A Canadian trade association reached out to me to let me know what they are seeing from across the boarder. And it sure does not look like the face of America we want to portray.
Since I have not had an opportunity to verify the details related to the documents given to me, I’m going to remove the specific company names from the information below relating to new allegations.
Canada Reports
In our battles with the likes of Cambridge Life Solutions and the Vortex Debt Group, we have discovered some very effective ways of alerting people who are thinking about using their services. Our most recent success was getting the CBC (the national government funded TV network) to feature a major news story on Vortex on June 2. After this story ran and people got upset, the heat was too much, and Vortex packed it in.
You can see the TV story here.
However, yesterday I received a phone call from an employee who just left Vortex. He informed me that [redacted] is back with two new companies: [redacted] (their debt settlement company) and [redacted] (their Debt Management Program company). Over the last month we have all of a sudden been having a lot of people contacting us who have been cold called by these companies. We didn’t realize that this was the new face of Vortex. Apparently [redacted] and team believe they have a 4 – 5 year window to milk Canadian consumers who they affectionately refer to as their “Canadian bacon”.
The ex-employee tells me that “they train their employees to lie and mislead” clients, they lie to their “Counsellors” when they ask why nothing ever gets done for clients, and some days they tell their sales team that the sales person with the lowest number of deals that day is going to be fired at the end of the day. When they sign people up for their debt program, they only hope that the client will stay on board long enough to make a few payments. In a contract we obtained from a former [redacted] client, it states that their fees will gobble up 100% of the client’s first payment and 75% of the client’s next 17 payments on a 48 month repayment “plan”. Some plan hey?
[redacted] and [redacted] “Counselors” are paid $10 per hour and receive a 30% commission on all debt that they bring in, and telemarketers get $8 per hour plus $1 for every person they transfer to a Counselor. However, because most employees can’t handle the “dishonesty” and having to “blatantly lie everyday”, their employee turn over rate is close to 50% per month.
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yes but keep in mind that Canadian Debt Settlement companies also use Americans like debt point which located in the usa texas
Scott Hannah over at Credit Counseling of BC is probably not happy that he is losing business to these shady American companies. Some are really targeting BC hard because of the looser licensing in requirements for debt settlement in BC. Other provinces, including Ontario have strict bonding and licensing for and the big catch apparently is that they have to have brick and mortar and be Canadian Citizens.Vortex and some others are blatantly servicing Ontario and other provinces with licensing requirements. In other words, they are operating as illegal as December in Vancouver is cold. I guess they just want to grab as much money as they can, switch names and do it over again. On one hand, I would think more Canadians would be wiser as to not give their money to an American outfit. If you live in Canada, find an established reputable settlement company in Canada! There always a bankruptcy trustee if things are just too bad.
Interesting, there was a blog post (http://blog.totaldebtfreedom.ca/2011/06/5-reasons-to-avoid-american-debt-settlement-companies/) by a Toronto based debt settlement company in Canada that talked about what a scam these guys seem to be. I see the ex-employee of theirs has verified this.
Hell hath no fury like an employee scorn.
Canadian Bacon? Really? That has to be en embellishment