AgingCare

Poor management, primary interest is money. No concern for needs of patients, families or employees. Compassion is not in their vocabulary. Pads bills and staffing changes constantly due to lack of respect for caregivers.

Home Instead Denver South is unreliable, incompetent, untrustworthy, and unsafe do not use this company!!!

My husband and I were in a car accident, cars both totaled. Both unable to function in any capacity. We hired Senior Helpers. At evaluation they asked what we needed, asked for a $2000 deposit and sent us a gal on her first day with them. She was unable to perform the simple cooking needed to make dinner although she was over 30. Two days later the company cancelled on us. I asked for my deposit back and they said they didn't do billing until the middle of the month. I had to demand they send it immediately so I could use it to hire another company as they had broken the contract. The check arrived about 10 days later with no statement to submit to insurance. I again had to chase them for an itemized statement. At best they are disorganized, at worst seem a bit shady. No other company requires a deposit of any kind.

Hello I'm the Daughter of a client he has a health care aid. You guys sent her the wrong card to be paid first time, now she can't get paid because You sent her another card with someone else's address and social security number on it. This is very unprofessional. She's said she will be leaving your company because of this and if she does and my Dad don't get proper care I will be looking into legal rights. People don't work for free and this is the reason y'all don't have workers. Fix this immediately. Well after this Worker quit the job. since they was having such a hard time finding workers I went out looking for people that was certified. Asking them to go apply for positions with this company. After getting the Ok from [Name removed]. I was then called by [Name removed]to let me know that she had found a worker for my dad I told her that was not our conversation on Wednesday. she tried to explain to me it's a process of being hired with their company so I told her yes to send the lady needless to say when the lady she was trying to send to care for my father was deaf, my dad is very fragile doesn't have his balance well and they think a lady that can't hear is about to take care of my daddy especially bath him. I refused service. How do you send a deaf person to my home, but a lady with 13 years of CNA you turn away? Tuesday I called and talked with owner of right at home in Austin and he advised me this was the only worker they had to work for my dad. THIS ENTIRE STAFF IS NOT PROFESSIONAL AND DOESN'T HAVE ELDERLY PEOPLE IN THE BEST INTEREST.

Asked if they could provide services of 6 hours a day and was assured they could. I do understand staffing shortages but left my bed bound 85 year old step father without coverage from the onset. Took over $2000 deposit from my mother and have not refunded for the service as of yet. They just want to collect fees and do not care if services are provided

I hired a night and day sitter for my mother who has advanced dementia. I am sad to say that they have no business caring for memory loss patients. Both sitters wanted to leave because my mother said she did not need a sitter? A nurse at the facility had to explain to both that they could stay in the common living area, right outside of my moms room and check in on her as needed. After agreeing to this, the company call me back to tell me the day sitter would be leaving about 3 hours earlier that I had hired her for. Also, when I booked the sittings, it took being transferred fo 4 people before I was transferred to someone who could actually book the assignment.

Worst Experience in the world. This is why people don't want to leave their loved ones with people they don't know, especially Synergy. It took a while but after our elimination period the insurance kicked in so we were unsuspecting of any issues until I audited the bills being sent to the insurance carrier CNA. It didn't make sense that they were paying out much more to Synergy than what they should be getting and once I figured out what was going on, it became obvious that they were double billing for their services. We had the benefits so it went unnoticed until we audited the account. Synergy didn't dispute my claims but continued to do it so I was forced to make them refund the difference to us each month. It took almost 60 days for them to refund the unauthorized charges so we fired them after they became more stubborn and it became too much to figure out what they were doing. On numerous occasions I requested information from them and they refused to respond or put anything regarding their shady accounting in writing. Our home health aid told me that she was owed money from Synergy and the company was always shorting her paychecks. The two owners are definitely not on the same page and the one handling the accounting [name removed] was very elusive. When this was brought up to the other partner, his response was “Welcome to my world.” We switched to Helpers in Home Care and can't be more pleased with the services they provide. They are honest, run a tight ship and the caregivers follow directions unlike what transpired when we used Synergy.

