Freelandt Caldwell Reilly LLP

They have been our accountants for the past 4 years. They are very professional and always ready to help us with any questions or issues we may have.

I was billed over $7000 for eight simple small business returns after being quoted a fee of not more than $300 per return by John Greenridge when I first called. Four of these tax returns were already COMPLETED FINISHED and paid for by a previous accountant, but I needed the question of GST updated viz a viz new regulations about platforms that sell services internationally. I didn't arrive with the shoebox full of receipts; I arrived with four completed returns needing clarification, four years of neatly organized documents and some questions about categorizing expenses. I was advised by John Greenridge when I called and emailed in September that I did NOT need to register for GST when, in fact, a free session with a CRA Business Liaison Officer in May, 2022 just confirmed that I should have. This CRA Business Liaison clearly communicated in less than 90 minutes what Patrick Harrington couldn't do in $7000 worth of billable hours!? In December 2021, my returns were sent in, I was cut off from contact with my accountant! I had no opportunity to speak to Patrick after receiving a stack of completed returns. The AR fellow (Desmond Edwards) was belligerent on the phone, patronizing in his emails and accusatory! My name and data was put into a collections portal that uses client data for 'insights', without my consent. This portal sends me updates in my gmail account, and I'm taken from a link in my gmail to my account in this portal -- with no password! So my name is in this collections app, and Desmond Edwards told me to pay up or he would take me to small claims court. As of May, 2022, I am locked out of My CRA as I head into my deadline for filing my 2021 small business return. I went to FCR simply to get a second opinion on the confusing question of GST registration for self-employed people using platforms for marketing. Don't trust this firm. Get *everything* in writing. Repeat your questions with each person you speak to, and write down what each person says. I did, thankfully. I asked about how they arrived at the $7000 bill given that the average charge rate for an accountant in Ontario is $80/hour and I got a link to the collections portal as a reply. They also got my DOB wrong and my SIN # wrong on the returns. I have no idea how an accounting firm could make a wrong determination on the requirement to register for GST or not: I went to this firm expressly to get this important question answered. To sum up, bigger is not necessarily better when it comes to professional service providers. What a colossal waste of money and a huge uptick in my stress re: recovering from COVID and turbulent first years running a small business. I was actually billed 5.5K and when I asked how / why, I was just told, "Actually you owe us 7K but we gave you a discount."