Accentus Inc.
Reviews and Complaints

Hi all, It is not only Accentus but there are a lot of companies like that who even pay less than that and they do not commit minimum wage. It is the trend now, outsource your work and increase your profits that is what these companies are doing. I applied to Accentus in 2011 and never heard back for almost a year. Last year, HR called me asking if i am still interested. I went ahead and said yes. Everything was being set up, when they come up with the issue that their platform does not support AMD computers...ah...thankfully i did not buy a new computer and even if i did, nobody would have gotten back to me yet. I called them several times after that to at least try the software on my computer and if it does not work, then i will probably think of buying a new one. Well, i never heard back from them and now I am really not interested. Moreover, after coming to this forum I would not work for them. Thanks guys.

Accentus contacted me 7 months ago to work for them. I initially didn't respond to them due to the comments here. They kept calling, so finally I talked to the girl. She was very nice, professional, I have no complaints about her. She hired me immediately and sent out the contracts. Of course, I didn't start until two months later. It took them about a month to get their "credentials", have the IT guy set up the system (which I'm fairly certain is screwing up my computer, as it was brand new right before I started for them). This wasn't a big deal as I was working full time at the time, but I was moving so I wanted to be working and not have to worry about finding a new job when I moved.
Anyways, so after two months everything was set up. I was put into gating. I had two team leads--both were fine. The one could be a ### at times, but she seemed more stressed out than anything so I didn't take it too personally. I was in gating for probably two months before I had to ASK to be taken out of it. I had been getting 100% on all of my reports. They agreed to take me out of it and everything was going great. I was making a decent amount of money but found it difficult to stay focused all day every day to make the amount I need to live off of, so I got a part-time job two days a week, and I was making the same as I was working full time in hospital between the two.
I was very happy. Then out of the blue, the account I was working on ended. It took them another 3 weeks to get the credentials for my new account...so three weeks without pay of any kind, and then I got placed back into gating for the new account. I have now been in gating for probably another month, however this team lead is so picky that I don't foresee getting out of gating any time soon. I'm talking tiny, tiny nit picky errors. I type them, review them, put the blanks in where I don't understand, and I am yet to get over 96% (you need to get 98 for a week straight before getting out of gating).
So now I am allowed to type 15 minutes a day, and each day I am more and more discouraged to the point that I end up job searching instead of typing. I cannot live off their 20 dollars a day, not even with a part-time job, nor should they be allowed to do that.
The first account was great once I got out of gating, but I am sick of never making any money. I wanted to work from home so badly, but by now, I am willing to take just about any job that will pay the bills.
I wish I trusted my gut and never contacted them back to begin with. They have put me in the hole with their false promises. Even if I did get out of gating again soon, I can only imagine something else would come up that would stop the work flow. I have never been so disappointed in a company.

okay, now we have complaints and in Canada we are working as contractors. They now moved our team of about 40 people to a new system and from one day to the next tell us that even the transitional training fee for training on new systems/accounts is being waved. We are now expected to work for 4/hr for the next couple of weeks until we get used to the system and the system flaws are being ironed out. They give us prep talks so we keep going, slaving away. Yes, I know we are contractors but changing rates like that and make us work for less than minimum wage. How can we get this changed. I already contacted several institutions that deal with labor law and nobody seem to be able to help.

I'm sorry to hear that Accentus has expanded beyond Canadian borders and is how making the lives of our neighbouring MTs difficult! Unfortunately for us Canadians, many hospitals are dumping in-house MTs for Accentus due to cost savings, which is similar to American doctors sending transcription to India. The virtual machine crashes frequently and I was lucky to have a day where I spent less than an hour on misc. stuff without getting compensation, like logging no dictation files, sitting around waiting for IT help, waiting for the team lead to get back to me on something, or waiting for a job in my inbox. Unit clerks don't work for free during lulls, how come we do?

