The long and short, he was trying to get her to refer people who come through the library looking for jobs to him. Because he had jobs for them if they had people skills, blah blah blah.
She asked the name of the company and he said, 'Primerica.'
Something inside me died just hearing it. Still, as I say, this particular librarian is one of those radiant people who make you feel like you might be in a toothpaste commercial when she smiles and I decided I wasn't going to say anything.
Then he asked me what my 'job title,' was and I said Graphic Designer. When he started to ask another question I held a hand up, 'Don't bother. I've been there, done that with Primerica. Biggest rip-off in my life.*'
So this character starts trying to argue the point with me. And I kinda lost it.
'It's overpriced insurance and overpriced, load mutual funds with high expense ratios that underperform the market consistently.'
'Now wait,' he says. 'I've been with Primerica for 24 years...'
'Great. Some people make money with Amway†, but most don't. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.'
At which point this guy said—and to understand how ridiculous life got for a minute, I'm pretty sure he retired from something else before he took up Primerica: he was old, 'Now you're looking for a fight.'
I managed not to laugh in his face. Sort of.
Why am I so bitter? Because I 'invested' something like $1000 in an IRA with Primerica back in 1997. Only $1000 because I started to doubt the wisdom of further deposits. I dropped the overpriced term insurance in favor of a policy from a legitimate insurance company*† a few years later.
So I didn't get stung as badly as I could, but in 2006 when I finally came to my senses and took the money out, it was barely over $900. I had lost something like five to ten percent in almost a decade when the stock market was doing well!
Thing is, Primerica gives good theoretical advice. It makes sense to buy term insurance instead of whole life, and if you're disciplined enough to invest the difference in good mutual funds (something you won't find at Primerica, I guarantee you), you're way ahead.
But by selling their crappy, overpriced products instead, Primerica performs something like a miracle in turning good, sound advice bad. Their goons put messages up on boards making it sound like the only people who say Primerica sucks are people selling their competitors products. I'm not selling anyone's products, I'm just a plain old fashioned victim. You're literally better off in a casino where the slots pay a 99% return.
At least a pimp would be more discreet than to try to get the local library to hustle girls for his stable. To claim you're offering a job to someone when you're actually trying to recruit them into a terrible MLM scheme...
I should have taken the old man up on that fight. 24 years of scamming people this way, it's high time someone broke this geezer's nose.
*Technically not true: the $3000 retainer I paid to Scott Hattrup to be my divorce attorney was a bigger rip-off. He didn't return my phone calls, didn't turn out to even know how to proceed in a divorce, and didn't quit mis-handling the case after I fired him. If I'd stayed with him as my counsel, I'd be living in a van down by the river, for real.
†I shouldn't damn Amway by association. I've heard some Amway customers say they get good stuff cheap for being in the system. Which makes Amway, at least from what I hear, a much more above-board concern than Primerica.
*†Don't let the Primerica assholes fool you. They'll roll out Smith Barney and Traveler's Insurance as signs of legitimacy, trusting that your simply recognizing the names of these firms will satisfy any skepticism you have. These firms are household names, but so were Arthur Anderson, Enron and AIG: it doesn't mean you're smart to do business with them.
22 comments:
Man . . . you gotta file a complaint with the Kansas Office of the Disciplinary Administrator on Mr. Hattrup. YOUR ARE NOT THE FIRST!!! There are 3 other complaints that have been investigated and are going to trial. Add yours to help disbar him.
you can contact me for info @ fairandequitable@gmail.com
Some people are just ignorant and my friend you are a perfect example of it. Mutual funds are over price with high expenses how bout you go to morningstar.com not a primerica company and do so real research. And your statement about casinos and slot machine shows how really stupid you are. I just a client and I know better. Oh also take a look at Fox business and read the articles about Primerica becoming a listed company on the NYSE. Seriously man wise up.
I'd delete your comment, but I have more class than that. I think I'll let your rambling and scarcely coherent remarks speak for themselves and let anyone who cares decide who the truly ignorant party is.
