CST Consultants
reviews and complaints

I had a great experience. Kris is very helpful and informative and I am very happy.

Have had a great experience so far! Kristine is my consultant and has been extremely helpful and available whenever I have needed. I love the friendly emails and contest that are always put on. Thank you Kristine for all your hard work

Several years ago we were contacted by CST about planning for our child's education. We were a little skeptical at first but once the savings plan was thoroughly explained, it was a "no-brainer". Very happy with the support and all the options with the plan! Thanks Joan!

Like every parent, we were looking to plan for our kids' education costs that will be hitting us in the future. We reached out to our CST rep Kristine D and she was awesome. She very clearly explained everything and set us on the proper road. Throughout the process, she provided us with valuable guidance and support, ensuring that we understood all the options available to us. Kristine's expertise and professionalism were truly commendable, making us feel confident in our decision to trust CST Consultants with our children's education savings. We are grateful for her exceptional assistance and highly recommend CST Consultants to any parent seeking reliable and knowledgeable advice for their children's future.

My daughter won the $1000 from CST Consultants when she was 10 years old. She was very happy to have this money (and more) available to her for her school expenses when the time came. We were advised by Kris on how to retrieve this money when needed and she had little issues in doing so.

I love CST! My advisor has always checked in with us, and made sure we were understanding the plan. Answering any questions promptly, and just keeping in touch! Getting started was easy, and then when my oldests plan matured, we were able to get his funds with ease! Its so nice knowing my children have these funds to use when they go to school. Such a great program!

Terrible buyers remorse. They are very pushy when selling the package, making it sound like you are signing up for a government program. I don't even know how they got our information. We did not know at the time that there was other options available to us. Sadly the massive fees are non-refundable, so I'm stuck with them. My financial advisor's RESP plan would have us at better than double what we have in CST. Mostly because it had 2k less fees off the start.

I decided to switch from CST to a different company because in the end it's a better rate of return for my girls' RESPs. I received an email that I was cc'd on from CST that was also sent to another representative from [Company Name] saying that they couldn't convince me to stay with them and that my husband works for [Company Name] and we've drank the Kool-aid. That was the most rudest, unprofessional email I have ever received from any company in my life. Once I got that email, I knew we made the right decision.

I bought 4 units for each of my kids. Oldest daughter now 23 and Graduated from University, youngest in College now. Bought the same units for both girls and both situations disappointed with the funds available! At least it was some money for them! Not as much as first forecasted. CST rep Joan was great to deal with, would do it again. Wish the forecast was more realistic however we may have not done it! 18 years per kid, our oldest had less time in the program and yet received more money? Something about how the investment does?! Either way we came out ahead not knowing how to invest our own money, not losing initial investment and coming out ahead about 6k.

Very confusing system to contribute or withdraw. My consultant was no where to be found when it came to redemption, after 18 years of contributing the max. Was referred to a website only to figure everything out myself. I have my MBA in finance, so I'm usually pretty good at dealing with money, investments and statements. This system blinded me with science. One customer service Woman was good, but had one who refused to help answer my questions then had a very snippy attitude when I asked her to go through all of the accounts and money expected. I even asked " are you not willing to help me and answer my questions? She just said to go on the website. An RESP is essential...but I wouldn't do it with cst in hindsight. Very frustrating to deal with.

We have been investing money with CST Consultants for 18 years and now our daughter is 18 years old. We have been trying to contact them since August 17 to withdrawal our money for our daughter's school. We filled up the Withdrawal Forms and send them by email and the website says 2 to 3 weeks so we can receive the money. Since that day we haven't received any emails back or any phone calls from them. We have tried to call more than 10 times and sometimes waiting for up to 2 hrs for a customer representative to answer. It was always easy for them to withdrawal our money every month and now that we need the money for our daughter's education, we cannot get any response from them. We need access to our money now and I would never recommend this company to anybody.

I am not good with money in general, so the thought of setting up an RESP for my son (and now daughter) was daunting to say the least. Krissy D., my future CST rep, was able to explain the system in detail, and in language that even I could comprehend lol. We were set up in roughly an hour, and have been watching the account grow every month since. CST is very transparent and I like that we have easy (and not confusing) access to our account. Unfortunately our marriage broke down, and I had several questions and concerns surrounding how our split might affect the RESP accounts. Krissy phoned me 5 minutes after I emailed her, and was able to make sure that everything remained uninterrupted and accessible to both myself and my former partner. [No need to replace asterisks in this context]. Now all I have to do is pray that my children turn out smarter than me and continue on to post-secondary!

