SYNERGY HomeCare of Metro and Hudson, NJ

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

I've had a very good experience with this service. The caregivers we've used have been very good, caring and attentive, and we've had no major issues with scheduling. We've found one particular caregiver that has worked out extremely well, and I see no reason we'd need to use any other service.