Primerica: BBB rating A
FINRA, SEC, AM Best Rating: A+
Please refer to Credible sources.
Opinions vs. Facts.
I can say that Primerica is a great business. If we compare apples to apples Primerica against any other Life Insurance company with Term I doubt any can offer anything comparable to Primerica when it comes to premiums, term length, rider options, etc. Most of the time Insurance companies would rather sell Cash Value as opposed to Term because of the higher profit margin, fees, and commissions! I wonder why Banks and Insurance companies are so against Primerica when Primerica educates people how money works, save enough for retirement, and eliminate the need for Life Insurance all together. The Rule of 72 is a great example of how banks charge higher interest rates while their consumers earn low on their savings return. Is it wrong for everyone to know this??! I just find it odd when people would rather be selfish and not let others succeed. If we knew what Banks and inusrance companies knew and learned how to win at the moeny game wouldn't it revolutionizes the financial industry, benifit Middle income families, Grow a stronger Middle class, and move the economy forward!? Primerica gives financial education to middle class families. Be informed by credible sources. That is what the BBB is for. And if you look on the BBB website it will list most every complaint and follow up to date.
Whatever you say, but I am informed by first hand experience that Primerica is a pure rip-off. You give good general advice and then pervert it with awful specific advice, which is Traveler's overpriced insurance and Smith Barney overpriced, underperforming mutual funds that mainly buy other Smith Barney mutual funds so you're guaranteed a profit no matter what.
As far as rating agencies go, the fact that all those sham mortgage backed securities were ranked as essentially risk-free pretty much discredits all Wall Street ratings.
I have invested with Primerica for the last 10 years. When they originally set up my investment they gave me 8 companies to invest with and dozens of options on diversification. I picked aggressive because at the time I was in my early 20s. I have invested $414 a month consistently since then. Total I have invested about $53,000. Current account balance $92,000. I’m no math whiz but that seems pretty good considering I started investing in a boom and that this balance is coming from a market low. Anyway the reps I spoke too were very persistent people but not pushy and good men when I got to know them a bit more. I also have their life insurance and it's about the same price as anywhere else I looked. However if something were to happen to me I feel very secure knowing that our agent will make shore my wife gets the money as fast as possible and that he will show her how to make it last. As far as debt goes they helped show me how to pay off my debt in 7 years instead of 30. And they did it for free. I know that Primerica is a franchise and that each office is run by a different person with different morals and ethics but the one I deal with seems to follow word for word the corporate offices business standards. Primerica is a very good company in my opinion.
It's interesting to me that this post collected dust for almost a year before being jumped on by at least one Primerica salesman. (Possibly two, or 'aewotto' and 'eli' may be the same guy.) Now 'intrepid' weighs in as a satisfied customer, which makes me wonder if he's a real person, a fiction created by aewotto/eli, or what. Or maybe he's a client of Eli's and Eli put him up to it.
In any case, there is no way you did better investing with Scamerica than you would have done if you had invested that same $414 a month (good job, by the way) in, say, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund. This is because you are paying vastly more in fees (a percent or two doesn't seem like much, but little things add up to big things), and no mutual fund has beaten the index for a span of ten years since the golden days of the Magellan fund. Some have banner years, but you'd have to be psychic to actually predict which ones those will be in advance and get in and out consistently. If it were possible for anyone to really do that, there'd be a mutual fund doing so and beating the market.
I'm glad you're saving and I'm glad you have insurance. I know from personal experience that there are far better deals to be had, and the fund I was invested in stagnated even during the late 1990s tech bubble, making it something of a miracle in non-performance.
I think if you compared your policy, apples to apples, with one from Zander, State Farm or American Family, you would find that the Traveller's policy you're paying for is the most expensive.
And Dave Ramsey could have given you the same good advice about getting out of debt, and his advice is free as well (if you get his books from the library anyway.
Which is a long way of saying your mileage may vary, but in my firsthand experience, Primerica is about as reputable as Bernie Madoff. Having personally been burned, there is nothing someone's going to post here that's going to change my mind.