First, you all have to understand that Synergy is a franchise and like all franchises they are run differently. This review is for Synergy of Metro NJ located at [location removed]. This particular Synergy franchise has co-owners, [name removed] (who uses the alias [name removed]) and [name removed]. I will refer to [name removed] as [name removed] for the remainder of this review. [name removed] is the front man and the one with all the personality and charisma. [name removed] runs the back office and accounting part of the operation and has no personality. You typically don’t deal with [name removed] unless [name removed] is away or there is a problem with accounting, which for us, became a major point of contention. After dealing with [name removed], personally I see why he doesn’t typically deal with the public. Our experience with Synergy began as best as we could expect considering my mom felt she didn’t need the care. We started slow and switched caregivers numerous times until my mom felt a connection with one of them. When we first got going with Synergy we dealt with a woman in the office named [name removed] who would bend over backwards to make us happy and we never had any qualms with her. She did what she always said she would. As it turns out, she was the only one with credibility because she never lied or tried to mislead me in any way. Unfortunately, the care givers would not follow the instructions provided by our family and this occurred over and over and over. I can’t tell you how many times I would come to visit only to find rotten moldy food sitting in the refrigerator from my previous visit, 2 months earlier. How many times does that have to happen to realize someone is asleep at the wheel? [name removed] exact words after the third time this happened, “I’m sorry man, I don’t know what to say.” They never did fix the problem because the caregivers would never do it. Synergy has a woman they call their nurse even though I have no idea what her qualifications are. She is a rude obnoxious lady that sometimes shows up at my mom’s home unexpectedly. The first time she came to my mother’s house my mother didn’t know who she was and she has no uniform, business card or ID to support that she works for Synergy. What is a 97 year old lady that’s starting to lose her mind think when someone she never met before shows up at her door and starts asking all sorts of personal questions and wants into her house? On the day this annoying woman showed up at my mom’s house my mom got on the phone with me to tell me someone from Synergy was at the house wanting to do stuff and asking her a bunch of questions. I told my mom I didn’t know who it was so to put the lady on the phone so I could find out what this was about. This woman from Synergy refused to get on the phone with me. If she was legitimate don’t you think she would get on the phone? She was defiant and nasty so my mother threw her out of the house. I would have done the same thing or never let her in the front door. To this date, we still have never gotten an apology or any answer to why this lady refused to get on the phone even though [name removed] told me she would be apologizing for her actions. You would think this woman would learn from her mistakes because she still shows up unexpectedly without an appointment and without any identification. When things are running smoothly you shouldn’t need to deal with these people every day, however with us, it seemed like I was always having to get on them for issues they neglected to take care of. When I did call, I was not alone because there ALWAYS seemed to be a major issue or problem going on at this company. I would always call [name removed] directly on his cell phone because he is the one I have the relationship with. Evidently, everyone else has his cell number too. [name removed] is the kind of guy you want to like and believe. He comes across as very caring however he is not the one caring for your loved one and has lost his credibility with me for lying or misleading me multiple times. I believe he means good and just says what you want to hear to make any issue go away but it makes it only worse when what you’re expecting to happen doesn’t ever occur. Almost every time I call [name removed] I get a return text saying, “putting out a major fire, I’ll get back with you as soon as I can” or “dealing with crazy families, have to call you tomorrow” or “call you tomorrow, in a crisis situation with a client”. These are exact quotes I took off my phone. I send emails and I don’t get responses or they send me an email that I never receive. They are always having email problems and is a crutch they use all too often when they haven’t taken care of an issue. It works for a while but after a year, you would think they would have fixed their email since it’s a vital part of business today. My mother would call me daily and say “I don’t know why you are wasting money having these ladies come to the house every day. All they do is sit around all day and watch TV”. The care givers were lazy and did nothing. They didn’t follow the instructions provided to each of them by me and my brother along with [name removed] and [name removed] even though they acknowledged that they understood what we wanted them to do. They continued to do nothing so much so that I installed cameras in the home only to confirm that they did absolutely nothing. My brother & I paid for my mom’s home care at the beginning stages until insurance kicked in to pay. How hard do you think it is to take a bill and charge one brother half on his credit card and the other brother half on his credit card? Hell, restaurants do it all the time, how hard can it be but the partner that ran the accounting area didn’t want to accommodate the request because he said it was too much work. At some point it became a problem for Synergy to do so they just stopped charging me and started charging my brother 100% without telling either of us. Initially, this slipped by undetected until my brother started seeing extremely high credit card statements. When he finally figured out exactly what occurred, he had well in excess of $5,000 in unauthorized charges on his credit card. He contacted Synergy and rather than bash them like he should have, he requested that they just charge a different credit card of his in the future which he uses to carry balances since it has a zero interest rate. It should have taken care of the issue or at least he thought it was taken care of until the next month when all the new charges appeared again on his old credit card so he contacted Synergy again and requested the same thing again. This went on and on month after month for at least four months because Synergy either refused to make the change or they were just too inept to process the request. Personally, I think it’s a little of both. Finally now my mom’s care was being covered by insurance but my brother was left with a financial mess due to Synergy’s lack of integrity or complete ignorance. They could care less about it or how it impacted my brother and it was 100% their fault. He never received any apologies nor did Synergy ever take credit for their screw up. This is how they operate. Every week my mom would get a statement from the insurance company and it would indicate what benefits were paid to Synergy. She would always send them to me and I would look at them and try and figure out why they were paying out more than what my calculations showed Synergy should be receiving. I contacted the insurance company who told me they were paying out exactly what was being billed and if it was more, then they were being overbilled by Synergy. Synergy never brought anything up until I did when I told them they were billing too much and keeping money that wasn’t theirs and never once did they disagree or

