How to Choose a Surrogacy Agency and Avoid Scams

Choosing an agency is the single most important decision in your entire surrogacy journey. You entrust the agency with tens of thousands of dollars and, more importantly, years of hoping for a child – often while communicating only through a messenger with someone in another country. That is exactly why this field attracts both careless middlemen and outright scammers. The good news: they are not hard to spot if you know what to check. Below is an honest checklist you should run on any agency – including us.

Verify the legal entity

A real agency has a registered company and names it without being asked: full legal name, country of registration, identification number. In Georgia, any company can be checked in the public business registry in a couple of minutes, free of charge. If there are no company details on the website or in correspondence, and the contract is offered "with a private individual" or only "after the first payment" – you are not dealing with an agency, just with someone on the internet.

For transparency: Bloom Fertility Agency is a registered Georgian company, Bloom Reproductive Agency LLC, identification code 405864042. These details appear in every contract we sign.

Contract before money – never after

The only safe sequence is: you read the contract, ask questions, negotiate changes – and only then pay. The contract must describe the program stages, timelines, the full list of services, the payment schedule, the agency's liability and the refund procedure if the program is interrupted. A "trust-based" arrangement, a contract "sent after the deposit", or a half-page document are all reasons to stop.

Also check who exactly signs each document: the agency agreement, the clinic agreement and the surrogate agreement are separate documents with different parties. A scheme where one intermediary collects all the money for everything, in cash, gives you no legal protection at all.

Transparent pricing with no surprises

A trustworthy agency breaks the budget down line by line: surrogate compensation, the medical part, legal support, pregnancy care, delivery, overheads – and tells you honestly what is fixed and what may vary, and within what limits. Two extremes should worry you: a price far below the market (a full program in Georgia in 2026 starts at roughly 55,000 US dollars – going much cheaper is impossible without cutting corners on the surrogate or the medicine) and a vague price that will be "clarified along the way".

Who handles the medical part

An agency is a coordinator, not a clinic. Ask directly: which clinic runs the protocols, who is the treating fertility physician, what licence and results does the clinic have. "We have our own doctors, details later" is a red flag. You have the right to know the clinic's name before signing anything, to check it independently and, ideally, to speak with the physician before the program starts.

Real people, a real office and how they answer

Ask for a video call with the team. Scammers avoid video and phone calls; a real team does not. Notice whether your questions are answered in substance: clear answers to uncomfortable questions (what happens if the transfer fails? if the pregnancy is lost? if we want to leave the program?) are a sign of experience. Evasiveness and pressure – "decide quickly, the donor is leaving" – are signs of selling at any cost.

Reviews and reputation

Look for reviews outside the agency's own website: Google, independent forums, parent communities. One or two negative reviews among many is normal – a perfect reputation does not exist. A complete absence of any trace of the company online, combined with claims of "ten years of experience", is strange. It is also fair to ask for contact with a couple who completed a program and agreed to answer questions: a serious agency has someone to show.

Red flags: the short list

You are asked to send money to a personal card or in cryptocurrency. The legal entity or the clinic is not named. You are promised a "100% guaranteed baby" – no such guarantee exists in medicine; honest agencies talk about probabilities and about what repeated attempts include. You are rushed to pay a deposit "while the discount lasts". A video call is refused. Direct questions are never answered in writing – everything is "better discussed by phone". Any one of these is a reason to be careful; two or more are a reason to walk away.

The checklist before your first payment

1. The legal entity is verified in the registry. 2. The contract is read before any payment, with all services and timelines in it. 3. The budget is itemised and you know what is fixed. 4. You know the clinic and the physician. 5. You have had a video call with the team. 6. Independent reviews exist. 7. Uncomfortable questions were answered in writing, in substance. If all seven boxes are ticked, you are most likely dealing with a trustworthy agency and can discuss the program with confidence.

At Bloom we are happy to walk through this checklist with you using our own documents – just message us on WhatsApp and ask any of these questions at your first free consultation.