Complaints

1. Tell us first

A complaint is more useful to us than a quiet client who never comes back. If any part of working with RateLens has gone wrong, tell us. That could be a call that never came, a number that turned out to be wrong, a disclosure you feel you didn’t get, or the conduct of anyone here. You don’t need to use the word “complaint” for us to treat it as one.

You’re never required to come to us first. You can go straight to the Real Estate Council of Alberta at any point, and nothing on this page limits that right.

2. How to raise it

It helps if you tell us what happened and when, who you dealt with, what you’d like us to do about it, and how you’d prefer us to reply. Send anything you have: an email thread, a document, a date and time. You don’t need any of it to complain.

3. What happens next

Complaints are owned by Daniel De Sousa, Mortgage Associate. If your complaint is about him, say so and it goes straight to Krista Pike, broker of record at Indi The Independent Mortgage Company Ltd. o/a Indi Mortgage, at (403) 517-8670.

1. We acknowledge it within one business day. In writing, with the name of the person handling it and a reference you can quote.
2. We investigate. We read the file, the call notes, the disclosures that were sent and when, and we speak to everyone involved.
3. We respond substantively within 10 business days. If the investigation needs longer (for example, a lender or a third party is involved), we tell you that before the tenth day, tell you why, and give you a date.
4. We tell you what we’re doing about it. What we found, what we’re changing, and what we can and can’t put right.
5. We tell you how to escalate. Every final response names the RECA escalation path below, whether or not you asked for it.

4. Escalating to RECA

Daniel De Sousa, Mortgage Associate, and the brokerage he is registered with, Indi The Independent Mortgage Company Ltd. o/a Indi Mortgage, are licensed and regulated by the Real Estate Council of Alberta (RECA) under the Real Estate Act. RECA accepts complaints from the public about the conduct of a licensed brokerage or an individual licensee, investigates them, and can take disciplinary action.

• Regulator: Real Estate Council of Alberta
• Verify a licence, or look up an individual: RECA ProCheck
• Licensee: Daniel De Sousa, Mortgage Associate
• Brokerage: Indi The Independent Mortgage Company Ltd. o/a Indi Mortgage

RECA publishes its own complaint form and process, and it does not require you to have come to us first. If you’d like the file references, the dates or the names to support a complaint about us, ask and we’ll send them.

5. Privacy complaints

A complaint about how we collected, used, disclosed, stored or destroyed your personal information goes to our Privacy Officer, Daniel De Sousa, Mortgage Associate, at privacy@ratelens.ca. If you’re not satisfied, it goes to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta (oipc.ab.ca), which is our primary privacy regulator under Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act.

The full detail is in our Privacy Policy.

6. Other regulators

Your mortgage is held by a lender, not by us. A complaint about the lender’s own conduct (a payment applied wrongly, a penalty calculated wrongly, a renewal offer withdrawn) starts with that lender’s complaints process. Federally regulated banks escalate to the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments or to ADR Chambers Banking Ombuds Office, depending on the bank, and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada supervises their market-conduct obligations. Alberta credit unions have their own process. Tell us anyway. We’ll help you find the right door and, where we can, take it up with the lender on your behalf.

Complaints about marketing email or text messages under Canada’s anti-spam legislation go to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission via the Spam Reporting Centre. Please tell us too: it’s almost always a mistake we can fix the same day.

7. What we record

We keep a record of every complaint: what was raised and when, who handled it, what we found, what we did, and the dates we responded. We review them together and we use them to change how we work. Complaint records are held with the rest of the client file, for the retention period set out in our Privacy Policy.

We don’t take reviews down because they’re critical, and we don’t make a resolution conditional on removing one. Our review policy says so in public for that reason.