Fairstone

DO NOT BE SWINDLED BY THEM! I applied for interest free credit from Ashley's furniture. My last payment of $200 after the year was up was a couple days late because I thought I had already paid it a few weeks early. As soon as I realised I had not, (literally a few days late) I paid it right away. They promptly sent me a bill for $500 in interest! 25% of my purchase! Not to mention they call and call and call trying to offer me more credit even after I declined several times. I don't know what kind of company would not offer a grace period for being a couple days late. I called and they were incredibly rude. I DO NOT recommend ever working with them!
9 years ago (22-08-2017)

This place sucks they charge more in interest then i even borrowed.. Do NOT..NOT.. apply RUN
9 years ago (07-11-2017)

applied online for a small loan. one week later, still no response. called the office to ask, has my application been looked at? they replied, yes we looked at it, not approved. well... thanks for letting me know. i really appreciated that they took the time for a quick phone call to advise this last week. and this is the same company that has sent me mail multiple times saying you've been pre-approved... clearly its junk mail at its finest
12 years ago (20-03-2015)

The woman working at this branch has pretty bad customer service. Her English had a heavy accent that was pretty hard to understand, which normally is alright but she spoke too quickly to the point where she was practically mumbling and slurring her words together. This would have also been fine, if she had given me the right information. I tried to pay my bill to CitiFinancial and called this branch as it is the one that is closest to my house. However, I had to call back a total of 3 times to get no where at all. First time I called her she told me to call Visions, the shop where I had gotten the bill from originally, to get my account information. I did that, called back about 15 minutes later to CitiFinancial and she said her systems were down and that she would give me a call back in about half an hour. She took down my name and number, but I never received a call back. I call back 2 hours later and their systems were up and running, so I asked her to help me look into my account. She then tells me that I have to physically go into the branch to pay it off. When I tried to tell her that I was given different information stating that I can pay online or through my own banking institute, she flat out said "No, you have to come into a branch or we can't do anything for you". A bit of back and forth later regarding this issue, and nothing was solved through the phone. I called the bank on Cambie street and they told me that I can pay it through the phone and through my bank as well, when I asked them about the North road branch, the representative at the Cambie branch thought it was weird. I ended up calling customer service to get some more help with the whole process, and they helped me get everything done and also recommended me to talk to the manager of the North road branch to let them know that the information was false. In short, don't go to this branch if you want anything done. The woman who works here only wants to get things done. Go with another branch or just call to their customer service. Service for CitiFinancial overall was great, with the exception of the North road branch. Thankfully I called a few other representatives first, otherwise I would have never used CitiFinancial again nor would I have recommended anyone to go here if my experience was based solely from the misinforming representative who works at the North road location.
11 years ago (15-06-2015)

Wow. I went here to take out a small loan for some unexpected expenses and I dealt with Gurvinder. DO NOT TRUST HER. I don't know whether they make commission on the loan insurance or not but she was very pushy about it. She told me that adding the loan insurance would not affect my monthly payments nor would it change the duration of the loan. I was skeptical but she kept pushing. The appointment had already taken much longer than necessary because she kept needing to redo things (one of her colleagues had started to get angry with her for having made too many mistakes) and I needed to get back to work. She told me that I could remove the insurance at any time and that what I had already paid would go towards the balance of the loan. When I tried to read the documents she kept rushing me through them and saying "this part says this so sign here". I got home later that evening and read everything through. The insurance DID increase my monthly payments and I did not want or need it. It was going to cost me nearly $500.00 per year. I called and asked Gurvinder to please remove it the very next day. She said that I'd need to fill out a form and that she would send it to me. I waited close to two weeks and called again. She said she would send it again. I kept waiting and finally I called the branch and left a message asking for the manager to call me. I waited two days and called back. I spoke with someone else and said that I would be in within the hour to sign the papers that they were supposed to have sent me. My first payment came out and it was for the amount with the insurance. I figured they just needed a little time to process it. My second payment came out and it was also for the higher amount. I called and spoke with the manager just now. First off, she could not just listen. She kept interrupting me to explain things and she would not let me finish. She told me that the insurance had been removed and that they were just keeping the payments higher to get the loan paid off faster. Now I have nothing to confirm this. I was not sent anything and normally if loan conditions (payment amounts or dates, interest rates etc) change then new paperwork is sent to the loan holder to reflect this. I haven't gotten anything. The manager was pretty intent on me opting for this. I finally pointed out that I've now asked about ten times verbally to have the insurance removed and the payment amounts reduced to what they are supposed to be without it. She finally agreed and said that I'd need to come in and sign more papers. She said that their systems are down today and that I can come in sometime next week to do this. We'll see. In all honesty I don't care about paying a little more on the actual loan each month. What has me angry is how I was tricked into the insurance in the first place, how nothing was explained to me about payments not changing when I removed it, and how people there are more concerned about talking and telling than listening. If Gurvinder had been honest and had not insisted that I take the insurance I'd have been happy. If the manager had just let me finish one sentence before jumping in then I'd have been happy. The reality of it is that this place provides terrible service and wants to do as little work as possible. Avoid this place at all costs and if you do happen to come here then allow yourself hours to complete things, read everything yourself, and say no to the scam insurance unless you actually do want it. Don't let them convince you that it's easy to remove because it's a nightmare.
12 years ago (05-03-2015)