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CST CONSULTANTS

287 Oxford St. E., London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 1V3

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CST CONSULTANTS Reviews (%countItem)

Scam artists
They prey on new parents and guilt trip you into "doing whats right for your child".
I put $3,300.00 into the savings fund, eventually started reading bout the withdraw process and no I can recieve back $1,300, because of "Enrolment fees".
Garbage company should be ashamed of themselves.

Do you enjoy receiving low returns on your investment and spending hours on hold?
CST provides a poor return on your funds with even worse customer service. They are currently facing a lawsuit, "alleging that the sales charges or enrolment fees they have been charging in Quebec are unlawful and, in some cases, abusive." This class action lawsuit, if successful, will likely continue across all of Canada.

You can easily achieve far greater returns through any financial institution's target fund RESP. You'll also discover that it is impossible to get ahold of CST to retrieve your funds in a timely manner, or discuss issues/concerns. As I write this review, I have been on hold for 1hr 30min to reach a customer service agent and still no answer. This is a typical response time in the "off-season". We recently decided to stop investing in our CST RESP, take the penalty and transfer the fund to another organization. Unfortunately this has proven impossible thus far.

After waiting on hold for hours to query why our funds hadn’t been released for over a month, CST claimed that they didn’t receive the transfer request and refused to contact the financial institution to discuss what went wrong. CST also refused to provide a direct contact number for the institution to call to resolve the issue and was told that they would have to wait in the hour+ long queue to reach their main switchboard to discuss this further. We resent the request but were unable to reach anyone at CST to confirm that it had gone through the second time despite hours on hold. Email response times are 2-3 weeks according to CST's automated phone message where no-one is available to answer the phone either. This is in late December and throughout January when applications for funding would be at a minimum. After finally reaching someone weeks later, we were told that our funds won't be transferred for up to 60 days following the request and again claimed that they hadn't received the request from more than a month prior. RBC on the other hand, transferred our account within a week and was available to answer the phone in under 10min anytime we called. We can’t imagine the hassle and frustration that we’d experience in actually applying for funds for education along with all the other customers during the peak season.

I hope that this review will prevent you from getting sucked into the high pressure sales tactics, and if you have, I recommend to take the penalty, stop investing in CST and transfer your funds to another financial institution ASAP. Chances are the class action will reimburse your penalty in the future and even if it costs you now, you'll get a greater overall return elsewhere and have your child's education in a safe company that's not being threatened in the courts.
Do you enjoy receiving low returns on your investment and spending hours on hold?

+1

You want to do the correct thing for your child's education. It's not this. They prey on your wanting to do the right thing.

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C.S.T charged me for savings plans for my 4 children. Monthly payments into there savings accounts. I was charged fees up to 600$ each savings.
On March 2012 Ihad a salesman come to my home and convince my husband and I top start up savings for our childrens education. *** time but he convinced us anything would help even savings of 10$ a month so we agreed and opened 3 accounts with them at first contributing 10$ a month and I raised it to $28 a month and in 2014 added my 4th child to savings plan. In February 2018 I put a hold on my savings payment due to household expenses. I called c.s.t in June.2018 and was told I wasn't done paying my fees. I was very confused as to how I could have fees when all my husband and I were doing was investing what we could financial for are childrens future. She then stated it was up to around $600 for each childs savings account. On March 22 2012 the salesman never stated once that we were to pay fees of so high for each account. Starting savings per child at 10-28$ per month would not be worth it if we were charged almost $600 each child before anything would be actually saved in there education. C.S.T said it was always provided to us in paper are fees but I never read anything that said plan fees etc. As I write this Im broken as thi88s company can just take money from low income families trying to help children have some money for education. As of today I have cancelled these accounts plan to open with a bank who will never take my childrens education money. My refund per child is only $208.44, $740.91, $681.66,$ 602.49. *** This refund simply isn't enough they owe much more of are money back to us to scam young parents and take from young childrens futures isn't right had it been clear that we were to pay this company all this many per childs savings is just wrong wrong.My husband and I are Sadie Sleiman Van Roie & Victor Van Roie. We deserve are money back for are children.

Desired Outcome

We would like all or much more of are contributes for are 4 children refunded by check back to us and this company should state clearly what there fees are to each person they scam into there savings plans it is wrong to take money from young childrens futures very wrong.

+1

If I'd have known 16 years ago what I know now, I'd never invest in this product. It is very limited, and if your child has any issues and cannot go to University, you can kiss a good portion of your initial investment goodbye. So not only do we have the issue of children with problems learning, we also lose out on our hard earned money. I would never invest in this product.

+1

Parents, watch out for this company. You can easily do better for your children by investing pretty much anywhere. Be aware that the income generated annually is less than 2%. Understand that for the first year and a half all of your contributions go towards Sales charges that may or may not be refunded to you. They make no guarantees.

Also be aware that if you decide to terminate your plan with CST, that they keep ALL income generated on your contributions. After 11 years with CST, my sales charges of $3,515.80 are still more than the income of $3,121.60 that I have made on over $25,000 worth of contributions. Over 11 years.

***

From one parent to another, please avoid this company. You are trying to do the right thing for your children and you have their best interests at heart. CST does not. ***

As young parents at the time my husband and I should have examined the program more closely, and I take full responsibility for these actions. My lack of clarity on the program allowed CST to *** money that I had set aside for my daughter's future. We'll recover and fix it for her, however my hope is that these words can save even one other family from discovering this too late.

We cancelled our contract with CST in January, 2018. We lost about 60% of our balance (which is to be expected when cancelling a contract) but now we are in the middle of April and still have not recieved our balance due. They took 4 weeks to send us a form via Canada Post because "it's not possible to email it out." Then when it came, it said nothing had to be done and we would recieved our balance via direct deposit by March 7 if they didn't hear we wanted to reinstate our policy. When March 10 rolled around and we still had not recieved our balance, we contacted our sales rep. He said the form (letter) that was sent to us needed to be signed and sent back. My husband said there was no where to sign on the letter, and the rep said "Oh, you're supposed to make a line on the bottom yourselves and sign it." We asked them to resend it because the form was lost while we were moving the month before and he said he would send one out asap. Well a few weeks go by and still nothing, so my husband calls the head office again and says we haven't recieved the original letter again, could you please confirm the address it was sent to? And this rep apologizes that it has taken so long and volunteers to email us a copy to make sure we get it. (Thought that was IMPOSSIBLE according to the last rep, but okay.) So we get the email and send it back the same day, (it was the exact same as the one sent to us earlier, but surprisingly this one had a legitimate line to sign on for both of us). The form stated we would recieve our balance via direct deposit last Monday. Now it is a week later and we haven't recieved anything still so we called, AGAIN. They said the best they can do is send us a cheque (what happened to that direct deposit on the form we signed?!) And it was sent out on Friday. So now we wait, again, to see if anything actually shows up this time. This experience has left a horrible impression and if our balance is not received soon we will seeking legal advice as to what to do next.

This is a very poor vehicle for saving for college. It charges an upfront fee of over $2000 and if your child is unable for whatever reason, to pursue university (which some cannot), you will lose this outright. Also, you will lose grant money if you do not complete your degree in 4 years & they keep whatever you can't use. Also, the interest on their "investments" is so low, almost any other saving vehicle would have been a better investment than this. It is a poor product and I would not recommend it to anyone.

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Address: 287 Oxford St. E., London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 1V3

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+1 (519) 472-1369


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