Heritage Education Funds - Heritage RESPs

Honestly wished they had a negative rating. You only get a quarter of what you put in, and the company asks like you are begging when it us time to receive the funds.
The payment is late past the payment deadline set by any university. Please PLEASE do not invest your money

I wish I had saved my money on my own instead. The sales and membership fees are exorbitant and your money is not safe should you need to quit the scheme for whatever reason. You will be paying these ridiculously exorbitant fees upfront for the first few years out of what you think is being saved for your child. Should you stop the scheme, this money will NOT be refunded. The sales people do not tell you this, or they minimize it. You've been warned. Save on your own or with your bank or credit union where your money isn't simply lining a sales representative's pocket.

Invest rather in GIC or stocks. I paid in for many years. I have a hard time to get the money, it's half of what was promised. This is the worst of all my investments with the poorest return. On top of it I have to fight to get the money that should be mine in the first place!

Bad company i ever seen. Poor performing. Management fees is so high. I cant take money back bcoz i will loose big amount just bcoz of management fees.
Never never approach heritage resp.

Lier and fraud. Do not ever never put money there because you will lose it all due to high management fees. I am so upset

We saved up for nearly 18 years, only to find out that our return is actually less than we put in. We were promised double what we put in, I expected to just get 1.5 of what we put in, pretty disappointed to find out it is actually less than the amount we "saved". They pretty much steal the amount the government is putting in, so basically you miss that whole amount. It would have been better to put it in a sock onder our mattress, because we didn't even get intrest if you do the math. If we would have put it in a piggy bank we would have more, because we would still be able to apply for government grands. What a scam!

Heritage RESP funds (AKA Knowledge First Financial) employs or/and contracts salesmen who are involved in predatory sales practices. They prey new and uninformed parents into signing long term contracts that they would never be able to truly understand the consequences of and risks the families entire contributions and income on the fund due to technicalities.

For example, The sales staff charge significant sales charges, in my case over $2,000, with the promise of a 100% refund of these charges if the subscriber maintains strict rules such as: never missing a payment, always updating addresses, choosing specific scholarship options.

When the sales staff was in my home, and to this day with current communication with the sales representative, touting the aspect if your child goes to a 4 years anniversary they would receive 100% of the sales charges back. However, further investigation recently has shown that this is not the case. The only way you would ever actually get 100% of the sales charges back is if your child goes to a 4 year college/university utilizing a 4 year EAP withdrawal of 3 EAP payments. Of which are not distributed until the 2nd year. The real issue is listed on their own statements of account that shows the 100% refund of sales charges is a lie.

I quote "Sales charges are returned at a rate of up to 25%, up to 50%, or up to 100% depending on the scholarship option chosen at matruity. The example of sales charge refund is calculated using the 2019 actual refund amount under scholarship 3 [the so called 100% option] which was $15.88 per unit. In the future years, the amount may be less or more depending on the amount of funds available in the sales charge refund account. Actual results may vary...]" In the example given if my child was to go to the scholarship option 3, of which I was lead to believe I would receive 100% of the $2,004 of sales charges back, I would only receive $329. They cannot guarantee that full 100% of the sales charges can be refunded at the end of the maturity, which in my opinion is not what was promised and not what I believe was in the contract.

Now if I want to remove my funds out of Heritage RESP, it will cost me not only the so called 100% refundable sales charges, but ALL the income earned in the plan to date. None of these items were discussed in the meeting with the sales rep in 2013 when as new parents, were preyed upon by predatory sales tactics and pressured into signing something at the time we did not understand.

I do not have confidence in Heritage RESP to be able to live up to their 100% refundable promise and according to their prospectus, they loose over 20% of their clients to other plans, as I'm sure were because they were preyed upon as well.

We invested in this plan once our second child was born. With the contributions we made it was projected to be twice as much as we received. We would have been better off investing in any GIC. We didn't even keep up with inflation. The scholarship options they told us about and were supposed to be significant were minimal at best. I invested the first three years for my oldest in a mutual fund and that performed great. Don't waste your time with Heritage. It is a complete ripoff! You are much better off investing in mutual funds or any other safe investment.

Hi, I'm an 18 year old student going into my first year of University. I hope that all parents actually take this review to heart. My parents have been saving up money for me to get into a university. It was there dream since the both of them have never gone to university. My parents both have a low income, so saving up all those years with aspirations for their daughter to have a good education and a bright future was all that they cared about. I finished my final credit during summer school (after I graduated) and I was supposed to get my transcript to my university, so that I could get an enrollment verification to give to RESP. However there is a deadline, and in situations like these it's nearly impossible. So I didn't get my enrollment verification in on time, and in fact it was after the deadline. So it was part of the deal that RESP doesn't need to give you 100% of the money you've been putting into the plan all these years. All that hard earned money goes to them. And I feel so guilty as I see my parents so upset, and we're struggling to get money to pay off all my debts. Honestly please don't do this. I hate to see other parents suffering in the same way as my own. And if you're thinking. "Oh well I'll get my child to finish so and so earlier." Or "I'll just prepare so that this doesn't happen" DO NOT think that way. It's mostly up to the child and how they learn and grow, that determines whether or not they will actually get the money, because there are so many ways for you to not get 100% of that money. I honestly suggest that all the money is put into some bank account. Please don't make this mistake.