Almost the end

I waited over the weekend. I read some sites about things other agencies have done to manipulate clients, and so many things sounded familiar. I checked old e-mails and timelines. I reread everything from Adoption Supervisors, especially the times when AS said one thing and Joanne said the opposite.

And then I got into Researcher mode. This was last January, remember, when I was preparing my dissertation proposal. I already had the tools to formulate a theory and design a study to test that theory. I knew how to organize information and use documents to prove a hypothesis. I had been preparing for the answer to Joanne's "deal" for three years of doctoral study.

I sent this response at 7:15 on Monday (January 8, 2007) morning, before I left for work that day: (Please note that all bold type has been added by me in THIS post and did not appear in bold type in the original e-mail. The only other changes were the removal of the agency name. The italics were in the original e-mail to clearly distinguish quotes from the agency Business Agreement.)
According to the (agency) Business Agreement,
"Duties of (agency): (Agency) agrees to provide information as to the expeditious preparation of documents required for international adoption in Guatemala, keep the Family informed of the adoption proceedings in Guatemala, intervene on behalf of the Family with the adoption sources in Guatemala and the American Consulate, and assist with the preparation of the documents for the final visa approval. (Agency) shall provide periodic updates on the health of the child assigned to the Family. (Agency) also agrees to keep Family informed of any activity taken on behalf of the Family."

As you know, I have never received any medical update from a doctor about Ingrid. There was never any activity taken on my behalf, the activity was taken on behalf of (the bsister)'s family.

"Adoption Risks: (Agency) cannot guarantee any time frame for completion of the adoption after the assignment has been made because each adoption is subject to and governed by the laws of the country of the child's origin and the immigration laws of the United States. (Agency) has no control over changes in laws that may affect the adoption process. Shouold Family choose to withdraw from the international adoption program after an assignment has been made, for any reason, all fees paid to (agency) and its foreign source, and no refunds of any nature shall be paid or due. Family understands that (agency) is unable to guarantee that no new categories of charges will be required or guaranteed that dates scheduled for overseas trips may not be cancelled or rescheduled because of events beyond its control. All such costs are the sole risk and responsibility of Family."

If (agency) were abiding by the immigration laws of the United States, I would never have been matched with Ingrid. Ingrid was being placed through a facilitator that is banned by the US Embassy.

My adoption process never started to adopt Ingrid, as my Power of Attorney was never filed. I was never "in process" during the past 13 months since I mailed in my dossier.

The Family (me) is not choosing to withdraw from the international adoption program. An assignment has never been made, as the child assigned to me was never able to be relinquished and my POA has never been filed.

"Child Placing: Family understands and acknowledges that (agency) does not place the child. The placement of any child is made by the foreign adoption source."

Therefore, you do not need to give me a placement with this same attorney. This attorney did not file the POA for my case, and therefore did not place a child with me. You can take the refund from this attorney and apply it to another referral with a different attorney. Please remember that this attorney works with Thanassis, who is banned by the US Embassy. You are not permitted to knowingly give me a referral from Thanassis. According to the US Embassy's letter of March 30, 2005,

"This is to inform all involved in Guatemalan adoptions that effective today, Mr. Athanasios Kollias, aka Athanase Thomas Collias, Athanasis Thomas, Thomas Collias, has been banned to act as facilitator in the submission and/or processing of I-600 (Petition to Classify Orphan as an Immediate Relative)applications before the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services at the American Embassy in Guatemala.
We advise all agencies to not accept any referrals from Mr. Kollias, as they will be rejected.
Any Guatemalan attorneys or notaries found to be involved with Mr. Kollias in attempting to circumvent this proscription will likewise be subject to similar action."

"Interruption of Adoption Services: If, at any time during the adoption process, Family decided to terminate the adoption process, all fees and expenses due to (agency) and in the source country at the time of the interruption of adoption services, may be considered included, but not limited to, change in family structure, such as separation, divorce, or death of a family member, instability in employment or other financial problems, health problems which might adversely affect the placement of a child with Family, falsification of records by Family, etc. "

The Family is not deciding to terminate the adoption process. According to this paragraph, I have always had the control you say you are just now trying to give me. This clause does not have any provisions for the Agency choosing to terminate the adoption process.

