Adoption Advantage Decieved Adoptive Family...company has $11,000.00 Family Has NO Baby Little Rock Arkansas

on any adoption agency you choose to use. But Adoption Advantage had done nothing but wonderful things for our family. Because of them, we now have our beautiful baby boy. Regardless of what any agency tells you, be prepared to wait and wait and wait. There will be heartaches beyond belief. A birthmom can back at any time during the pregnancy, and, in the state of Arkansas, has 10 days after birth to change her mind.

During the 4 (yes, four) years we were signed with this agency, we had two birth mothers change her mind on us. Adoption Advantage presented us with several more birth mothers, and we had the option of declining. Adoption is not an easy thing to go through, no matter what agency you sign with. But I am extremely glad we signed with Adoption Advange. Yes, we had to wait, but, in the end, it was all worth it. And the staff was nothing less than wonderful, caring, and attentive to us the entire time.

To whom it may concern,

I am an employee of Adoption Advantage and know personally how misleading and/or false statements about our company hurt people/clients. The majority of fees given to this agency are used in advertising to find birth mothers for adoptive families and comments being made about the agency make it seem as if we are profiting from fees when in actuality, that is not the case. Our adoptive parents are very near and dear to our hearts and are referred to on a "first name basis". After signing up with our agency, you are put on a list in the order of the date you signed up. When birth mother's call in they are directed to one of three Birth Mother Coordinators and given choices in the type of adoption they want. Such as...do they want to pick the adoptive parent/parents or do they want the agency to pick. If they want the agency to pick then the directors take in to consideration what qualities are important to the birth mother, the race of the baby and/or birth parents, and then match the birth parents with whoever has been on the list the longest that match these qualities in adoptive parents. Our agency deals with adoptions of many types, from very open to very closed. If a birth mother wants to choose the adoptive parents then we send her portfolio's that the adoptive parents have made themselves (they look like scrap books), that describe their family, have pictures of family and friends, pictures of their town, home, vacation spots and some even explain why they are choosing adoption. We only send portfolio's that match the birth parent's preferences!!! We send 5 to 10 every single time and we ask that they pick their top five in order from most favorite to least favorite. Sometimes these are sent in the form of paper and sometimes they are sent in the form of dvd's. Either way they are sent...it cost's the agency money for ink, dvd's, paper and shipping. Shipping alone is $20-$25 a pop. Once the birth parent/parents choose their top 5, we call their first pick. If their first pick declines to match, we go to the next family; and so on, and so on. Do you get the picture?

If you have been on the list for awhile and you are not matched yet, you might want to consider the factors, (as explained to you before you signed up and again now) before you start bad mouthing and pointing fingers! It is not the agency that you are hurting by saying these comments, it is people just like you who either cannot have children or have a calling from a higher power to adopt. I can tell you something else, all of the employees in this agency work up to 80 something hours in one week, just to make sure that all aspects of the matching process are taken care of. Sometimes this means having to neglect our own families to do so! Maybe it would help you to come work a week in our shoes, to see everything that we are doing to make sure that our clients are matched with a baby and are satisfied. We have 3 Birth Mother Coordinators in our office and we are on call for all new and existing birth parents and to adoptive parent's that are matched or have had recent disruptions. We are all caring, loving and dedicated people! If it hurts our adoptive family, it hurts us as well. Maybe you should rethink your thoughts and actions against us. We are available to talk to you with any concerns or comments you may have. You know how to contact us and you are in our prayers as always.

I am making a comment about the "Consumer Comment" AND the "Employee Comment" which are posted on this thread begun by Mary/Virginia Beach:

Something doesn't feel right in that you both show ZERO empathy for someone who is out "$11,000.00 and has NO Baby." Your empathy for "Adoption Advantage" is clearly stated, however. In other words, the party who ended up with the money not only has the money, but has defenders who are publishing its praises.

Does this situation feel right? The party which is out the money, received no benefit, and evidentially has no hope of being treated fairly is being dumped on by the defenders of the party who ended up with the money??? Could it be that the party who ended up with the money and the defenders are one and the same?