Terrible customer service. Left mom with no care and no substitute caregiver after promising she always has plenty of staff. Mom passed away 1 week later.

HORRIBLE AGENCY I’ve been trying to get issues resolved for weeks with this agency and keep getting told the CEO would get in touch with me....... No issues resolved. No follow up. Weeks passing. So a review of my honest feelings and experiences it is! I have a long history with this agency. My initial impression a couple years ago was very negative and I spoke to the CEO [name removed], who listened to my concerns and temporarily made things better by having the agency send more tenured caregivers..... So we stayed for a long time and found some great caregivers who genuinely cared about my dad. But sad that it always seems to take causing a big, public stink to get the services everyone deserves all along. Fast forward to now. My dad’s condition has changed, and there seems to be very few competent caregivers who can expertly handle a bedridden patient and a very noticeable drop in competency in the staff. Firstly, the scheduler [name removed] does not need to be in any people facing capacity. She is WILDLY unprofessional and unpleasant to interact with. A simple schedule change provokes an attitude from her, and I have gotten into several verbal altercations with her. I asked to only work with [name removed], who is much more competent in customer service. Second, we have struggled to find a caregiver skilled in repositioning my imobile dad in his bed and changing him, despite this being a requirement for their state certification. Where do they find these incompetent people?? For $21/hour I feel I should be able to call their agency and get an expert who will be able to come in and handle him with efficiency and diligence. But that has very seldom been the case. There are a few caregivers that have come out who have had facility experience and have been EXCELLENT, but the sad truth is that they are few and far between. I have gone in and his bed has been soiled and the caregiver sitting down playing with her phone.... I have gone to clean him about 30 minutes after a caregiver left only to find him covered in dried stool. I have been asked by a caregiver how to turn him.... Tonight the caregiver who was supposed to come out was irritated that our house was far back in the woods, got 3/4 through our driveway to the point that I confirmed I could see her car, then she turned around and left in irritation..... It’s absolutely ridiculous and unprofessional. The RN, [name removed], is very kind and empathetic and goes the extra mile to try to rectify my issues, but it is much larger than her. She is just one person at an agency full of staff who just don’t give a [language removed]. Third, their record upkeep is terrible. My dad is bedridden and has a feeding tube, but on some caregivers’ agendas it still says to prepare his meals and monitor him on the toilet..... so these caregivers come in completely unprepared for what is actually needed. They come in and I ask what they know about my dad’s needs, and they say nothing even though I have explained it numerous times to the staff before sending someone new out. So what was the original assessment for if it wasn’t to pass the info to the people that would come in and care for him.....? Several of my coworkers are searching for caregiving agencies for their loved ones and ask me pretty frequently who I would recommend. Sadly we live in an area with very few options, so I explain that if there are any other options, don’t choose this agency because they only care about collecting the $21/hour without making sure they can provide $21/hour quality. They are constantly increasing their prices while decreasing the standards of who they hire. I am completely disappointed and will take the tens of thousands of dollars we would normally spend with them elsewhere the first chance I get.

I am a wheelchair user. My husband is my primary caregiver, and I work full-time. I needed a home health aide to help me at the beginning and end of each day to dress/undress, transfer in/out of bed and in/out of the shower, prepare light meals, and do light housekeeping. Through my union, I was referred to Sara Companion Services. They accepted the job of helping me for two hours each morning before work and two hours each evening before bed for all of March (my husband's recovery period). I did not hear from them until I called them at 4:30 pm on[date removed] (the night before their service was supposed to begin) only to find out that they would not staff the job. Needless to say, I was extremely upset. They left me without assistance, and did not have the courtesy to give me enough notice to find another agency to help. Furthermore, I have repeatedly contacted them via phone and email to have all copies of the contract and credit card authorization sent to me so I can shred it, and they refuse to respond. To make matters worse, they still went ahead and charged my credit card the $784.00 weekly fee even though they did not render any services. They have trouble responding to calls and emails when things go sour, but they have no problem dishonestly charging me for services that were never rendered. Stay far away!

