Bullet points from Anon rumors
- One of the in-China travel agencies (not BLAS) told a July 15th family that they should get their referral next month. This family checked with BLAS and BLAS is not prepared to say anything at all about their wait. (This is the first info I’ve heard from the first agency, so not sure how reliable that may be.)
- Someone with a December LID was told by their agency that switching to SN would not speed things up for them - so it sounds like this agency is still thinking the wait won’t go much beyond the 11 or 12 month range for them.
- One of the big agencies expects referrals to be sent the week of May 29th. When asked about cut offs the agency stated that “the CCAA has the potential of doing two weeks”. (I agree with the poster, her agency rep should go into politics.)
- Another agency is warning that their late June LID families will not get their referral in May, though we don’t get an indication of what their late June LID date is.
- Another agency (called a large one by the poster) is predicting an October referral for their 7/26 families. (I’m ignoring this one, my emotions aren’t prepared to deal with that possibility)
- Another 7/26 poster with a “conservative agency” was told their agency expects their referral in July.
- Someone with a 6/27 LID was told they would not get their referral in May, they were told they should receive their referral in the June month-end batch, though there is a possibility it will be the July month-end batch.
- Someone with a 9/7 LID was told there is still a possibility of an August referral, and that they should be home with their baby before the end of the year. They thought October or November travel was expected, with warnings that this could change.
**********************
I think this is promising. Most agencies seem to be pointing to things starting to speed back up. We seem to only have one agency that is preparing their people for the current rate to continue.
An another note, I’m trying to figure out the best way to handle anon comments in the future so that agencies aren’t hurt. I’m playing around with the idea of having anon comments moderated ONLY so I can edit out agency names before they go public. What do ya’ll think of that idea?
May 16th, 2006 at 9:33 am
RQ:
Love the Anon time and yes, I think it would be very wise to moderate anon post as it is very easy to figure out which agencies people are talking about. I love my agency and do not like to see them miss-quoted…which has happened in the past.
Thanks again for all your hard work.
May 16th, 2006 at 9:37 am
Thanks for the summary, RQ. I wish I could agree with your “promising” conclusion but I’m not so sure. Truly, I would love to believe that things are on the upswing. But I read the comments and it didn’t really strike me that most agencies are pointing to things speeding up or that there seems to be only one agency pointing to the slowdown continuing. My own agency is still saying the slowdown is continuing. I just didn’t post that because that isn’t news. After reading the comments I was more left with the feeling that different agencies are telling their clients wildly different things, which makes me feel more like it’s anyone’s guess and no one has a real clue at this point…unfortunately.
May 16th, 2006 at 9:46 am
I am very concerned that agencies are all over the place with their predictions–usually they are at least close but this is wild-differences of about 6 months. According to our agency our late Aug LID won’t be getting a referral until WAY after October. Why do ya’all think the agencies are all over the place in their predictions? This makes me VERY nervous.
I would appreciate any input or guesses.
May 16th, 2006 at 9:48 am
It looks to me like most agencies seem to be expecting it to go to around the 20th this month and then possibly at least to the 15th next month. A good 90% of the info that is coming in fits into that scenario.
I’ve only seen one person whose agency seems to be saying the one week at a time rate will continue - is that what your agency is saying? Is it possible that only those with good news are posting it and those with bad news from their agencies are just staying in bed and not even getting on the computer to tell us about it? Oh, I hope not.
May 16th, 2006 at 10:03 am
the information re China Womens Travel was posted by me. They are a very well known travel agency in China & I think they are government run. They provide (among other services) guide services to Europeans adopting from China. We used them when we adopted our first daughter. I e mailed them yesterday, to inform them of our LID & when they thought we might get our referral - their words were - ‘the allocations for June will be received at the end of this month, so July will be next month’ BUT i then received a message from BLAS who is an agency used by may adopters in the UK to track their papers whilst with the CCAA. In response to my query as to where our papers were and when could we expect a referral, they said we were in the matching room, but that they had absolutely no idea when we would hear, but that we must be patient! I know that in the past BLAS have given estimates of when they think referrals will be received, so I was quite surprised by their lack of information. This leads me to believe that the the CCAA are playing their cards very close to their chest & we will just have to wait and see what happens, and that any information received from agencies at this stage is probably speculation -in my opinion anyway.