And having been burned, I feel it is my responsibility to tell anyone who will listen to stay the hell away from Scamerica.
No doubt there are scammers out there; and I'm sure there are some in Primerica, as well as any other company in any industry. Also, I can't blame anybody for wanting to learn from their mistakes.
I was at Wal-Mart one time looking for paper towels and one of their employees sent me to the wrong side of the store, what did I learn from this? That employee didn't know his butt from a hole in the ground. I didn't, however, blame Wal-Mart because they still had affordable paper towel and after a little more looking I found it.
As for your investments, when stocks are booming and high, bonds usually drop, and vice versa. So it really depends on what funds you pick, so always check your prospectus. I say pick because there are literally thousands to choose from, but ultimately the fund you picked was your own choice, you even signed a document stating that, so own up.
If you looked at it even halfway objectively (and I understand you probably can't because you've already put yourself on record saying you can't, but for the benefit of anyone else who might stumble across your blog-rant) you'll see that you can't really expect all 100,000+ Primerica reps to be the same person. You probably just picked a fight with an honest old man who simply dedicated his life to sharing the principles that you yourself defend as legitimate (you should be ashamed of yourself, you didn’t even know the guy.)
As always, use good judgment in any financial decision with long-term benefits/consequences. If you find something with better value, invest there, but the principles are sound and the information Primerica shares as a free service is priceless, so stop hating.
As for your conspiracy theories about someone getting on here and posting with half a dozen aliases, come on man, your blog isn't hidden. It was the second link under a Google search for "Primerica logo," which I was curious to see since I am also a graphic designer. But with 100,000 licensed reps and hundreds of thousands more satisfied clients (of which I am one) I'm sure 3 or 4 can find your blog and disagree without prior collaboration.
(continued in subsequent post...)
Anyway, Chix, I noticed you decided not to delete a previous post because of some obvious orthographical errors, claiming it to be a testament to ignorance, but again you're over generalizing the complexity of a group of several hundred-thousand individuals, each with varying levels of eloquence and ease of expression. Either way, how well someone expresses themselves doesn't have much bearing on whether or not Primerica as a company is going to actively try to "rip you off."
Ockham's razor would suggest that you most likely encountered one dishonest agent rather than a dishonest company.
In parting, I think some facts might be of interest to all of your accreditation-respecting blog followers, (assuming there are some) so here are just a few I was able to find with a quick search (credits start to roll as a triumphant electric guitar solo swells):
"Primerica's life insurance underwriter Primerica Life Insurance Company and its New York subsidiary National Benefit Life are rated A+ as "Superior" by A. M. Best as of May 2008.
Standard & Poor's has the company rated AA as "Very Strong."
The Insurance Marketplace Standards Association, a non-profit organization based out of Bethesda, Maryland with the intent to create ethical standards for the insurance industry, has renewed qualification for Primerica Life and National Benefit Life for high standards and quality business, "continuing dedication to ethical business practices."
In 2010, Primerica received its seventh Dalbar Service Award from Dalbar, Inc., a client service rating organization focused on raising the standards of customer satisfaction and quality in the financial services industry, for Primerica's excellent customer service in mutual funds.
In 2009 the Better Business Bureau changed their rating system from “satisfactory/unsatisfactory” to an “A+ to F” letter rating system. Primerica Financial Services received an A+ rating from the BBB, and is also a BBB Accredited Business since January 1, 1980.”
You Primerica confidence artists are really tedious, you know that?
Claiming these great ratings by Wall Street ratings agencies for your terrible, over-priced, under-performing mutual funds is like AIG pointing to the ratings of all those mortgage backed securities that required a multi-billion-dollar bailout.
Primerica is a rip off. There are other scams out there: Prudential 'advisors' who will only advise you to buy Prudential insurance and Prudential mutual funds; then there's the American Express version of the same, etc.
Primerica takes this dishonesty a step further by incorporating multi-level marketing into the mix.
I've said it before, I'll say it again, because it's TRUE: Primerica takes good general advice and perverts it, making it terrible specific advice. You might as well go to the payday loan for all the good Primerica will do you.
