Adoption Star spends a lot of time and money on advertising and reaching out to prospective clients. When we called as prospective adoptive parents (before my partner and I signed up with the agency), someone always took our calls right away, and we were treated with the utmost respect. Zack, who handles a lot of the new client outreach services, was kind and respectful and addressed all of our questions and concerns. So we felt great about signing up with Adoption Star.
However, my partner and I have now been clients of Adoption Star for over 3 long years. We've been waiting three years to adopt, and we have paid them over $10,000 (all those fees - application fees, home study fees, renewal fees, etc. add up over time). We are no closer to adopting than we were when we started this process years ago. We have had three different case workers, due to staff turn over and internal restructuring at the agency. In the time that we have been clients, Adoption Star has raised their adoption fees and added new fees (like a mandatory online profiling fee). These weren't fees when we signed on with the agency several years ago, but regardless of that we now have to pay the new fees.
The staff, who were all so kind and attentive when we researching the agency and deciding if we wanted to become clients, are now cold and rude. When I call (since we never hear from them, I like to call them once every few months to stay on their radar), it takes me multiple phone calls over multiple days to get ahold of our case worker. It is typical that I will call on Monday, and leave a message with the receptionist (the agency does not have voicemail, unbelievably enough for the 21st century, so everything goes through the receptionist). Then, having gotten no phone call back, I will typically call again Wednesday and leave another message with the receptionist. Then maybe I'll call again Friday morning and receive a call back from our case worker Friday afternoon. Our case worker never seems happy to hear from me, and always makes me feel like she's rushing to get me off the phone. It also takes agency staff multiple days to respond to email. Having paid the agency over $10,000 and wasted over three years of our lives waiting to adopt, it is very frustrating that it's so hard to get ahold of anyone and no one seems to care about us as clients. It makes me feel like they are happy to take our money but, once they have our money and we're locked in as clients, us waiting adoptive families are not their priority.
I would strongly urge anyone reading Adoption Star's online reviews and researching this agency to look at the date on the reviews, and to take the older reviews from several years ago in context. From what I can tell from speaking to current and previous clients of Adoption Star, they used to be a much better agency. But in the last two to three years, things have really gone downhill. Wait times are WAY longer than they used to be (two to four years is now typical, whereas before, it was typical that adoptive families wouldn't have to wait longer than a year). So if you are researching Adoption Star and are reading wonderful reviews, look at the year in which they were written and the length of time the reviewer has been waiting.
My partner and I wish we'd never signed up with this agency. After paying them so much money and wasting several years of our lives waiting for a child, we are no closer to being parents than we were when we started this process. read more