I worked for Accentus for multiple years. I have done medical transcription for over 30 years. I used to make a good wage and enjoyed staying home to work. Then they dropped the wages by 50% and promised that voice recognition would increase our production to the point of having no reduction in our income and probable gains in income. Their voice recognition doesn't work good enough to attain what they promised, Many doctors do not speak good enough English for VR to be able to produce a good enough draft. All other complaints on this board are legitimate. I went from $1.25 per minute transcription to $0.575 per minute VR and $1.15 transcription. They need to realize that without MTs they will not be able to fulfill their contracts with the hospitals. I honestly think they need a wake up call. I have switched to another company that pays slightly better and am happy with where I am. I also worked as a team lead for Accentus and guess what ladies, team leads get slammed for any poor work the MTs do so many of them filter this back down the pipe to the MTs that they get in trouble because of. I never did this, I was always aware that the best way to get ahead was to be considerate of my team of MTs and to help them and encourage them the best that I could. Many of my girls still check in with me on a personal note and tell me how much they miss me as their team lead, and yes because they are being treated like [censored] by their new team leads. So please don't group all TLs in the same category. There are good ones and there are bad ones, same as there are good MTs and there are bad MTs. Unfortunately all companies exist to make their owners money, this means the owners get all the profits and those that do the work for them get peanuts. Accentus is no different, but I too agree Labour Boards should be able to help with this situation of working for less than minimum wage. The job of MT is a dying job. You are all riding the last slide down the hill to being obsolete. If they can improve voice recognition to the point of not needing MTs to check the work then this will happen and there will be no more MTs. So find another job or go back to school to learn a new career.

For the most part Accentus is a good company to work for. However, the pay does really lack and they are continuing to hire girls at lower and lower rates. it doesn't matter how fast you are, there is just no making more than $8.00/hour which is far less than minimum wage. Accentus is whining because they are losing all their seasoned MTs but they do nothing in return to make us want to stay either. We need to go somewhere where we can make a decent living. So what if we are working from home and can set our hours we still have to make the commitment and they still want an above level of accuracy. If they want the excellent reports and the MTs to take their time to ensure accuracy then the contractor should be compensated for it. As a contractor we have a right to set the wage amount not them. That is the one flaw in the MT industry across the board, not just with Accentus but with all Transcription Companies. They say how much we have to produce and some even try to state when but then manage to word things just well enough that they get away with calling us contractors as opposed to MTs. I truly believe things are going to get worse before they get better. All MTs need to come together and work to fight for our rights before things get even worse and even worse... a patient's life becomes affected.

Lady_in_Boots, your holier-than-thou attitude is sickening. People like YOU are part of the problem. The reason people are complaining here is because this is a complaints board, or did you miss that? Or have you conveniently ignored comments from others explaining that 200 minutes a week is not possible due to their constant computer issues, Accentus managers capping dictation limits, and then overstaffing? I am happy you can make a "lovely little living off Accentus" since you are one of the few that can, but for the many of us who can't because of Accentus's incompetence, we are warning other potential ICs of this company's pitfalls. And, for the record, your complaint about us whining is hilarious because YOU ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT US. Funny how these loyal Accentus people have so much time on their hands that they can post disparaging and foul remarks about "victims" while still racking up big paychecks.

I've worked for Accentus for years now. I have no major issues to complain about. Yes, the odd nutball works for Accentus and may even have a team-lead position, but overall, the other employees are friendly and helpful. If you want an hourly rate, with benefits and sick time and pension, etc. then get off your butt and head out into the work force. Contract work and self-employment means its up to you to provide your own perks. All these complaint boards make it sound like Accentus is the worst place to contract to, yet I've had a completely different, positive experience. If you want money, sit down and work. Its not that challenging to have a $200 day, but you're not gonna make that unless you're sitting in front of your computer and actually working. Very occasionally my work flow runs dry, but I've never been told I CANNOT work. 200 min/week is NOT hard to accomplish and the reality is, even though you're "self-employed", you still ultimately have someone you have to answer to, i.e. the one who signs your paycheck...unless you OWN the company, there are rules, get over it, its a grown-up world. I really can't believe the ridiculousness of some of the complaints here, what are you, 12? For all the whiners and complainers, no one is forcing you to work for Accentus...if you're not happy, move along, after all, you are "self-employed". Perhaps a hospital or office setting is more your style, and I encourage all of you to look for that, but be warned, in my 23 years experience as an MT, I see that the wave of the future has arrived and will continue to evolve to the work-at-home outsourcing concept more and more. I make a lovely little living off Accentus and the write-offs against my mortgage and other expenses easily balance out not having healthcare and other benefits, that for 100 bucks a month, I can provide for my own self. Quit being victims and change your own situation if you dislike so much. More time typing, less time whining = better living.

Our government is pushing outsourcing so much...I hope they will not go bankrupt when we are all on welfare. It will be nice to see the young folks working in our old jobs though...for peanuts, but sad knowing they will never own a home or get ahead in life. I have worked my entire life to get outsourced. yay.

What I find truly disturbing is how they come into the hospitals and take our jobs away. The contractors they are using for our site are not good in general. We see so many errors that are shocking to be honest. We get in serious trouble if we have errors and these people keep on typing. Eventually we will not have jobs here we have been pretty much told. The fat cats are trying to save a few bucks (our CEO makes an outrageous salary). The Accentus fat cats get paid well too, no doubt, but pay their contractors peanuts. Then when they need carpal tunnel surgery (because to make minimum wage they have to type at warp speed and they are paid only on production) there are no sick benefits to be off for the surgery. Sad sad sad. I would rather be a Walmart greeter and have more dignity doing so then working for Accentus. Slimeballs.

