Name Change: Hitchswitch Reviews?

If you do a search, there's a few threads about it here. All of these services charge you money to gather the forms you can collect for free. They don't do the legwork for you. You still have to mail them in or go in person. When I changed my name, there were 3 forms: social security, passport, and driver's license. The first 2 were available online. Everywhere else was fine with me emailing a scanned copy of my updated driver's license and marriage certificate.

No, ma'am. It's a complete waste of money.

View Quoted Comment Whew thank you !

Waste of money. Thank God my friend got it as a gift for me ha ha. Just some advice name changing during a pandemic. Social security will take awhile. You need to mail in docs. Could take 2-3 just to get you registered in their system then another 2-3 weeks to get your new card. After that you can do driver's license and all that.

View Quoted Comment This is so unromantic! Lol

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Gurl let me tell you. Loved marrying my husband and our day but the name change process sucked lol. I did the hitch switch and all the forms are sitting on my counter top but yeah they over charge to send you some stamped envelopes and some filled out forms. -_-.

It's pretty easy even during the pandemic. I wouldn't pay someone to do that!

View Quoted Comment I knew it sounded too good to be true!

Save me some time and research! Thanks Bride Tribe!

Unfortunately I can't recommend HitchSwitch anymore. I bought for myself in Nov 2020 after I got married in Sep 2020 and it was great. Although they aren't able to complete the process for you (duh, it's a legal process and you have to do it yourself), I bought the platinum package during the Black Friday sale and was able to get all the forms, instructions, etc. My concierge was super helpful and responsive (within a day or two) when I had a question. To me, it was worth it. My passport, SSN and license were done by April 2021.
Flash forward to Aug 2021. My best friend got married and I bought her the platinum package as a gift. HUGE MISTAKE. She's had nothing but issues. She made a mistake on her form while filling out the handwritten part and reached out to her concierge via email. Never got a response. It's been well over 2 weeks. I emailed their customer service on her behalf a few days later, also never got a response. Ended up having to comment on their Instagram to get some assistance. When I said in my comment that my friend hadn't received any assistant, they dmed me and said "That’s strange. Yes. Tell her to dm us. What’s her question." SERIOUSLY? For a company that takes pride in customer service, I'm no longer impressed. Turns out it was much easier to get another copy of the forms than we thought, but the website was difficult to navigate. Her instructions also aren't complete. Although we're in different states, her instructions were missing basic instructions like where to mail her passport paperwork and what kinds of identification to include in each part of the process. I'm so disappointed and embarrassed that I gave her HitchSwitch as a gift and will not be gifting or recommending it anymore.

View Quoted Comment Yea I decided to stop being lazy and do it the traditional way. Changing my SSN card was super easy now that’s Covid times and all forms are online anyway. I did the SSN process over the mail. Then the state ID process took me 15 mins just making an appointment at the local office.
The passport part I didn’t do yet..

But ladies just do it the traditional way.. it’s not worth it. Because don’t you have to pay anyways to process your applications through these federal agencies?

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Yes, I believe it's a $25-50 charge for a new license depending on the state, and a $150-200 charge for a new passport. My passport took about 2 months to get done, so just be aware of that when you send it in! And ALWAYS get tracking numbers for anything you have to mail.

The idea of HitchSwitch was to make it easy to get the forms and instructions, but their quality and customer service has gone downhill.

View Quoted Comment I can’t believe they would charge someone to get forms when we can download forms independently online ourselves for free ….

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The idea is good, but they've had some issues. Government websites tend to be difficult to navigate (and calling the DMV, at least in MA is impossible) and for me, I didn't have a printer so having the forms mailed to me was helpful. You fill out most of the information online and then the forms can be printed/mailed to you with the information filled out, so that's also helpful if you have poor handwriting/prefer it typed out so it's neater. And the included instructions were really helpful with understanding what to send for each change. There's three issues with them - 1) very pricey 2) the customer service has gone downhill... 3) the quality of the instructions has gone down too

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Gosh so glad I am not the only one who has had a terrible experience! (not glad your friend wen through that though, of course!!)

I bought the middle of the line package and received it with errors and it has been 3 weeks now of me leaving voicemails and sending emails and I have not gotten one single response at all...I have literally never written a bad review for anything at all, but I really do think that is absolutely ridiculous. I will try DM'ing them or commenting on their instagrams to see if I can get their attention.... I am not even looking for assistance on the issue anymore, I just want a full refund.

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They sent me instructions on how she could get another copy of her forms and make any changes if necessary (she printed the second copy herself). I copied them below for you!! I'm so sorry you're having difficulty

Once logged into your dashboard, please follow the instructions below:

Click the Name Change Orders button.
Click the View Details arrow, which will take you to the Name Change Forms page.
Scroll to the bottom of the page, and click Click Here, which will allow you to make changes to your name change form.
After making the changes and confirming the information is correct, you will click the Update Your Name Change Form button.
Then click the Name Change Orders button again to download your new forms!

Honestly my experience with HitchSwitch has not been great. When I first made my order, I clearly outlined 1 address for mailing, and 1 for permanent (I wasn't moving for several months) but the receipt of my order stated my papers would be mailed to the permanent address I don't live at yet. Customer service was a ghost town, took multiple emails to get ahold of anyone and when I did they weren't super helpful. Eventually I got it sorted. Then I get my paperwork, and then an email saying my order had been refunded. I never asked for a refund or for a cancellation so I responded, and the only response I got back was a PayPal invoice for my order $ again. So I pay the fee again. Then going through my paperwork, I found a typo that means I need to re-print my forms. I log into my account, but none of my forms are in there. Now I have to assume that because someone refunded my order, the paperwork attached to my account got cleared? So now I have to go track down each form from the original agency manually. I might as well have done all of this from the start and saved myself the hassle and money. Not worth it in my opinion, others may have been luckier.

DO NOT USE HITCHSWITCH! I wish I had read a thread like this before going through with the service. I paid for the Platinum service and everything started off smoothly. I wanted to make my maiden name my middle name, and I was instructed that it may or may not work, but I could give it a try. I was told that if it was not going to work, it would be rejected at the social security card step (step 1), so I decided to give it a shot and had no issues getting my updated social security card with my maiden name as my middle name. As such, I proceeded with the process of getting my passport updated (per the direction of my Hitch Switch "concierge"). That also went smoothly and I received my updated passport with my maiden name as my middle name. I then went to update my license as a final step in the process, and after getting the run-around from the DMV (with no direction from my concierge despite asking), I was finally told that I in fact could NOT make my maiden name my middle name, and I would need to start the process over to re-update my social security card and passport to make my middle name back to my original middle name. I tried emailing my concierge again for direction and received no response. I then tried calling the passport agency directly and was told the only way to make this update would be to get a court order name change. I am now out the $100 from the HitchSwitch package, $110 to update my passport to a name that wasn't legally allowed, and will need to spend at least $250 in court fees to legally change my name BACK to what it was to begin with. All the while, no support for HitchSwitch or accountability on their end. To say I am frustrated is an understatement.

Oh, and the kicker - I live in NJ which is where the HitchSwitch headquarters are based. If they don't even know enough about the law in their own home state, I would hate to think of how misdirected they must be in other states. BEWARE before you give your money over to this scam of a company.

View Quoted Comment I would never pay someone to do nothing. What exactly does the service do? We still have to do the leg work and run around to these agencies no?

No, I just had to redo my passport paperwork by hand because they wouldn't accept the paperwork HitchSwitch sent to me. It was deemed to have been printed too small.