"Claiming?" Come on, it isn't considered a claim when it's documented. The ratings are real, and as for your attempt to make the accreditations sound like they are from no-name contributors, come on, the S&P and the BBB? You don't know who they are?
You don’t have anything to gain from dissuading others to invest with or buy from this company, which is a testament to your motives. And I have nothing to gain from debunking your claims, which shows my motives aren’t selfish either. So what really matters to each of us is presenting the truth for what it is, and the only way to do that is with facts, not just exasperated tirades.
Now I could just share my opinion that in my experience the Primerica Reps (a husband and wife, and parents of 8 children) who helped me were very polite and took the time to explain my investment options(which have done very well despite the economic lull), that they worked with my work schedule and came to my home (which I don’t see other institutions doing), and that they taught me how to earn interest rather than pay it (sure there are authors who teach the same thing in books, but the authors sell those books). They set me up with enough life insurance that I don’t have to worry about my wife and daughter if anything happens to me, it's much more affordable than almost any other company, and they are known for prompt benefit payout. Most customers don't even have to come up with any new money out of pocket because they simply replace more expensive products already in place, and invest the difference. All that matters to me. But that all still counts as one experience; my experience, and it isn’t the only thing that matters. Facts matter.
You've once again failed to provide facts; with no mention of the specifics you claim the company perverts, which just makes this more of a rant than a warning as you're claiming.
I'll take the time-tested research of the BBB (which tests millions of cases, rather than just one) over the fact-less rantings of “Some Guy on the Internet” any day.
And since you brought up a multi-level argument, I thought we could dissect that too. Every independent office in every company has the ability to recruit. Even a design firm has Art Directors who make more money than a Sr. designer, who in turn makes more than the Jr. designers (and don't get me started on internships! sometimes they don't even get paid, how are you not storming that castle?) Your homework for today is to show me the business structure of any working company that doesn't have "multi-levels," or where the CEO's/Top Executives don't have a higher compensation than the new employees. Levels shouldn't scare you, in fact most people appreciate not being stuck in a dead-end job.
Maybe it’s because of the startup fee? That’s certainly a valid concern and it should be a red-flag whenever someone wants you to pay money to be recruited. However in the case of Primerica any startup fee collected, which I think is like 200 bucks, covers 1st: a federal background check to ensure that they aren't recruiting felons, and 2nd: the study materials for state licensing exams so that they'll know the laws. Both are very understandable costs and not a dime goes to the company or the recruiter ... dang, kinda shoots the multi-level marketing claim in the foot. And how is that dishonest? They tell that to anyone they want to recruit.
You’ve said it before, you’ll say it again, because it’s TRUE for you. But that doesn’t mean it’s true for everyone or even a small percentage. Back your opinion up with facts and you might get a little closer to derailing the financial institution with the largest sales force in the industry, but it’s not likely. When accredited investigative entities dig deep they expose scammers for what they are, but they’ve investigated (much more thoroughly than you) and found it to be not only an honest, but an exceptional company.
Are you always this tiresome, Bryon? I'm talking about a thousand bucks 'invested' in the mid 1900s that lost money during the Tech Bubble. I lost money when any idiot who could remember a password and screen name made money. I lost money those years, true, but nothing compared to the bad years.
I am not the victim of a lone unscrupulous Primerica rep, Primerica itself is what's disreputable.
You tell me about the hoops they conned you into jumping through as if I'd suddenly have a road-to-Damascus moment, but in reality I had it when I realized that if I had a friend in the financial world it had nothing to do with Traveler's, Smith Barney or Primerica.
Those big name agencies you want me to bow to when I know better? They are the exact same agencies that verified the risk-free nature of derivatives backed by sub-prime mortgages. You might as well try to convince me you're not robbing a bank because you have Jessie James and Pretty Boy Floyd riding with you.
