J L.
1/5
Update (Apr 18th 10:42AM): Received phone call from Tony Defazio. He threatened me to sue me for libel for this review. Unfortunately libel is applicable to made-up stuff, not the truth.
Should be 0 star
I tried to obtain 3 products from Tony Defazio: Group benefits for my corporation, disability insurance for myself, and CI for my wife. Below is how things go for each:
CI: We got declined. We disclosed all our info to Sun Life and they did a very thorough check (even booked a nurse) only to reject us based on something we disclosed at the beginning. That's OK, but what's bad is Sun Life did not cancel the nurse appointment, and when the nurse came she continuously verbally harassed my wife. I asked Tony to follow-up on this but he failed (brushed me off with "it takes them a while") and ended up I needed to follow up myself.
Disability insurance: I was pretty excited to see the product being offered here. The unfortunate part was in the middle of the application the company that contracted me decided to shut down their Vancouver office and lay off everyone in Vancouver. Without an income there is no point to continue the application. I delivered the bad news to Tony to hold on the application. He seemed at first helpful but we will come back to this later.
Group benefit: This is the fun one. I went with this company calls Edge Benefits which provides the Greenshield program. Started paying the premiums in Feb, but DID NOT GET ANY MATERIAL UNTIL APRIL AFTER PAYING TWO MONTHS. During this time I continuously follow-up with Tony and everytime I get the answer "you should get the stuff this week". Okay, not completely their problem, perhaps? I let it slide, and simply ask for how I can make claims online, since at time of choosing this product I confirmed there is online submission (would be weird it's not available anyway in today's info age), and I got the confirmation that online submission is available. However, when I go on to Greenshield website to access my account, I could not find online submission. Again, I went back to these guys on what's going on. After some back-and-forth with Carollee, I got the confirmation that online submission is actually NOT available for the product I got. Being very upset that the product does not meet my need, I decided to cancel this policy, as it doesn't make sense to use a stone-age product especially I was told otherwise at the beginning. At this point, still, I do not blame DC Benefits, as I felt that Carollee was as surprised as I was finding out there is no online submission.
I asked Tony to cancel this in the first week of April. No response.
I followed up last week with him (second week of April), and he asked me why I am cancelling. I don't know why he asked since I said clearly because online submission is not there (I actually told him multiple times if there is no online submission, it's a show-stopper for me), but I repeated: No online submission as confirmed by Carollee, and this is the email I got from him, copied-and-pasted word-for-word. I will let you decide for yourself the mindset of DC Benefits:
"Not sure why that is so significant to you Jammy. The medications are still refundable to you. Just need a form and a stamp.
The only other way you will get as good as this coverage is through an employer sponsored plan. The other personal plans with Manu, Blue Cross, Sun and GWL are all inferior plans for about the same cost.
You will need to put a stop payment on your account if you want to kill this at the end of the month. They typically need 30 days notice.
Frankly I donât understand where you are coming from. We went from applying for disability, which I did for you...and you cancelled now you are cancelling this!!!!
Not sure you know that we only get paid if you keep the coverages. Otherwise all my time with you was just wasteful was a waste of my time.
Tony"
My 2 cents: This company is full of salesmen who only care about they get their dough. I would suggest using a company with people who pose themselves as educator/experts than salesmen.