This place was awful. The police had to be called bc of the nurse that was provided. The girls in the advice were rude and unprofessional. Watch out for this company!!!!

I would have rated this agency really high up until yesterday. When we first decided to go with this agency, they sent someone to the hospital to meet with my Mother and our family and do an orientation. The initial caregiver was really nice and the 2nd one was great. They were on time and very respectful. Every Tuesday I was told to call and give them the schedule for the next week and I would receive an invoice for the last week. They asked for an $800 deposit in advanced and we did that. I used them from the end of November to the end of December. They then said I had a $300 refund. I never got that refund. I went to reinstate them at the beginning of the year and there was one week that I didn’t get my invoice. I called them three times and never got a call back. Finally I was able to get ahold of them yesterday and was told I only had an $89 credit. I lost it. This was never discussed and they just held my money. My trust was completely broken at that point. Then, they told me that they should have made me pay a higher deposit and said they were doing me a favor. I am very disappointed. When you receive your invoice, they’re not clear either. They just say what you owe. They don’t give you any detail as to where the dollar amount is coming from. The billing aspect of this agency is a total failure.

Very poor service, in all aspects the caregivers are sucks no training at all

awful wouldn't recommend them to my worst enemy - I have used their service for over 1 year will spend over $75,000 for their service - the problem starts at the top whoever manages the Havertown office doesn't know how to treat a customer/client. Desperately looking for another service who wants my business

The caregiver from this company left my husband in his pajamas all day until 5 pm, did not give him any lunch until 3 pm, did not bathe him or help brush his teeth. Left him in the same diaper all day (the one he wore all the previous night). When I returned at 5 after having been gone since 9 am, I also found she had gone through all my financial papers such as invoices, social security and medicare statements, investment statements, and other sensitive documents. She helped herself to my food without asking and my portable thermometer was missing after she left. She through away many important papers in the trash can along with food. And she locked my cat in a drawer for 6 hours. Even worse, the owner defended her! I have all this behavior caught on camera. Then he illegally called my daughter, who has nothing to do with our affairs, to demand payment from her! I will never use this company again.

I was disappointed in the level of service provided by BrightStar, and I would definitely not recommend this company, especially if your loved one has dementia. Because my mother could not remember what needed to be done, and the aides only did what she requested, very little got done. She would dismiss them after half an hour, saying she “couldn't think of a thing for them to do.” (This was not adequately communicated to me. I only found out when I installed nanny cams in the home.) I had provided a list of tasks, including 3 times a week bathing, throwing out old food, checking that she had taken her medications, making sure she locked her door, was wearing her medical alert necklace, light housekeeping, etc., but this list was not given to the various aides that showed up. At one point, a cleaning company refused to clean my mother's bathroom because of feces smeared on the floor. The company went through a series of bookkeepers, and as soon as one had learned the ropes, she was gone, only to be replaced by someone who had to learn the process for submitting invoices and logs to the insurance company for reimbursement. We chose this company because they would agree to a 2 hour minimum – my mother's preference – instead of the standard 3 or 4 hour minimum other companies require, but I regret the choice. After my mother moved to assisted living, the company without authorization debited money from my mother’s bank account to pay for past services that I had hesitated to pay without receiving the logs for those dates. (The insurance company won’t reimburse without receiving the daily logs.) I had requested the daily logs for those invoices, and the company never sent them to me. Imagine my surprise when I notice over $800 taken from the account without either my knowledge or consent! (Hey, [name removed], still waiting for those logs!)

Very disappointed. Feel so bad for placing my mom here. My mom don't speak any English, don't have any friends and don't know how to communicate with staff. I bought box with year prepaid channels from her country to make her happy, but they public internet is slow and nothing they can do to connect her to faster internet. I am disappointed and will look for new place for my mom. Maintenance guy is very rude and unprofessional.

Do not work or hire this company! They are so so unprofessional. They send people out that don't know what the job task is about! They are lazy! And [Removed] aren't nice!

Their receptionist [Removed] is very rude and handles phone calls unprofessionally. Not gonna call this company again.