Its funny. 3 years later and tons of people tell you a thousand reason why Primerica is a billion dollar wall street finance firm with over 100 millionaire agents and plenty of satisfied customers and because you have one bad experience in the 90s with a bad mutual fun, you bash the company and call them scamerica? Do you live in your house with nothing to do? Get real.
You are a tiresome bunch, you Scamerica assheads. You sell overpriced insurance and high cost mutual funds and turn good financial advice into terrible advice. It's perverse, and anyone with any sense will avoid Primerica, Travellers and Smith Barney. I will never back down from this, you are the worse sort of charlatans, if there were any justice in the world you would all be hanging on stakes outside legitimate banks to serve as a lesson to others.
You sound really bitter....no company is 100% "pure" or correct all of the time.....lately, the debate is about the 1% and the corporate top level management who keep getting richer while the "lower level" workers are stagnant in their earnings growth. PFS offers its clients and representatives an opportunity that allows for unlimited earnings, depending on how well they run their business. It is an opportunity for "regular" people, so some people will come into the business with ill-motives or ill-practices. That is NOT the Primerica way. My father supported five children from his PFS business. He passed away last year and because he had OWNERSHIP of his business, it was passed onto my mother who does not need to get a 9-5. The company continues to make money for her.
Regardless of the business opportunity, the company serves over 6.3 million families throughout North America and recently became an independently traded company. It's products have improved and expanded over the years. I'm sorry that you had a bad experience, but that does not warrant discrediting the company as a whole. That's a bit rash.
You guys are hilariously insistent on your virtue. I told it like it is, I'm not bitter, I caught on and got away relatively quickly. You guys can go pat yourselves on the back along side such backbones of our economy as the payday loan sharks and pawn brokers. You take good advice and pervert it with the worst, most overpriced products that exist.
This is the most hilarious thing I personally have read in a long time... As a Primerica RVP (Regional Vice President) I definatly disagree with everything you are saying as I am kinda partial to Primerica for the things that this wonderful company has done for myself and my family. Therefore I am not going to rant on and on about how you are wrong but I am only going to say this. YOU chose your funds. Stop blaming Primerica for the poor funds YOU chose. The funds YOU chose do not have anything to do with Primerica other than they were solicited by a Primerica Rep. I understand you dropped Primerica's term insurance for someone elses term insurance due to a prica conflict in your head? OK..... Did you happen to compare the two side by side as far as options, exclusions, riders, etc.? Because if you did you would have found that Primericas term is the BEST term insurance available. We are NOT the cheapest in price... But we are also NOT the cheapest in value... Simply put we have 1 exclusion... thats it ..... 1... DONT KILL YOURSELF FOR 2 YEARS!!! Yup if your feelin froggy the 3rd year then go ahead we wil still support your family when you have chosen not to. We GUARANTEE REINSURIBILITY!! Yup when you get cancer and your term is up we will reinsure you WITHOUT PROOF of reinsuribility... There are many many many other reasons why Primerica's term is the best but what I am tring to say is.. cheapest is NOT always the BEST... and as for "underperforming investments" you are definatly an idiot if you think that we only offer certian funds... we offer EVERYTHING... we are a financial services MARKETING organization... meaning we offer ANYTHING you can get at Edward Jones, Merril Lynch, Morgan Stanley, etc. the difference? these places charge 2 seperate fees... we charge 1... our advice is free... theirs isnt... oh yea and cant forget this one... THEY will send you to a 1-800 # if you dont have at LEAST $250,000 to invest... try and go to one of these and invest your little $1000... they will literally laugh at you... We market to the middle income... which is the largest market in the world... yes some people take advantage of others, that is the world we live in... sorry bud but you only screwed yourself with the fund you chose... sorry you didnt do your research... own up for YOUR actions even though I know you wont, just like many many many others.
I have to disagree,I'm paying $27.50,for 300,000 in coverage?? Maybe u met the wrong agent
Chixulib...
I am under the suspicion that the rep you dealt with may have done something wrong. I suggest you do some investigating. Call the Primerica home office. Tell them about your situation, and let them know the name of the rep you dealt with. I know they will look into it and investigate the matter.
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