I disagree with the above poster.

No, we NEVER had control of our earnings. Team leads can place a limit on individual production, whether it be 10 files transcribed/day or no more than 30 minutes of transcription/day, to ensure they were competent to be "let loose" to transcribe whatever minutes they wanted.

BUT...Accentus is NOT obligated to provide the ICs with a minimum of 200 minutes of dictation each week, yet the ICs *were* obligated to do a minimum of 200 dictated minutes/week or else be charged rental fees for the software and foot pedal. ICs are NOT ABLE to do this when the work slows down of if, as in my account, Accentus hires too many ICs and there is not enough work to go around. We have NO control over this.

ICs CANNOT work when the virtual machine goes kaput. This happens OFTEN.

Accentus "employs" the IC to do a number of things for free that are NOT in the contract. Logging "No Dictation" files, for instance. If this is not done, the IC cannot move on to upload another dictation and transcribe that.

Actually, Accentus is one of the better paying MTSOs in Canada and better than all of the MTSOs in the US. The only way you will make minimum wage to begin with is if you work on-site at a hospital or clinic. All home-based medical transcription jobs are production-based rather than paid by the hour. In other words, YOU have control of how much you make. You agreed to the wage when you got hired so you cannot say that you did not know that it was a production-based job. No where in the contract does it state that they will pay you an hourly rate. This is why most hospitals and clinics give their business to MTSOs...it is cheaper for them as they do not have to pay an hourly rate or give benefits to employees. They just pay the MTSO a base rate either per dictated minute or by typed line and the MTSO pays the MT either by the dictated minute or typed line

Accentus has been taken over by American company, Nuance, and has gone downhill since. It targets people in areas of low or no employment, and of course people who are unable to be out in the regular workforce (disabled) behaving like a legitimate transcription company, but in fact requiring little transcription, and mostly the cleaning up of the notoriously poor Dragon recordings. The audit finds that the work is good but then the individual is docked by their supervisor for this, that and the other so-called error, yet all you do is strictly confidential, so transcribers can't compare notes to find out if this system is consistent. The pay amounts to well below the minimum wage and the encouragement is zero. The last concern is the patient. The notion expressed above, that if the transcriber will only speed up, there is money to be made, puts doctor and patient in jeopardy, but accuracy is not the goal of Nuance; money-making is. I have a good friend who supervised for them until she quit in disgust who says that anyone contemplating this joke called a job should consider this company to be the highest form of scam slave labour and look elsewhere - ANYWHERE else. They even write their own positive reviews (bogus). Report this company to your MLAs, MPs, Ombudsmen and fellow MTs. You are worth more than to be used by a company that keeps your hard-earned money and scolds you as if you were a child. The schools are in on it. Forget it.

If you're not making enough, it's time to speed up, ladies and gents!

I agree. I understand there are many complaints about everything in life. But a job that you can work from home is worth it to me.
If all the complainers werent complaining about this theyd be complaining about gas prices every day or the traffic or the long commute to work
blah blah blah.
A job is a job!

I have been with Accentus for almost 2 years now. I have never experienced any of the things I have read here. I was and am treated with respect, and I absolutely love the lady who trained me and now another lady who is my team lead. I found them to be nothing but helpful and always there for me when I had questions. I am sorry you had such negative experiences but I can not agree with you. I love my job and yes, some days I have trouble with some of the doctors accents, but I have found the more I transcribe them the better I am getting. I make good money and I look at it as a trade off when other people doing other jobs make more than I do. I do not have to drive to my job, I do not have to buy gas, I do not have to park, I do not have to leave home, I do not have to buy clothes for my job. I can show up in my night gown and no one cares. So again, very sorry for your experience.

I just started with Accentus. I was told to contact my trainer anytime if I had any issues or questions. I felt confident. Till I actually emailed her asking for an answer. First She didnt reply, then when she did reply, she said "Its very disappointing that you did not write things down when we spoke on the phone training". Ummmm hello? We spoke for 2.5 hours, and how was I to write everything down as we spoke? I did take notes, but the question I was asking, we had never even discussed. Also, as I was working on my reports today, I got a Dr. that simply said "use the standard dictation for the said procedure".. are you kidding? What standard dictation? And now I am paid for a 0.21m dictation that tells me to go find a report that could potentially be 10 mind long? No thanks.