Therefore, according to the (agency) Business Agreement, I see there are two options.
(1) I get a new referral with an attorney not associated with a banned facilitator.
(2) I get a complete refund of all fees paid, as this happened before there was a child assigned to me for placement. According to the contract, the fees paid to the attorney were $9,000 and half of the (agency) fee, $2,000.

I will expect your answer by the close of the business day on Tuesday, January 9. Thank you.
Stacy

"By the close of the business day." That is more than 24 hours, in fact it is two complete business days. I don't need to tell you that Joanne didn't answer me. I resent it the next day from my work e-mail, stating that the program enabled me to see the time she opened the e-mail and that I expected a response within 24 hours.

Still, no response. By Thursday night, it was clear that Joanne was not going to respond to me. She promised me a referral OR a refund, I said I would accept either one, and now she's ignoring me. She's not living up to her contract and she's blaming ME for the entire thing. There are provisions for what happened outlined right in her contract. I pointed out the provisions: refund or referral. I would have taken either one (the only thing I would not take was a new referral through Thanassis, which I also explained why I would not accept). I went to the forums.

Yup, the forums Joanne says to stay away from, but she advertises HEAVILY on. For a while, it seemed that every time I'd check the forum I'd see HER advertisement. And if you search for her agency online, there's actually a quote from Joanne about how wonderful the forum's photolisting is because it brought her lots of "leads." Make no mistake about it - potential adoptive parents are "leads" and not "people she can help process an adoption for." I'm not going to fish out my exact post on the forum, but it was something along the lines of "I lost my referral after 14 months and now my agency won't answer my e-mails."

Just as I expected, I got a bunch of private messages asking for the name of the agency. I also got some posts offering condolences, followed by private messages asking for the name of the agency. People wanted the name of the agency, that was for sure. (I can't blame them; no one wants to be involved with an agency that would give a referral, watch nothing happen for fourteen months, and then after the referral is "lost" the agency won't even answer an e-mail. That is a HUGE red flag, even to the biggest skeptic.) Bright and early the next morning, I posted a comment on my own post, thanking people for their support through private messages. I knew my comment would bump the post to the top of the forums. First thing in the morning, when Joanne logged on to spy on her clients check on the latest news.

Seven minutes later, I finally got a response to the e-mail I sent on Tuesday:
I have sent this to our legal counsel and will wait to hear from them. I doubt very much that your information is correct and seeing as we did offer you a replacement that you passed up and you continued to want to wait....

You can make all the "I am expecting a response from you within 24 hours of your having read the e-mail" demands you want. When we hear back from our atty we will respond to you and not before.

There's a little more interchange, two or three e-mails back and forth, but they just reinterate that she will get back to me after she hears from her attorney.

And as far as that "24 hour" thing - sucks to be her, since she sent the rest of her clients an e-mail earlier that week (within minutes of my Tuesday e-mail) stating:
As a result of this very uncooperative attitude by certain families, as a policy (the agency) will only answer emails during the day from about 9 AM until about 4 PM. We will, at our own discretion, answer emails from families with genuine questions or concerns or thoughts in the evening and weekends. The official policy will be that each email will have a response within 24 hours of receipt and if an exact answer is not readily available (which very rarely happens), a note advising of receipt of the email will be sent and an estimate as to when we will have the information will be given. We never imagined that we would have to resort to this kind of unfriendly policy but unfortunately a few clients have made this legally necessary.
(There was much more to the e-mail, but it doesn't matter much. You can see that according to Joanne's own "official policy," she will respond to each e-mail within 24 hours of receipt exactly as I was requesting she do. Funny that her "official policy" came right after I ask her to answer me using those same guidelines and she responds that she will IN NO WAY answer in that time period.)

That's where it ends. Friday, January 12, 2007. It's been almost a year. I'm tired of this. I've had enough. Two more posts on this blog, and then it will become legacy.