Our department is being outsourced to Transcend. Does anyone work for them? Has anyone ever worked for them? What can you tell me about them - good and bad? I have 17 years experience and very uncomfortable with this transition.

Hi Ears,

I don't know anything personally about them, but I was in a similar situation to yours about 6 months ago. I had been an MT for over 18 years. Our department was outsourced and we were offered jobs with the new company (it wasn't Transcend). They made a lot of promises I knew they would not be able to follow through on, just because I've been around awhile and I mostly lurk in the cyberworld of transcription.

They told us that we would be doing the same work as we had been doing (that didn't even last a day--they did the stats (maybe 10% of the workload) and the rest was sent overseas). About 10 of the 23 MTs in our department went with them. They told them they could work whatever shift they wanted and no weekends (very few services do that)--what happened was after they started they would have no work on Monday and sometimes Tuesday mornings which would then, in effect, force them to work one weekend day every week (which was the company's objective) just to make some money.

About the money--they paid almost half of what we were making at the hospital, plus their health insurance was 2-1/2 times the cost of what we were paying at the hospital (less than $400 a month for my husband and me at the hospital, to $1000 a month for less coverage with that service).

I sat down and figured out how much I would make if I did 6000 lines a week and it was half of what I was making before taking into account the difference in the health insurance, so I didn't take it. I can make that much money working at a lot of places where I am not required to keep up with the profession like I have to do with MT. Long story short, in the past 6 months at least four people have left because they were making so little and/or not able to make production, so I know I made the right decision.

I guess what I am saying is that you need to be very wary.

Found this on the internet when I googled Transcend transcription reviews (no quotes).

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Transcend-Services-Reviews-E1215.htm

Hope that helps!

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not everything you read on the internet was objectively written. I guess, the main question is, when you realized that you are having trouble with your employer, have you tried speaking to the concerned people or the management? If not, then I guess, both of you have a problem. You are not addressing it directly and they (your employer) are not sensitive enough with their employees.

Try to talk first and if nothing happened, make a review about the company. Don’t forget to include the positives about them ‘coz they deserve it and you chose them over the other employers because you saw something in them. I think this is the most effective way to get their attention. Just my opinion.

I agree with you, Zara Mari, that everything on the internet is not objective. In that vein, I will post the link below, which are testimonials from that company.

http://www.transcendservices.com/employee_testimonials.asp

Again, these could be suspect also.

I do know that the majority of big services are paying (per line) within a penny or 2 of what I was making working at a service 16 years ago. This was confirmed by my former supervisor, who told me that it is pretty much the same, as well as the company that took over the transcription department where I used to work.

I personally found it difficult to go from 14 cents a line down to 8 doing the same work but meeting higher production standards, but that is just the nature of the profession now compared to years ago. I don't feel that MTs are paid nearly enough for the knowledge they are required to have to perform well in this profession.

Of course I am "old school" and newbies have no memory of the "good old days," so 8 cents a line might be fine for them.