So I get this call the other day out of the blue from a woman who used to run the IT department for a company that I used to service as a Network Engineer years ago. They were one of our clients and were assigned to me for support. They loved me there. Turns out she is leaving her position in a few weeks and she was wondering if I would be interested in filling her spot since I know the systems and software they use.

I was not looking for a job and I honestly don’t know if I could even take a job at this point. I really like the life and schedule of an entrepreneur. I seem to work a lot but can bend my hours for the most part when needed. Of course, the one and only reason to take a job would be for the money. Steady, consistent income week after week is nice. Better health insurance is a good thing too. I agreed to meet with them tomorrow at 10:00am to discuss things. Obviously I won’t make any decisions until I hear their offer, but it is making me think. They want me to bring a resume…yikes!

If I were to actually spend 40 hours per week on productive income generating activities, I’d be making a lot more money than I do now and a job offer wouldn’t even get considered. I guess this is forcing me to take a good look in the mirror and give myself a good kick in the ass. It is clear to me at this instant that I waste too much time and need to get my head in the game. Gotta go…

I received a call the other night (6/26 at 6:50pm) from Tom at CSG. We actually had a nice hour plus long conversation about CSG, their issues, their plans going forward and a number of other things including my issues. He owned up to the issues with my checks, I vented all my frustrations about the way they do business, he made a few promises and I agreed to give them another chance. He readily admitted that they dropped the ball with me and my payment issues and apologized for that. He also made some claims and promises about things to come and things he was going to do for me to try and get my team updated and motivated to submit more deals.

Regarding payments of commissions – Until now, they gave their reps several different ways to get paid. They have this account in the backoffice where they would deposit your commissions. You then have to log in to your back office and request payment by one of several methods. Each method was odd by its own right for this type of business and caused a lot of confusion for the agents and actually more work for CSG. Some people hae money sitting in their accounts and they do not even know its there, or do not know how to get it out. This is a problem.

Going forward they are changing to a once a month check payment. That is the only option. No more PayPal, debit cards, wires or any of that. They will be mailing out checks on the 5th of the month for all business that was closed and paid by the 20th of the previous month. This is a good thing and will resolve a lot of their issues.

Agent Training – CSG is doing a lot more training for agents including a program called Foreclosure College. Agents sign up and become part of a training team where they are given specific actions to take to be successful. So far the results have been very good according to Tom. Supposedly, people are having good success and a lot of leads are getting closed.

They also now have people on staff called Loss Mitigation “Closers” who follow up with all leads that get submitted. These people make sure that the leads submitted by an agent know what to expect from the Loss Mitigation process and work to get the company paid.

There were several things that Tom promised to do for me as well including sending me a breakdown of pending activity in my group, setting up a training specifically for my team and a few other things to get things rolling and get me more inceom from CSG. I’m still not sure why he went out of his way to call me and make a point of trying to fix things. Maybe they are really getting things in order now? Maybe they are just trying to stall the inevitable business failure? I have no idea.

As I promised Tom, I will give CSG another change to get things in gear and do what they say they will do. I thnk a lot of the issues I have with them is that I listed to what Tom says. I am one of those people that expects people to do what they say they are going to do. Over the months that I have been with CSG, he has made a lot of promises, many of which never happened. That sends my trust-o-meter into a tail spin. Then every other things has says gets taken with a grain of salt.

So, I am waiting to receive some reporting on my downline activity, including pending deals and who is active, and some info on a training that he is supposed to be putting together for my group. We will see if any of that happens without me chasing him.

So after filing a few complaints, I went ahead and sent an email to Tom Tsilianis at CSG (tomt @ consolidatedsg.com) letting him know that I had filed the complaints. The following morning I received an email from “BarbaraT” in billing who tried to put the blame on me for the payment delays saying that had I contacted billing in the first place this would have been resolved immediately. Can you believe that? She also focused only on the Mentor Fee payments and did not even mention the $619+ in unpaid commissions. I had to explain to her that I am an intelligent person and I understand the PDF “print your own check” thing and I sent her my email exchanges which included replies from “CSG Billing”. CSG made numerous promises that they sent payment to be but they never did. They lied and even sent me a phony UPS tracking number to try and stall me.

She told me the original overnight package they had supposedly sent, with the invalid tracking number, got returned to them because they “forgot” to include their account number on the shipment. HA!!! That one actually made me laugh out loud. How stupid do they think I am?

She ended up overnighting me a package containing three checks. Two Mentor Fee checks (I was only aware of one until this) and one from OnClick Networks made out to me for my unpaid commissions. All three were printed by them on blank check stock. I was suprised to see OnClick does not have pre-printed checks like most normal businesses use. Another Red Flag for me.

I deposited the checks into my bank account immediately and will just have to wait and see if they are good. I get the feeling at least one of them is going to bounce.

Also, I already received a response back from the New Jersey BBB stating that my complaint is “outside the scope of their services” and they are not able to assist at this time. What a joke. Thanks BBB!

I have not heard back from CSG regarding my last email to them so I am moving on to the annoying process of filing complaints with the numerous agencies that may have some pull in getting CSG investigated and me paid. I really hate doing this because it is a pain in the neck and takes time and it is just not necessary. How hard is it for a business to write a check for money that is due to someone. They obviously collected the money from the client or it wouldn’t even show in my Transaction History. Why is it an issue paying out the commissions that are due on that money.