One thing I notice about these reviews are the majority of the good reviews are from people who haven't tried to cash out. For those of us trying to recover what we thought we were going to get back only to find out that is not the amount that you will get back at all the reviews are not so great. I sincerely hope the practice of CST reps visiting you in the hospital when your baby is 1 or 2 days old has stopped because even if they explain all the unpleasant details of how you could end up with less money than you invested (which I highly doubt they do ) you have a brand new baby, which is an incredibly vulnerable time for new parents, not the best time to make financial decisions. I am certain no one took the time to explain that if my child opted for a trade or college degree (which costs as much or more than 4 years of university) instead of a 4 year degree , look out you are going to lose money and have 50% withholding tax taken out. Word of advice to new parents, there are better ways to save for your child's future.

My son has had the Canadian Scholarship trust fund for the last 20 years. Now that it is time for him to go to college, we realized it was a huge mistake to invest in CST. The returns are much lower than other plans. This has been a major disappointment. The fees are not transparent. I have never seen a statement showing what they take for fees. If you invest in CST, you are locked into the plan because you lose the $1,600.00 enrollment fee if you do not continue paying for the entire 18 years. (It might even be more than $1,600.00 now and we didn't earn any interest on the $1,600.00).
The kicker is that they will only release the funds in 4 payments, over 4 years... So if your child goes to a 1, 2 or 3 year program, you can't get the money in the time when you need it. This is highly inconvenient and restrictive. When we initially invested in the program, she told us that they can do any type of post secondary, including college... However, when you go to take the money out, you can't get all of the payments in 1, 2 or 3 years. It is as if they are penalizing you for not going to a 4 year university. My attempts at speaking with someone at CST have been frustrating and unproductive.

I have had my kids RESP's with CST since 2003. In the past, phone calls were always usually answered quickly and if wait times were long there was a "que" to let you know how long your wait time would be. Never more than 15 minutes. Well things have changed drastically with this company. For two days now I have been trying to reach a phone rep. Yesterday I gave up after just short of two hours on hold. Today I am at 2 hours 4 minutes as I type. I really am beginning to doubt anyone will answer at this point. No "que" anymore as in the past and no call back feature or estimated wait times. Its absolutely unacceptable and actually a little concerning and has me wondering if this company is in some sort of peril. I am now dealing with my last child's redemption of funds for her post secondary. Even though I have stuck with them for 18 years I will always remember how wrong it felt back in 2003 to be charging the fees and commissions that they did at the initial setup of the plan. It was crazy actually thinking back. There were not many choices back then(Bank RESP etc) so just went with them. Knowing now what I do and the many RESP choices out there, CST and their fees would likely not even make my consideration list in 2021. And top it off with the lack of any customer phone support(still on hold..2 hours 14 minutes) I would say to anyone asking. Put 100% of your child's money into a plan. Avoid fees, commissions and lack of customer support and the utter frustration that comes with that! Thankyou

We have four children. They all have RESPs with CST that we started for each of them shortly after they were born.

Our two oldest sons have graduated from high school and received their Education Assistance Payments (EAPs) for their years of University studies to date. They are both still working on their Bachelor's degrees.

The CST application process for each son's annual EAPs, and sending in the proof of registration for each academic year was very easy to complete for our sons. Our sons' universities' Registrar's offices provided the documentation that CST required. The entire process, including the return of our principal investment amount, was completed in a timely and efficient manner.

We found it useful to use the online CST account page for each of our children's plans as it allowed us to check on the plans whenever we wanted to over the years.

We appreciated the support from both our local CST agent's office in Winnipeg and the main office on Toronto throughout the years whenever we had questions about the plans.

Our third son graduates from high school in 2021 and we look forward to the same easy process with CST for his EAP when he registers at University. As well as for our daughter in a couple of years. Hopefully COVID-19 will be a distant memory for everyone at that point!

In short, it was reassuring to know our children's RESPs were safely invested throughout the years with CST. So far two of our sons are using their CST plans for their educations as intended all those years ago.

The company makes you email them with all of the information to be able to withdraw money from the account for tuition payment. I received one automatic rep since saying they received the request weeks ago but haven't heard anything from them and I have continually followed up but they just don't respond to the withdrawal requests that they make you do. The company not responding/ ignoring withdraw requests has resulted in me not being able to pay my tuition on time and has also resulted in late fees because of this. Very poor customer service and a flawed system!

