AdvantageBC - Vancouver, British Columbia

Ronald Lee

AdvantageBC takes advantage of people and businesses. I've been debating whether to share this story but in the end, I think it's better that everyone knows the kind of people are behind AdvantageBC as run by former British Columbia finance minister Colin Hansen, Jimmy Mitchell and Talia Beckett. Beware when dealing with these people and the company.

I am an international marketer and part of that includes visual marketing (i.e. photography). In 2015, AdvantageBC put on an event called the Pacific Finance & Trade Summit in Vancouver and they asked me to bring a team of photographers to cover the event on a volunteer basis (they claimed they had no budget to pay for this, but did offer to pay for parking after I asked). I brought a team of about ten photographers, who were mostly hobbyists and the event went off without a hitch. We delivered the photos to AdvantageBC immediately, which they used for marketing. Parking was never reimbursed despite emailing scans of the receipts.

The next year, the 2016 Pacific Finance & Trade Summit was held again and AdvantageBC contacted me to ask if I'd like to bring another group of photographers to photograph the summit. I was told again that they had no budget for photography and that all the helpers for the event were volunteers. I thought this would still be a good event for photographers to come and cover the event (some do it for the joy of photography, some do it for experience), so I agreed and brought another team of nine photographers.

This time, however, the experience was entirely (negatively) different.

We arrived an hour before doors opened to setup our lights and get everyone acquainted with the location (Vancouver Convention Centre West) and was told by AdvantageBC that we couldn't setup our lights to shoot the event and that we weren't allowed to sit nor put our gear/belongings on a table in the back. We'd have to put them along the wall to one side. The AdvantageBC team asked why we were and proceeded to give us dirty looks throughout the event, at times, speaking rudely to us with one AdvantageBC staff even telling us to "get out of the way" as she tried to move from one point to another. It seemed as if they wanted to keep tight control of the event and didn't know we were going to be photographing the event.

As it turned out, there was a videographer whom I've known for years who was covering the event and he told me he was hired (i.e. paid) to take videos and photos of the event. And the sound A/V team also told me that they were hired to work the event.

To add insult to injury, when lunch started AdvantageBC said that food was for "paying customers only" so several of us ate some carrot sticks that one of the photographers brought until the end of the lunch hour when AdvantageBC realized that the venue had a lot of food left over and was told to hurry and eat it.

The rest of the event pretty much continued the same way, with the photographers and the young university students manning the sign in tables, being shown the least respect by AdvantageBC (I assume the students were probably volunteers as well).

After the event, we delivered our photos to AdvantageBC quite quickly and we did get our parking reimbursed this time, after some time (but never did get reimbursed for parking the first time).

I was quite insulted by experience and we all felt taken advantaged of. If I was less of a professional, I would have left by noon, but I always see my commitments through. However, I really felt bad for the photographers I brought, whom were not all professionals, they thought it would be fun to do some volunteering, who were treated like dirt by AdvantageBC.

It all pointed to the leadership of AdvantageBC, which at the time was run by Colin Hansen, Jimmy Mitchell and Talia Beckett. I would recommend you use extreme caution for any business dealings with these individuals or with AdvantageBC itself, as this type of experience is indicative of the culture of the company as a whole.

A.P Bo

Great news they have transitioned into sustainable finance, looking forward to seeing their progress in this sector