TIP: If you are a CSG agent and you have ever submitted a lead, check your Transaction History in the backoffice to see if there are any commissions sitting in your account. Some people never check and they might have commissions just sitting in an account (not that you will actually receive the money).

So anyway…I filed complaints with the BBB in Texas and New Jersey because those are the two states they have addresses in. I have also filed complaints with the Attorney General in those states and I will file in Connecticut tomorrow as well since that is my state. I am too tired to do it now.

I will also be filing complaints and investigations requests to several other agencies such as the Department of Consumer Protection and the Federal Trade Commission. Oh, I filed a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) as well. They seem like the kind of organization that you would not want breathing down your neck if were doing something wrong.

I just want to get paid what is owed to me and keep CSG from doing this to others. I have received emails from other agents stating they have had issues getting paid as well. CSG admits that they owe me the money so it is not a question of whether or not I should receive the funds. They even told me on numerous occassions that they sent checks to me. They just never actually sent them.

If you are considering joining Consolidated Solutions Group, I would urge you to reconsider if getting paid is something you feel is important to your business.

I am writing to update you on my Consolidated Solutions Group business. At this point, I have nothing but bad things to say about CSG. I will give my personal experience only, and try not to bad mouth them in general terms. You should do your own due diligence and make your own informed decisions before expecting much from this company.

Here is a summary of my current situation with Consolidated Solutions Group (CSG). Click to read the whole post – You be the judge…

DOWNLINE -
Since joining CSG back in November 2006, I have seen a decent amount of downline growth. The company has done some agent cleansing (finally) so my numbers have changed since some of my earlier posts, but at this time my backoffice Account Summary is reporting a total of 1,586 people in my three tier downline. In my backoffice downline tree report, I have access to 3,568 agents since it shows more levels.

LEADS SUBMITTED -
I have not personally submitted any leads to CSG since joining until a couple mortgage leads I sent in on behalf of one of my downline last month. These leads were sent in on April 25, 2007. The last update from them was on May 7th until I requested an update the other day to which they replied, “we are working on it.” I also just received an update on one that they are still trying to find someone to do the loan.

I held off on submitting my own leads to CSG simply because I wanted to see proof that they could handle leads and get them resolved. When I joined, I immediately signed up a few very good people who almost instantly submitted some foreclosure leads. The results from these leads was terrible in my opinion. I cannot justify sending leads in when they don’t seem to be able to handle the ones that have been sent in from my downline.

COMMISSIONS –
In the Backoffice area, there is a commission section where you will find the Transaction History. In the six months that I have been with CSG and with as many as over 3,000 people in my downline who joined to make money and who have access to CSG’s training materials, conference calls, marketing materials, sophisticated backoffice suite, Team Managers and Regional Sales managers who are supposed to help generate and work the business, how many deals do you think were closed? Go ahead and take a guess how many leads (cases) were closed and commissions paid to a CSG referral agent in my downline.

Four. That’s right, there was a grand total of four (4) closed leads submissions in six months in my group of over 3,000 people. Two in February, one in April and one in May. I also received one Mentor Fee ($497) from someone that upgraded in my downline. The total figure for these commissions and the mentor fee comes to a whopping $1,164.16. Guess how much of it I have received to date. NONE. I have not received a single cent from CSG to date.

GETTING PAID -
Since I never really expected anything to come from CSG when I joined, and since it is not a source of income that I have even taken seriously really, I have been extremely patient with them while they “sort out” what they have been referring to as “growing pains. Until recently, I have not put much effort into getting paid and have basically just been waiting patiently with an occassional follow up.

I have recently stepped up my request for unpaid commissions and here is a summary of recent activity related to that:

TIME LINE OF RECENT ACTIVITY -
On April 23rd, I requested a payout of $619.56 from my backoffice. It was approved and should have been sent out without delay. I have still not received it.

On  May 4th I requested a check for the Mentoring fee of $497.00 that I had earned. I was told on May 5th that it was being sent out that day. I have still not received it.

Since then I have been trying patiently to get them to send me a check but I have had no success.

On May 23rd, they told me the two checks (totalling $1,116.56) were sent out the day before (May 22nd) by USPS Priority Mail. It has now been 3 weeks and I have still not received anything. Priority mail does not take 3 weeks to get anywhere in the U.S. I sent two follow ups since then and neither was responded to.

On June 4th, I made a final demand for payment and stated that if things are not resolved, I would begin taking action to get them shut down. No response that day.

On June 5th I received an email from Tom Tsilionis (CSG’s owner) stating that he would re-print the checks and email me a copy of them, then he would overnight the checks to me and email me the tracking number. I asked when this would be done and I did not get a response.

On June 7th I sent another follow up to Tom asking if the checks have been sent. He responded that they were reprinted at his office and he would be in later that day to print the UPS ticket and email a copy of the checks in PDF format and a tracking number.

On Monday, June 11th I received an email from CSG stating that a 2nd Day UPS package was going out that night to me and it included a tracking number. The email said the package was being picked up that day at 7:00pm. I checked the UPS site and it stated that the tracking number was invalid. I figured that was because UPS had not yet picked up the package.

On Tuesday, June 12th, I checked the tracking number again on the UPS website and UPS still stated the number was invalid. I emailed CSG to ask about the invalid tracking number and this is the reply I got -

“This was sent. I saw it go with my own 2 eyes as it was picked up from the office. In fact I rate shopped from UPS Air to 2nd day Air to CT.
I will ask the office to get me a copy of the ticket. I could of typed a wrong digit in there somewhere.

Rosa”