I am enrolled in the pooled trust spend-down with assistance from one of the Maimonides Cancer Center's social workers in 2018 or 2019. It has been a blessing for me as I have advanced breast cancer and am on a fixed budget with SSDI.
I have had no bad experiences with CDR in Rochester. But one has to take responsibility and keep watch for what you send in to get paid and when the payment is due. So you need to keep an eye on your own expenses that you are submitting to check that they are paid on a timely basis.
I have occasionally interacted with Marsha Sweet, Assistant Director, at CDR. She has always answered my questions quickly and has always been polite and professional.
It is NOT a saving plans so you need to try and use the money you have in there every month realizing that they charge a $20 fee (which is minimal compared to other places). Once you pass away, or if you wind up in nursing home or hospice, it will be the end of the pooled trust bc you no longer have bills to pay.
They are human and make errors occasionally like all of us. But each participant needs to check their own account to ensure bills are being paid on a timely basis. I have not had one issue with them, and phone calls/emails are responded to promptly.
Realize once one passes, CDR keeps whatever money is in the pooled trust spend-down to help others in the same position. YOU DO NOT GET WHAT IS LEFT OVER BACK.
I am grateful for the work they do.
Minus zero star. Everyone's negative reviews have happened to me for the past 7 years. No concept of paying your bills on time. No communiction. No matter how much time, effort, and double checking on my part they continually screw me out of money with late fees for bills not paid, money taken out of my bank account but not paid any place and on and on. Talking with them makes zero difference. You can't get anything straightened out by speaking to them. They are supposed to be helping people who are diabled but instead the stress from trying to deal with them makes me physically ill.
Never has my check for rent print out and ready - have to call MULTIPLE times and fight for MY money to go out for my rent, not sure I’d recommend this to anyone - if you have other alternatives I would do that instead - disorganized and sloppy. Blames everything on being short handed, but I see on these reviews that this has been going on long before the pandemic - what do disabled people do if they can not advocate for themselves here??? I feel sorry for those folks
This Scam is nothing but a SCAM. They have never paid bills on time or correctly. They mail checks with wrong account numbers on them purposely. Then they cancel the checks after mailing them. This resulted in bad check fees once the payee figured out which account the cancelled check was for. CDR has caused un necessary late fees by making errors on purpose and when you ask that they pay a late fee they created. They take the additional money wrongfully from your account. They even paid one of my bills with their general Credit card then had moneys returned while taking the full amount from my sub account and not returning the returned funds to line their pockets. The greedy Person in charge needs about 40 years in state prison for fraudulent creative book keeping practices and CDR needs to be shut down fully. This has gone on way too long.
It would take a day for me to reorganize their business practices and stop all of their timely, costly, and I imagine HR issues. Instead, every bill I submit requires countless calls to address their failures in handling MY MONEY. There are no other pools for me to switch to and I suffer as a result. This is all entirely avoidable and does not cost salary increases to fix.
CDR has mispaid alot of of my husbands bills in the past two years. the program is based in Rochester ny.it can only be as good as the people that work for it and the one is terrible! the do not call back and you are not allowed to be connected with the direct people that handle your funds that does not seem fair since they are suppose to be helping the disabled who cannot always speak for themselves. when you try to get things to run smoothly you can die trying. or someone to turn to fo HELP.there has to be a better way!
CDR POOL TRUST Never informs you if you submitted bills to be paid incorrectly Instead weeks go by & you realize CDR DID NOT FOLLOW UP ON THE SUBMISSION. When you call after being on hold for 20 minutes they tell you they “never got the bill request & know it was not complete. HOW COULD they KNOW YOU SUBMITTED something “WRONG” if they did not get it? THATS TOO MUCH DOUBLE TALK FOR ME. Always change the Requirements, which seem incongruent between reps, very painful experience.
Actually 0 stars. They will steal your money. If you die and have any money in your account that has not yet been dispersed It does not go to family. Can’t be used for funeral expenses. Doesn’t go to your child that may desperately need it. Keep in mind they are funded by the taxpayers of NYS and claim to be a non- profit. BS.
I didn't even want to give this company even one star. they are horrible. I have been working with the Pooled Trust department part of the Center of Disability Rights for over a year now and not even one month have my bills been paid on time and for this reason I have been forced to pay numerous late fees and my credit which was formerly decent is shot to hell now. I am about to cancel my account and seek out another way to qualify for Medicaid. And don't even try to talk to their customer service because you will half ass answers to your questions by very rude people. For a place that is supposed to help the disabled they fall far short.
Mary Frank
After a long wait I was connected to a person who did not know the information was asking. I was asking what the fee schedule is. I was placed on hold and given different information, so I asked to speak to a senior person who would know the answer to my question. I was rudely hung up on!
I worked for the center for disability rights for almost 2 years in the pooled trust department. I have never been treated with such disrespect at a job. This place professes to help people with disabilities yet treats their own employees with disabilities with rudeness and disrespect. The fire hard working people simply because they try to do the right things, but because I takes money out of the CEO's pockets they get fired for it. The pooled trust is nothing but a way for them to line their pockets at CDR. They hide money and bonuses by calling it rent. The trust will never be run properly because the money that is suppose to go to better the trust goes in the pockets of greedy people. Question their accounts practices and try to do things the right way they will fire you so fast so bullcrap reasons. Try to help the consumers and actually make the trust run better out the door you go, because they don't care about the consumers, they just care about the money the trust brings in.
In 9/2014 I opened a supplemental needs/ pooled trust with the Center for Disability Rights, Inc. in Rochester, NY. Between that time and 6/2015 when I finally ended up having to cancel it they made chronic monthly errors in paying my bills for me. Every month my bills were either paid late, not paid at all or paid incorrectly. Spoke to their customer service advocate on quite a number of occasions but the problem did not get corrected. I also contacted the Supervisor 3 times regarding my complaints and never received a response. Not only did I acquire and have to pay late fees due to their complete negligence but I'm sure it also affected my prior perfect credit rating.
Review from Guidestar