The "rebuttals" to Mary's posting mention nothing about her money. I really feel that the party with Mary's money will soon be trying to give it all back to her and will be asking her to please drop the entire matter.

END.

My wife used to work for Adoption Advantage. For the first few months it was a dream come true. There is truly a great deal of good done through this company. However, we soon learned that when something seems to good to be true... you know the rest of that statement. My wife became became frustrated by the company's financial dealings in that dedicated funds were often spent for other things leaving her to have to tell birth mothers that they would have to wait for the assistance their adoptive family h ad already paid, and at the same time leading adoptive families to believe that the funds were secure and set aside for their intended use. Not being an accountant, neither my wife nor I would suggest that those type things are criminal, but it was putting her in a hard position. It did come to a head though when my wife was emailed, called, and reprimanded for refusing to lie to an adoptive father about funds that he had paid for fees that were later waved by a secondary adoption agency that had been hired by Adoption Advantage to work with a birth mother. The reasoning, "He has no business knowing weather or not we had to pay those fees." This was not only a large amount of money, but it was also wrong. My wife was told to call him back and tell him that she had made a mistake and that that money had been spent already by the second company. Needless to say, that was her last day working with Adoption Advantage.

During the last weeks my wife worked for Adoption Advantage I was approached by the director. He asked me to work for him, off the books, watching the internet for consumer reporting pages and adoption forums to see if there was any negative feed back about Adoption Advantage. My instructions were to refute those negative claims, pretend to be an adoptive parent who had a good experience with the company, and make positive comments about their services. I declined.

My wife still feels very bonded to the families she worked with. My wife still has fond memories of working with Adoption Advantage. And if you are one of the families whose adoption goes quickly or without many obstacles, then the experience is great. But there are families who get hung out to dry waiting and waiting and waiting in hopes that they will give up and just count the money as gone. The policy while my wife worked with Adoption Advantage was to find and sign new adoptive families and put them at the top of the list, bumping those already waiting for months and years. The rational? "We have to keep income coming in or we won't be able to help any families."

Adoption is a very hard field to work in. Birth mothers are in a very hard situation and often do change their minds. But there has to be a better way to be consistent with the families who are waiting on a baby.

Please visit (((Redacted)))to see 5 pages and growing of comments by people scammed by AA. THe comments on here that are positive are, as one gentleman on here was offered a job doing, planted by AA by hired employees acting like adoptive parents. They scam everyone at every chance they can. The problem is they have scammed so many people they can not keep with the truth coming out by those recognizing they have been scammed. Slick Eddie Web portrayed himself as a Christian used the faith Christians have in each other and God to exploit us and take our money. Well Eddie we may be trusting, but we are not dumb.

Adoption Advantage is probably going to have their license as an adoption agency revoked next week. They have not returned our phone calls or emails for the last month or longer. We started to worry & so tried other ways to get in touch with them. Last week I talked to a woman in an office close to their (I Googled their address) office. She said the owner/director is going through a divorce & things fell apart when his wife left. We also found some comments from other people saying that they had been having the same problems & very upset.

So from a suggestion from someone on that forum I spoke with the woman in charge of licensing adoption agencies. She told me that Adoption Advantage has had about 40 couples file a complaint about them. It is bad enough that they would just stop contacting people, but they were also not matching the people already on their waiting list. They would have a birthmother agree to adoption & they use that baby to get new couples to pay in & adopt the baby to them. To keep the cash coming in! That is the part that makes me the most angry. And the fact that they advertised themselves as a Christian agency.

We have a few options to get our money back but none seem very promising. It is makes us angry more than anything right now. I really feel terrible for the couples who don't have any children yet or can't have any of their own in this situation. This "Christian" scam not only caused financial damage but adoption was their hope for a family. I'm sure many of them were crushed not to mention the wasted time.

Ed Webb needs to pay for what he has done to hundreds of families.

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