Canadian Scholarship Trust (CST Plan) located at #1234 Example Ave, Toronto. It's time to collect the tuition money that we have paid into since my daughter's birth. My daughter is going into 3rd year university. We have provided necessary paperwork since July and they do not reply by email and we have waited 2 hours on hold with no response for 2 days. Why are we not receiving the funds as promised? Why no acknowledgement? Last year with the COVID-19 situation worse, we received our funds within a few days of sending in the proper paperwork. I want to know what's going on. COVID-19 and less staff is not an excuse. You know this time of year is when they pay out what parents have contributed for their child's education. Ours is due in a week! We are depending on the funds from CST. This is my complaint. The funds need to come ASAP. How about an answer that's not COVID-19 related?

I have made several attempts to contact CST Consultants to close my file #XXXXXXXX and receive my funds on July 1, 29 and Aug 4, 5, 6, 7, 11, 2021 with little to no results. CST Consultants Sales Representative X-XXX-XXX-XXXX x *** can be reached at CST Consultants Inc. Branch 401, located at 105 Consumers Drive, Whitby, ON, L1N 1C4. You can also contact them at X-XXX-XXX-XXXXx705 or ***@cstresp.com; www.cstresp.com/8603.

As a sales representative, the only financial information I have available to review is a copy of your annual 2020 statement which states that as of December , your RESP contributions for *** amount to $***. I noticed that you have made 4 contributions this year, totaling $***. When you add $*** + $***, the total comes to $***. You can confirm this number by contacting CST Customer Service toll-free at X-XXX-XXX-XXXX or emailing ***@cst.org.

Furthermore, *** Subject/Sujet:RE Plan [protected] contacted me once on Aug 5, 2021, but there was no follow-up and I did not receive any funds.

In Feb 2019, I met a representative from CST at a business network event, she knew I had 2 babies, and suggested that I buy an RESP with CST because they are the best and biggest RESP provider in Canada. A few days later, she came to meet me at home and really sold me on their Scholarship Plan. Her sales slogan was that my principle investment will always be protected no matter what. And no fees! We repeatedly asked her if there were any commissions and she assured us that there would only be a one-time sales charge and no other fees ever. She said the fees were minimal. We took her word for everything, gave her a check of $5000 contribution for both children. We naively signed the contract and went on with our lives. I remembered that after signing, I asked her if there was any way I could monitor my investment and see how it performs. She replied to me that CST does not issue statements, but they do have a system online. However, she said I could only see it once my account became active in a few months, and she would notify me and teach me how to access it. Since then, she didn't contact me. Now I only realize that there is a 60-day regret period, if I want to cancel, I won't be paying ridiculous sales charges. That's why she prevented me from checking my balance, if I checked, I would cancel immediately for sure! In Dec 2019, I called her again to ask how to access my investment. She told me how, and after I went online, I was shocked to see that my principle only had a total of $496 left for both children! When I was reading through it, I finally realized how it really works! My husband and I were both astonished by these numbers and how little our principle had left. I need to mention that it took several weeks for her to come back to us. Basically, CST took a huge amount of sales charge, which she never quoted the exact amount to us when we met, nor did she tell us that these fees would be deducted from my $5000 contribution. It is very clear that the fees were not mentioned nor explained. Moreover, the fees represent 100% of the amounts put aside.

My complaint revolves around what I would consider the intentional omission of information during the sales process for CST RESP products, putting additional financial burden on exhausted new parents who are simply trying to do right by their children by putting away money for their education. I was unfortunate enough to actually sign up both my daughters before realizing just how exorbitant the fee structure is at CST, with the first 34 monthly payments being used in whole or part to pay a "sales fee" which is not clearly explained (or even necessarily mentioned) during the initial sales visit. The representative focused on selling how much the fund would be worth at maturity, glossing over the sales fee and also not mentioning how difficult and costly it can be to leave CST via transferring to another RESP provider or simply cancelling the plan and taking back your principal. I now want to transfer both RESPs to another provider, but I don't want to be left on the hook for the "sales fee" outstanding on my younger daughter's account, currently around $1500. Ideally, I would also like the $1800 already paid (not invested on our behalf, simply paid to CST) refunded if possible, as the loss of those funds and their associated gains which would have occurred in a normal RESP would be very harmful to the future value of the RESP. Another issue I have is with the availability of information during the enrollment process, as I have a clear email trail showing that the fund prospectus (including an explanation of the "sales fee" and other charges) was not sent to me until AFTER the electronic documents for signature had already been signed. Of course, I should have found one online and reviewed the fee structure before signing, but the representative never mentioned the "sales fee" so I had no cause for concern until I looked at our account and noticed almost no money in it despite over 2 years of contributions! I'm not sure if you have dealt with CST often, but I truly find their business model abhorrent, with strict conditions for contributions and other measures, and punitive fees or outright cancellation of policies being the backbone of their "improved return on investment" compared to other RESP providers.