What a Reputable Debt Help Organization Looks Like
If you are looking for help with your debts, you should choose an organization you can trust. We believe that a company or organization that helps people with their debts should meet the following criteria:
- Be an accredited member of the Better Business Bureau (BBB) with a high rating. Any consumer debtor protection company in Canada should also only have a limited number of complaints in it's BBB reviews; any more than 1 or 2 complaints is a lot.
- Be licensed and bonded by the provincial government appointed consumer protection agency in the province they are serving. If an organization isn’t licensed you have little recourse if something goes wrong.
- Be accountable to a recognized Canadian national association. National associations set minimum standards for service and ethical behaviour.
- Be a registered as a non-profit organization and approved by the Canada Revenue Agency as a charitable society. A for-profit company can offer the same services as a non-profit charitable society, but they don’t have to live up to the same standards of ethics and financial transparency. For-profit companies also charge for services that non-profits offer for free or at a very low cost.
- Have professionally accredited Counsellors.
- Have a solid track record of many years and a good reputation in all communities that they serve.
- Have the trust and cooperation of your creditors. If a debt settlement organization doesn’t have a good relationship with your creditors, it will be extremely hard for them to successfully negotiate a settlement with them.
We meet and exceed all of these criteria, and we think that every other reputable organization in our industry should too.
If you need debt help, give us a call and our professionally certified Debt Settlement Specialists or Credit Counsellors can help you explore all of your options—including a debt settlement with your creditors (we do suggest these when they make sense, but they typically only make sense for less than 2% of the people that we see). But regardless of what your situation is, if you need help with your debts, we are here to help.