Create St Paul's - customer service

[rihanna4]

Hello - I have had appalling customer service from Create St Paul's and feel worried about this going forward. Has anybody had similar experience with them? Or positive experience?
Is this issue specific to Create or are all IVF providers like this?

I want to get more data points in order to make a decision about whether to keep going with Create or switch provider.

Thanks.

Hi - I had a really positive experience with Create St Paul's last year after a really traumatic experience with my NHS clinic. I am currently 24 weeks pregnant thanks to Create so perhaps it's easier for me.

I think if you feel this way about the clinic at this point perhaps it may be worth looking at changing because I really think the lack of stress in this situation is important. We have to go through such an emotional and stressful time that you should feel 100% secure with the clinic that you are using.

Wishing you lots of luck xxxx

I was recently at Create Birmingham and found the customer service / admin side very poor, particularly the centralised call centre. The staff at the clinic were much better but going through the call centre for everything was painful! I much preferred the NHS clinic I was with previously which was quite bureaucratic in terms of paperwork and process but I found the people much more responsive and helpful.

I've done quite a few cycles with Create and I remember feeling the same about not liking the customer service and administration side of things when I started (summer 2021). It did improve when I was a registered patient and had a patient coordinator sorted, although not ideal when she left as again things dropped..But now when I email the generic email address I usually get a quick reply from her the same day. Calling them improves too (when you can click that you're a registered patient and get through to the reception). I do think that the service from everyone you get in person is good though. Having said that, I've had a break in cycles from Aug to Dec after Xmas this year and I have noticed the reception staff have changed and aren't as good. I'm not sure if they're temps because of the Xmas period or if there's actually been a changeover and they're new and still learning.

I think overall that the main point should be how you feel about the medical side of things though. I try not to get too stressed about the admin things. In this last cycle I had them trying to charge me £280 for a box of pills which I knew was incorrect and I had to explain it was wrong and then someone else helped the first lady to realise she was looking at their full order- turned out to be £10 for what I needed! Then also I had to pay £120 for 2 x blood tests which should be £100 but she couldn't figure out what was wrong. I paid it and then emailed my patient coordinator who arranged the £20 refund the next day and explained it should have been put through as a package etc. This happened again the next day so I told them at reception this was wrong etc and they corrected.

Honestly yes I found their customer service terrible. I let a lot of things slide but had to make an official complaint at one point because my emails to my coordinator went unanswered for weeks. Even when I phoned the centralised help desk I kept being told someone would call me back but no one ever did.

I recently had my first cycle with Create St Paul’s and luckily got pregnant. I found their staff members all very nice and supportive. Yes their internal coordination can be better, and a lot does depend on the patient taking things under control and following up with them. I had to chase them on two occasions but both got responses within hours. Email requests to my patient coordinator were usually dealt with the same day or day after. So I believe they are trying to improve things, but probably sometimes issues still slip through the cracks.

Thank you all for your responses - much appreciated.

@katerose2022 Congratulations! Would you mind sharing how old you are? Out of curiosity...

@rihanna4 Sure I’m 38, with no known issues apart from being slightly underweight. AFC was 8 I remember which was average for my age. I turned out to be high responder so managed to collect 14 eggs even on mild IVF but only 1 good quality blast in the end, with 2 poor ones frozen but probably not much use in future… had some male factor (very low morphology) but ICSI helped a bit