May 16th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Yup RQ- That is what our agency is telling us, that it is possible that only matching one week at a time will continue.
They have predicted that the end of July LIDS will be referred at the end of October. Yes, I am going back to bed to cover my head and cry now…..I bet that is where all the others are too!
May 16th, 2006 at 10:19 am
Thanks to seekingzuzuspetals and wrigsassy for the info.
I still have hopes that they make it to somewhere around the 20th this time…. but they aren’t quite as high as they were.
May 16th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Any ideas on why the agencies are all over the place with their predictions of referrals?
May 16th, 2006 at 10:58 am
My bitchy answer is that the CCAA is on a power trip and won’t tell anyone because they don’t have to and it makes them feel all powerful to be in control.
My PC answer is that even the CCAA doesn’t know until the files arrive from the orphanages and they see how many they have.
Whichever of these is true - since the agencies aren’t getting feedback from the CCAA they are forced to guess, and they are all guessing different things.
Or, maybe a few agencies ARE in the know and do happen to know what they are talking about. How do we know which ones are right? The ones that used to be right seem to have been silenced, leading me to state what I did in the first paragraph.
May 16th, 2006 at 11:02 am
My guess is that way back before the wait started increasing, the agencies were all optimistic, and they got burned. Can you imagine the number of waiting parents they are communicating with daily! I would guess that having been wrong for the past six months, a lot of agencies are simply making guesses and probably more toward the worst case scenarios so that they can avoid having to go through that again! So, if they start telling people how horrible the wait will be, then people will be pleasantly surprised when it turns out to be sooner, or won’t be calling them again when it does take so long? Just my 2 cents
May 16th, 2006 at 11:03 am
ok, so what’s the closest bar? let’s meet in 45 minutes and have a drink. ; ) thanks for the info zuzu and wrig — for fear of what i hear i’m going to hold off in calling my agency until after the next batch of referrals go out.
May 16th, 2006 at 11:32 am
my 2 1/2 cents:
I agree that the Anon posts should be moderated to help protect the agencies. I also agree with the statement about the agencies going ‘worst-case’ or not saying much at all for fear of “getting burned” or worse…having upset families/clients when they say something and are wrong.
Call me silly, but I’m going with the fact that there’s more rumours/speculations/postings with the May group going to 6/20 or so and the June group getting into the July LIDS. Not sure about the 7/15 thing, but anything at least through the first week of July LIDs would be a good thing. I definitely think I’d rather try to be more optimistic than go through the next few months with the thoughts of possibly not getting matched until Dec or something. yuck!
May 16th, 2006 at 12:03 pm
What I want is the truth. If someone could tell me right now that we will get our referral in January, and be 100% for sure about it then I’m guessing that this blog would mostly go away. I wouldn’t like that answer, but at least then I could make plans and I could stop haunting every corner of the internet looking for clues.
I want to go through the next few months with a good idea of when we will get our referral. If it’s going to be next spring then so be it, if it’s going to be this September then great.
With a late September LID if they continue at the the 11 days average over a six month period of time then we’re looking at a referral in April.
However, if they speed up to, say, three weeks per month, then we’re looking at a referral in September.
That is a spread of 8 months.
If the CCAA doesn’t like the speculation on the internet then they should give out some kind of estimated timetable.
May 16th, 2006 at 12:14 pm
i hear that…
May 16th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
just a question…
for as long as you’ve been doing this RQ, has it seemed like when these bits of info, emails, speculations, etc appear to say similar things, that they’ve more often than not been pretty close to being what ends up happening? or do you think it’s just an instance of just a few bits of info being regurgitated and copied to where it seems like alot of different sources saying the same things…?
May 16th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
The reason that I ask that people email me with their agency name when they have a rumor is so I can figure out whether ten people from one agency are telling me something or whether those ten people actually come from three or four different agencies saying the same thing.
