I was cleaning off my desk this morning and came across that check I got from CSG. I’m sort of afraid to cash it because I don’t want it to bounce and cost me money. I thought I would take a quick visit to their site to check out the backoffice and see if anything new was happening. The link didn’t seem to work. What the…? I figured they were all done, but then a new website appeared. It is something called HomeownerMedia.com.

I can’t get over how many companies these guys have going on. I will see about putting together a list some day but suffice it to say, they have a lot of companies floating around the web all interlinked and referring to each other as “Strategic Partners” or some other term that implies they are not owned by the same company.

So I poked around the new site and found a way to log into th backoffice. There are some new things, some of the same things, different pay plans and still no way to contact them. So I opened a ticket asking what is going on. We’ll see if I get a reply. They haven’t sent an email out to anyone in months so I seriously doubt they plan to respond to anyone. 

There are no doubt some very upset people who paid for the $997 (or whatever) upgrade and now are sitting there with nothing. If this describes you, I recommend contacting your State’s Attorney General, Department of Consumer Protection and/or Department of Banking. The BBB is pretty much a useless organization but you can complain there as well if you want. If you have an attorney friend, maybe you can have him/her write a letter demanding a refund since the company seems to have changed their business from what you paid for. If you don’t ask for what you want you will never get it. SPEAK UP!!!

Anyway, I thought I would continue following this company as they try to figure out how many more people they can make money off without providing any sort of customer service at all. I guess they never heard of the term “outsourcing.”

So I look through the mail today and there is a check from CSG in there for like $75.00. Just a check. No other information at all. I have no idea what it is for. There is no mention of anything in my backoffice either. Hysterical.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no company there. Money has vanished from my account and there is just nothing going on. The company appears to be dead. If you are considering joining and you’re here looking for opinions on the company, here is one for you… don’t waste your time.

If you really want to get into the business of foreclosure prevention, I will be posting more info soon on a few ways to do that profitably. You can make good money, but there is a lot of work involved. If you are afraid of working hard, get a job, don’t start a business.

I’m actually going to be doing my own thing soon too so look for that. I can tell you that it will NOT be Freedom Foreclosure Prevention or any of the other companies that want a ton of money from people just to join. And there will be NO recruiting bonuses just for signing people up. I am tossing around the idea of a 2-tier affiliate deal, but details are a long way off.

At this point the plan is to build a free, informational, self-help type of site for homeowners who are heding toward foreclosure. Then I might add paid services and info products eventually. We’ll have to see how things unfold. For now, I think most so called “loss mitigation” services out there are just ripping people off. That is just my opinion of course. Much of what they do the homeowner could do themselves if they knew how.

Gotta run…more coming soon.

It seems there are several people that have found this blog and actually refer people to it to demonstrate that CSG is not a good business opportunity. They make a lot of claims and use a lot of negative comments to try and persuade people to avoid CSG. In case you didn’t know…they are doing this to try and convince you to join ther latest company and make money off you. These are typically people that jump from one business opportunity to another looking for the one that makes them money without any effort on their part (which doesn’t exist by the way).

Almost everything you will find when you Google “Consolidated Solutions Group” is there either to talk you INTO joining CSG or OUT OF joining CSG and joining a different company instead. Whatever company they are in just happens to be “the best” company with “the best” track record of success and they pay the most money and everything about their opportunity is awesome and so on.

Take it all with a grain of salt people. It is all HYPE. Most of these opportunities pay these agents a commission for getting other people to join. Some of these companies charge $1,500 to become an agent for them. They train you and you get to call yourself a “cosultant” and for that you get to do all the hard work in getting a loss mitigation case closed. I think, though I am not sure, the referring agent receives like $1,000 of that sign up fee. Do you have any questions where their motivation is?

CSG has a tiered referral model which pays on several levels. Most others pay on one or maybe two levels. I don’t think one is any better or worse than the other necessarily, it depends on your goals and what fits your style. I have never liked the free signup model personally because most people who sign up for something that is free don’t even know what they signed up for. Those that do work very little if at all and the ones that actually try don’t have any money to support running a business which makes it more difficult to succeed. In my opinion, you must bein a situation where you do not NEED money immediately to start a business. Any business. It takes time and effort to make money.

Here is he bottom line on CSG and some of the other Loss Mitigation Companies out there… CSG has a decent opportunity to make money. Their program takes VERY LITTLE effort on your part compared to most of the other Loss Mitigation business opportunities out there. You basically just make initial contact with the homeowner and enter the lead into an online form in you CSG Backoffice. THAT’S IT! The company takes it from there. They have trained, experienced people who assist with closing the lead and getting a workout arrangement in place. They succeed in closing between 10 and 20% of the leads that are submitted.

It is just a fact that most homeowners do not qualify for loss mitigation for one reason or another. It is another fact that many homeowners “flake out” during the process for one reason or another. They change their mind, they borrow money from a friend or family member to catch up, they sometimes just decide to give up and let the bank take their house.

I find CSG’s numbers to be pretty good despite the spin agents of other companies try to put on it. Most loss mitigation companies claim that they have 95%+ success rate. Sounds great right? What they fail to tell you is that they only count the leads that have already been pre-screened and pre-quaified by YOU. You are required to contact the homeowner and gather all their information. You are required to obtain copies of their mortgage statements, hardship letters, release letters, and their payment for the loss mitigation service. Once all that is done, the company has a 95% success rate.

Just for fun, ask one of these reruiting agents what percentage of leads an agent typically has to go through before they get a homeowner to give them all the required paperwork, documents and the company’s loss mitigation fee. The agent has to do all the hard, time consuming “leg” work. Also, ask them if they joined the company for the loss mitigation income or the recruiting income and decide why you are joining. If you are looking to pitch a business opportunity all the time, find a company that has a high referral commission.

Be smart. Don’t be sheep. Find what works for you. Don’t listen to everything you read.

As for me, at this point I am still with CSG and I have been paid all of my outstanding commissions. CSG is a young company and they have had some growing pains in the past. I believe most of their issues are now in the past. They are having much greater success now that they have flushed out most of the MLM’ers. Of course now all the MLM’ers are badmouthing the company in order to get you to join their company and make money off your signup fee (that is what MLM’ers do).

All I can say is watch out for these people. If you are considering joining CSG I would still be cautious however. They don’t seem to have their act together completely just yet.

 

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”