Sterling Trust is a company that deals with investments in precious metals, gold IRAs, hedge funds, and IRAs within real estate industry.
In the year 2009, Sterling Trust company was acquired by Equity Trust and was later known as Equity Institutional as from May of the year 2013.
After checking various different customer/user review sites that are related to the Sterling/Equity Trust Company, we found out that most of their clients aren’t satisfied with the company’s operations and their customer services.
Sterling Trust is under investigation for fraud.
Given the fact that the company has rebranded itself as Equity Trust, we feel that the change might be because of the fact that Sterling Trust had gathered a lot of bad reputation and thus had to change its’ name for it to survive. From our research, we found out that Sterling Trust has over 118 complaints filed in the last 3 years; this is actually the highest number of costumer complaints that we’ve ever seen.
This is a huge red flag given that there are several Gold IRA companies which have zero complaints. Such a huge number of complaints shows that the company doesn’t care much about their clients as much as the other companies do. Given all the negativity arising from the former Sterling Trust, one needs to consider if the new move to Equity Trust is just the same company but with simply a different name, or if the company has cleaned up its’ image and improved its’ service delivery.
TrustLink Rating
According to reviews within the TrustLink site, there are very few customers who shared their experiences, and only one customer gave a positive review regarding Sterling Trust company. Many of the customers complained that they had lost their life’s savings.
BBB Rating
Sterling Trust does not have any score/rating with BBB whereas many Gold IRA businesses/companies have actually achieved the A+ rating.
Pros
When we checked their new website, we immediately felt the touch professionalism from its’ design and reviews. There is a chance the company has cleaned up their act and might now offer better services as Equity Trust. (We haven’t found enough information to say whether the company has now changed, but maybe they learned from their past mistakes, and on this second chance, they will do things differently).
Cons
Most of the customer reviews regarding Sterling Trust focus on fact that the company was a fake. Some of the major complaints were that the company was charging clients who had zero balance in their accounts, the company wasn’t able to convert clients’ IRA funds and that they were requesting different types of fees from clients.
Bottom line
When looking to invest your hard earned money, it is always best to choose a company with excellent customer reviews and high ratings, and this is something that the Sterling Trust company lacks.
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