Too Good to Be True!

We have a commercial here in Canada for a private health insurance company which provides extra health benefits to companies and individuals. The tag line is “Sometimes life can bite you in the butt”.

Well, it has, and the ironic thing is it isn’t health benefits I need – it is a company offering to help find me more benefits that did the biting. My previous post was about how this company ; however, now I want to tell a different story instead.

I had someone let me know that this company are scam artists. He said that they end up taking over 30% of the monies coming to you. I replied on Facebook that they disclosed this in the phone conversation yesterday and I know from other businesses who have offered to work on my behalf (or for other people I know) with the government that this is pretty standard.

What I didn’t know and have found out from some deeper investigating, is that the tax credit they are helping me with is the same one that I helped a friend with (for free) a year ago. Now I wasn’t able to get him any back taxes because he hadn’t collected any; however he is now working and the credit will definitely be in his favour.

I also found some interesting articles:

Disability Tax Credits Under Investigation

Agency Charged Woman $10,000 For Tax Claim She Could Have Filed For Free

Better Business Bureau – The National Benefit Authority Corporation

This last one, from an Ontario Better Business Bureau is particularly interesting. The company gets an A+ rating. Why? Because they have had 16 closed complaints in 3 years, 3 in the last year. Okay, how many complaints are still open? If I saw that a company had at least 16 complaints in 3 years I would be very skeptical in spite of the perfect rating.

I also read reviews on Google where people are calling the company out as scam artists, and articles by former employees who left because of ethics or were fired for not falsifying documents.

So, thank you to the follower for pointing this out for me. I am usually much more careful about things like this. But the thought of being able to provide more for my family instead of being a burden (in my mind) I guess was too tempting.

I will not be filling out the paperwork when it arrives, and will pursue the tax credit on my own as I did for my friend. If I get something from it then I will be blessed, if I don’t, at least I will know that I did things the right way.