVF, and making babies. Hello and welcome to Surrogacy Talk with me, Frank Golden. Today, I have a wonderful topic to discuss with all of you. I'll be diving into what makes up a good surrogacy agency, specifically some green flags or the positives, but also some red flags that might be cause for you to pause and reconsider that selection. But before I dive in, I would like to remind all of you to like and subscribe. You can find us on YouTube, Spotify, or anywhere that you stream your podcasts. And if you're already viewing us right now on our website at goldensurrogacy.com, thank you. Now I do want to dive in. Everyone always asks, what are some good attributes of a surrogacy agency? What are some things we should look out for? And the list is deep. I'm going to discuss items that I feel are most pertinent. So just tackling the green flags, the positives, things that are to me kind of common sense. But if you don't know something, you don't know something. And we really want our Intended Parents, whether you select our agency or not, to know what to look out for. Now with surrogacy agencies, transparency is something that should be very, very important to you. So you really want to look for a surrogacy agency that has their costs, specifically the agency fee, as well as the Surrogate compensation structure all listed on their website. All of that should be transparent and out in the open. If you are visiting a provider's website, and you can't find that material and you have to hunt for it, or you have to email an agency representative to find it, that probably is not a good thing. So I would say err on the side of caution there. There might be a reason why they're hiding those numbers from you. So, again, a good thing would be an agency that has all of the financials front and center, and they're not hiding anything. Now, a second item would be an agency that has given you access to their positive reviews. Or when you're out there doing research online, you can easily find positive ratings and reviews. Especially agencies that have been in business for a while. And that really kind of leads me into my next point is in the surrogacy world, these journeys last anywhere from 18 to 24 months. So even a new agency, it's going to take them quite a while to fully manage a journey from beginning to end. My recommendation would be to work with agencies that have been in business for at least five years or longer, because that then really gives you a key indicator of their success. And if you are working with an agency or researching an agency that has been in business for again, that five year mark, they should have ample customer reviews and Surrogate reviews. You should be hearing from the Intended Parent side and the Surrogate side. You can find reviews on social media, Google, there are other websites. In today's day and age, it should not be hard to find that information. Another point is that the agency should be able to put you in touch with previous Intended Parents and Surrogates. Now, another factor when looking at positives, agencies that are doing a good job, that are ones that you would want to to do business with, would be good bedside manner, as they kind of say in the medical field. But how they communicate with you, their communication. When you hop on the phone with agency representatives and personnel, do they sound warm and enthusiastic? Are they excited to help you build your family or is it just kind of the humdrum of going through a consultation and you're just but a number. You are someone in their queue that is just they're just trying to move you through the line and get on to the next person. That is really really important. So pay attention to cues such as when you hop on the call with them or perhaps it's a zoom, do they use your first name? If it's in person, do they make eye contact? Do they remember facts that maybe you've put into the comments field on their website and they're able to recall this information when they speak with you? That really shows a genuine sense of care and compassion about your specific case and lets you know that you're not just a number. They care about what they're doing, they're happy to help you. So these are these are good things. These are things that you want to to look out for. Now, diving into red flags on the other side, which a few of these things correlate, and I did kind of explain. But if you can't access financials and compensation on their website, that's a red flag. I would I would stop I would reconsider that. That's usually a sign of maybe an issue with their their infrastructure, their agency. Perhaps they hide their numbers until they speak with Intended Parents to try to decipher what they should be charging you based on your wealth income. So these are things that you really need to kind of consider. Do they have public reviews online if you can't find reviews of a particular agency or you read through a lot of the reviews that are posted online and they all sound similar with similar verbiage Perhaps those are fake reviews or if they're lacking in quantity, again, red flag stop and reconsider. And then bedside manner, communication, and customer service on the red flags side of that, if communication seems cold, if they take longer than 30 to 40 minutes to respond in email communication, when you've got good threads going back and forth, that's also a sign that there may be some disorganization there at the agency. And if you are merely in the research phase of trying to decide which agency to go with and red flags are already piling up, then do yourself a favor and do not hire that agency because these journeys are very complex and if they do not have organization when they are simply trying to get information to you and answer your questions, what does that surrogacy journey look like further on down the road? So these are things that you really need to stop and think about. Now, a few other items that I do just want to quickly mention. Take a look at their website. And a lot of people don't think about this, but an agency that has good bones, good infrastructure, these are the agencies that can properly manage your surrogacy journey. If the website is not organized, does not showcase staff, does not have the financial numbers, does not have good information listed or posted, that is a sign, right? Because in the business world, many of the the agencies now do not have a brick and mortar. We're not brick and mortar stores, I guess you could say, where you're going to be walking down the sidewalk and say, hey, there's a surrogacy agency. You learn about our business from our website, our web presence. And if we haven't put forth 110% of our energy to make sure that we are showcasing our brand and our company on our website, what does that say about the inner workings of our agency? And again, what does our ability to case manage for you correctly look like once you've retained our services? So again, look at their staff page. Do they have their staff listed? You should not have to guess who's working for that agency. If you do, that is a red flag. Take a look at the Surrogate side of the website. Make sure that the numbers that the agency is advertising to their Surrogate pool for compensation lines up with the financial packet that maybe they've presented to you. And then look at the health criteria for the women that they are recruiting because agencies that are not recruiting the healthiest candidates possible to make sure you have the healthiest pregnancy possible, they they are not looking out for your best interests. So that's also very, very important. And these are these are some of the items that I feel are important when assessing what makes up a good agency. I am sure there are many other key items that I could sit here and go through with you, but these are the most pertinent that a lot of people tend to overlook. They kind of get stuck in how much is this going to cost and how quickly can I match with a Surrogate? And then you don't even look at the website. You don't pay attention to things like missing staff on the website. So who's running the company? The numbers, you know, were kind of presented piecemeal during the consultation, and at no point do Intended Parents sit and really look at the totality of what's going on here with this business from a business perspective, not just I'm trying to find a surrogacy agency, and I really feel that if you tick through some of these items that I have just listed and really spend some time to thoughtfully consider green flags and the positives of selecting an agency and those red flags, you will, at the end of the day, come out of the process being very well informed and be very confident and comfortable with the agency selection that you make. And it is my goal to give you that information so that you can have a fantastic surrogacy journey. And that is all I have for you today. I would like to remind all of you that if you found this topic helpful to please go ahead and like and subscribe. Follow us on Spotify, YouTube, wherever podcasts can be found. Send in your questions and comments as well. You can tweet me @GoldenSurrogacy or send DMS on Instagram to @Golden_Surrogacy. I would love to hear your feedback and also if you have additional questions on this topic and you would like me to spend more time on it, please send that in. I will make another video. I will make I will make more audio I will do whatever I need to do to get the information out there for you to consume and to consider and make the best decision for your surrogacy journey. And once again, I am Frank Golden here with Surrogacy Talk, my Surrogacy Talk, reminding all of you that Everyone Deserves a Family.