In my experience, once we get several agencies saying the same thing then that tends to be the way things go.
May 16th, 2006 at 1:26 pm
thanks! somewhat reassuring to know that. :)
May 16th, 2006 at 1:32 pm
RQ-My agency is continuing to not say anything other than what they heard from the CCAA in April: that waits are likely to continue to increase because of blah, blah, blah. This is a conservative agency that always flat out refuses to predict/speculate. Given that they are so close mouthed, I am a little encouraged because when I pressed the issue they did say they didn’t think the wait would go out as far as 2 years (which it easily would if referrals were to stay indefinitely at the current rate). But they did say “16 months or more” is a possibility. [My LID is Feb. 2006, by the way.]
May 16th, 2006 at 1:51 pm
I agree with the moderation as I just received an email from my agency that said due to the misconstruing of the information they have given out in the past on the internet posting boards, they are now not giving anyone any information on ANY aspect of referrals anymore. I think that stinks because I am paying them alot of money for this adoption and the information that goes along with it!
May 16th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
glassmaker 1:51-
Preach it Sister.
May 16th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
I personally think some of the agencies are just looking for an excuse to not speculate on referral timeframes. They don’t know, and it’s easier to say “we aren’t doing it because it’s been misconstrued in the past” than it is to say “we don’t know”.
Still, I am trying very hard to not irritate agencies and to assure them that we aren’t going to post their info on this site and attribute it to their name. So, in the future I will probably have to resort to moderating anon comments before they go public. I really hate to do that, because I don’t want anyone to feel that they can’t talk about possibly touchy subjects. Before our next anon posting day I hope to come up with “reasons I may moderate your posts” before we get started.
May 16th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
i think that’s pretty inconsiderate of an agency to say “because of…we’re not going to tell anyone anything”
that’s crap since they’re getting paid to help and guide us through this process. I can understand not wanting to speculate and all that, but they know good and well that people are going to share information about what’s going on with their process to friends, family, groups, etc. Discussions of timelines and possible reasons why things aren’t going the way we think they should is perfectly natural and harmless. Not divulging any super secret agency information here. If they don’t want to have things “misconstrued” then they should just do like some of the other agencies and just not speculate at all…just give the possible worst-case or provide possiblities based on recent timelines, etc.
May 16th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
You guys in the US are LUCKY!!! Here is Tasmania, our agency is a government run department, and they have very little idea as to what is going on in China. I don’t believe they have any contact with the CCAA and are still telling us that we will have our babies before Christmas (we have a Nov 22nd LID). I would love to believe this, but I really think they have absolutley NO idea what is going on. Very, very frustrating….
May 16th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
…there’s gotta be a comedy routine somewhere in all of this…. imagine code names for each agency and a certain Abott and Costello….
Well then who’s saying 12 months?
Yes.
No, the agency with the 12 months?
Who.
The 12 month agency?
Who.
Arg! What’s the 12 month agency?
No. What’s the 18 month agency.
I’m not asking you who’s on 18 months.
Who’s on 12 months.
What agency is saying 12 months?
Who.
Bah! I don’t know.
Oh… they’re saying 20 months.
duhn duhn duhnnnn…..
Boots
May 17th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Hi everyone, I am new to this board (LID: late october). I have read everything here for 3 weeks now. I am french… so my english is not that good. Ok, here are the news. I have talked to someone whom adopted three girls from China. He is a DH of an agency director (a women) and he volunteered for a lot a missions for orphanage in China (27 in 15 years). I think he is a very good source of information. Here is what he knows: there is an incredible amount of dossiers arriving each month in China. He said that It is “almost” 2 time what It is suppose to be. But, he said that the CCAA is REALLY trying to do something about It. They hired a lot of new staff. Therefore, he believes that this new staff is in training and this is a main reason why all process is slowing down (and, of course the rising of the demand). He was told that the wait WILL go up to 18 months but for the LIDs from november 2005 to now. Before that (june to october) the wait should not go over 12 months. That is what I know… Of couse, nothing is official but as I said, this man knows a lot (he even speaks fluently mandarin… so It may help him find some good sources).
Bye all.
Claude