Not to brag, but my mom turned 100.
“Do you realize? Hundred years ! It’s old ! she said to me, wrinkling her face exaggeratedly, as if to imitate an old person.
— M’man, at 99, I could still say: well no, let’s see, it’s not old. But here, I admit, at 100, I would be a liar not to say yes…”
She lives in one of the 48 tours for old people (but also for just old people) of the Selection Group. The company is now famous both for its spectacular bankruptcy and the pharaonic lifestyle of its founding shareholder, Réal Bouclin.
“Your phone is working, I see…
– But yes, why? »
For once, she had not yet read her tablet, where my colleague Julien Arsenault signed an article entitled “Debacle at Groupe Sélection: residents could lose cable and telephone”.
Because you see, the tenants of some of these residences pay a lump sum for rent and services. An intermediary company – belonging to the Bouclin family – takes care of paying the service providers. These companies of the Bouclin family are in default of payment of these basic services, according to the financial controller appointed by the court to put order in the mess of Groupe Sélection. Bell and Videotron, among others, have undertaken “collection measures”. The controller expresses “deep concern”, fearing that the services will be completely interrupted.
“No, no, I pay my bill directly to V********.
– You subscribe to V********?? In any case. »
It is impossible to know how many of the 14,000 residents of the Group’s buildings have paid money for these services to the opaque companies of the Bouclin family.
But consider that these tenants have duly paid for telephone, internet, etc. And the money didn’t come back, because it was siphoned off somewhere else. We are beginning to have the portrait of a group where money flew and flew galore.
When the big boss pays “bonuses” to his family and buys a private jet from the income, the example comes from above.
The (ir)leaders of the Group swear that there is no danger, that everything will be regularized.
But even if that doesn’t happen, the mere fact that suppliers are down to formal notices and threats of cuts is a shame.
After years of forced confinement due to the pandemic, all that is missing is: cutting off or threatening to cut off the telephone, internet and TV to people who, very often, cannot go out.
This is the minimum to be guaranteed, if really “the interests of the residents” are the first thing to protect in this bankruptcy, as Judge Michel Pinsonneault says.
Since GS’s financial problems became known, my mother has received half a dozen letters from Luxe Gouverneur, another home for old people (or just old people).
“I received one this morning! »
She is already recycling with the others, but from memory (and she has some), it goes something like this: We are well aware of the worries that the financial situation of the Selection Group is causing you… We are offering you a free move to our magnificent residences… and one month of free rent…
What a nice sales technique, don’t you think? Use the lever of worry and insecurity to beat down the old (and the simply old)…
Beautiful industry, there is not to say.
The fear of a new sanitary confinement has slowed down plans to move to these slightly more depopulated houses. Sales techniques are refined.
Note, if the phone were to be cut (it will not happen), it would limit fraud.
The other day, a young man calls my mother and pretends to be my son. He says he had an accident and needs cash because, he tells my mother, he doesn’t want to tell me he had an accident. The classic fraud scenario.
“Remind me of your father’s name again?” replied my mother.
“Come on, grandma, you know my father’s name…
“Yes, yes, but refresh my memory…”
She may be old, but she’s cunning. The guy hung up.
How many people get caught in these scams that play on their most precious possessions?
I don’t think there are just “real” thugs who want to pass on the backs of old people. There are many legal ways to do this. It wraps around differently.
Yesterday my mom sent me a picture of her yoga teacher, a guy I knew… a hundred years ago.
“You must have been getting a lot of calls, since you were 100 years old. Do people ask you for your secret?
– Yes…
“What are you telling them?”
– I have no secrets. Must move…
– It could be the title of your book, you could make a fortune with it!
– Leave it, I’m not interested. »
She has such no business acumen.
“Don’t forget I made you some ham pies, they’re in the freezer…”
I’ll come by tomorrow, mum.