Complaint Review: National College Aid And Guidance

National College Aid and Guidance of Carson City, Nev., urges families to participate in individual interviews with the company's representatives at various hotel sites across the coutry. A toll-free telephone number is provided in the letter for families to schedule interviews. Callers reach an entity called "College Services" and hear a recorded message that requests input of an identification code that appears on the letters.

90-minute interviews

The letters state that the interviews, which are free, would last approximately 90 minutes and would help "determine your eligibility to receive grants, scholarships, negotiated tuition discounts and interest free loans" to help meet college expenses.

In smaller print at the end of the letter, the company states that the interviews would follow a "group presentation."

Inquiries determined that Corporate Advisory Service Inc., whose representative directed a reporter to a spokesman for National College Aid and Guidance, shares a suite in a Carson City office building with a company called Integrated Capital.

Apart from their location in the same office suite, the connection between Inte-grated Capital and National College Aid and Guidance could not be established yesterday. In addition, the listing in Carson City's official "ownership and assessment" records of three businesses in the suite whose names bear no resemblance to the names of businesses listed in a Better Business Bureau database as being located there could not be accounted for.

The names in the database include American College Financial Aid, the National Association of Travel Agents and National Student Financial Aid. No telephone numbers are listed for any of those entities in Carson City or the vicinity.

FTC consent order

Integrated Capital was the subject of an FTC consent order that required it to pay $115,000 to settle charges of misrepresenting its ability to obtain college financial aid for students, according to a summary of the order supplied to The Eagle by officials of Berkshire Community College.

"According to the FTC's complaint, NSFA sold college financial aid services to at least 40,000 consumers, resulting in excess of $10 million in revenues," the summary reads. It states that interviews, "typically held in local hotels, were sales seminars at which the defendants promoted their college planning and financial aid services."

Those services ranged in price from $750 to $1,200, the FTC order stated. Instead of supplying consumers with the promised detailed "personalized" studies of the best available financial aid packages, the FTC concluded, "the defendants provided consumers generalized information, not customized career and financial strategies."

The FTC order also prohibited Integrated Capital and NSFA from engaging in certain sales practices, including those that would lead consumers to believe that purchasing the company's services would secure financial aid or that more financial aid would be forthcoming if the company's services were used than if they were not.

A
Short Hills, New Jersey
U.S.A.