Global Mediation: Mediation & Arbitration - Barrie, Ontario

kari M.

I had a horrible experience with Global Mediation. Maureen Smith was completely unprofessional. She took our money ($3000 up front) and never provided the services she promised!!

My ex and I hired her last year to help us mediate an access issue concerning our son. My ex wanted to use someone that was not known to us or any of our friends/family. I went online and found Maureen. Her website claimed that she was a member of OAFM, Ontario Association of Family Mediators. Which is why I felt I confident to use an unknown mediator found online.

We wanted a 1 hour mediation session with her. She made us pay $3000.00 as a prepayment for services, we each had our intake session, then Maureen refused to have our mediation session unless we paid her MORE money upfront!! When I told her that I wasn't willing to pay her any more money because I already prepayed for our session, she then cancelled the session and billed me another $1600.00 saying that I didn't give her 48 hours notice as per the contract we signed. When I refused to pay the invoice for the cancellation, she hired a collection agency and I was harrassed for weeks until I figured out I could make a complaint with the consumer financial protection agency. The calls stopped but the collection was still registered against me. I then tried to call the Ontario Association of Family Mediators (OAFM)to file a complaint against Maureen and Global Mediation, only to find out that she was NOT a member like she was advertising. She was a member at one point but her membership had been suspended and she hadn't been a member for a long time. They said there was nothing they could do as she was no longer a member. I had no way of making a complaint against her because she had no professional accreditation and was not a member of an association that could hold her accountable for her conduct!! OAFM contacted her and made her remove their name and trademark from her website.

Maureen advertises that she is also a personal coach and a legal shield representative. During the short period of time (10 days) that we were involved with Maureen, she kept calling me trying to sign me up underneath her with Legal Sheild, which is a network marketing company. She went so far as to tell me my lawyer didn't know what she was talking about and I should fire her and sign up for legal sheild instead. I ended up getting in a heated discussion with her about this. She also kept calling to try and convince me to sign up as one of her coaching clients. She kept trying to give me unwanted legal advice on how I should deal with my ex. She told me "I am not a lawyer, but when I was in University, I read a lot of law books at the University Library!" We had more than one heated discussion because she kept calling and upsetting me by getting involved in my business and trying to give me advice I didnt' want. At one point she told me I should take my son and move far away from my ex where he couldn't find me!!! She also disclosed to me what my ex had told her in confidence during his intake session.

When she informed us that we would need to pay a further $1600 for our 1 hour mediaiton session, we had a heated discussion about it. She then had the nerve to tell me that she should be charging me EVEN MORE than that because she had spent so much time on the phone with me trying to advise me on my issues. I told her straight out that her calls were unwanted and that I had signed a contract for mediation NOT coaching and that most of her calls were to try to get me to sign up for her network marketing company, Legal Sheild. I am still shocked that she spent over a week trying to pressure me into using her other services and then had the nerve to charge me by the hour for her "services".

I would not advise anyone to use Maureen Smith or Global Mediation.