Clarica & Primerica: Pyramids?

[ggaleazz]

I was at the job fair this week and spoke to some reps from Clarica and Primerica. This is the third time I've dealt with someone from Primerica. To me it all looks like a classic pyramid scheme. Does anyone have experience dealing with these companies in re. to jobs. Are they legit, or was my cynicism correct?

 

[impala77]

legit yes. you need the government licence to sell insurance, you front the costs and in order to get started you provide them with the names of all of your family and friends to generate your clients, failing that there is alot of pavement pounding and cold calling.

 

[The Doctor]

I don't believe Clarica is in this category, but Primerica could definitely be viewed as a Pyramid or MLM set-up. Once you hand over the list of family and friends, each of those people are then recruited to get their licence and become a part-time insurance agent. There are other firms such as Wold Financial Group who prefer to call it Network Marketing as opposed to pyramid or MLM.

You can call it what you like, but when you think about it, every commissioned sales organization could be viewed as a pyramid scheme since a a commission is paid out to the front line sales person, the regional sales manager, the dirtict sales manager and ultimately the national sales or managing director in decreasing proportions. In most cases the NSM or Managing Director receives the greatest compensation through expansion of the sales organization below him. Whether you are selling insurance, vaccums or encyclopedias. In low overhead businesses the best way to push top line revenues is through a broad distribution network.

The real drawback for insurance and financial planning industries is that Primerica and World Financial are going out and recruiting non-financial people, selling them on an easy system and convincing them that with their licence they too can have a second or full-time income in financial services.

Be very careful with these organizations because the person who is handleing your financial affairs in general has no more experience at it than you do.

 

[Howdat]

Actually, Sun Life bought Clarica.

 

[21pro]

from scambusters website:

Primerica Employment Scam

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As I am currently unemployed and eager to enter the workforce, I jumped at the chance to go to an information session about an employment “opportunity” when invited by an old colleague. When I asked her position, she gave me little info about what she actually did, and told me that they would fill me in when I got there. When I got to the Meeting, (in an office between Excitement Video and a strip club called Ralph’s Place J) I found a small room crowded with about 25 people, everyone was very happy and welcoming, lots of handshaking.

I sat in the front row for the presentation, overheads charting interest rates, doubling time, the rule of 72, RVP overriding Financial Analysts, $500 each person you switch from Whole insurance to Term Insurance, RRSPs and Mutual funds, Banks are Evil and Greedy.The whole presentation is pretty much a blur. The main Presenter came up and told us that as we are a division of Citigroup, and we are the biggest company around, that many people have bad things to say about Primerica (I am one of those people now). I tried to take notes to review later, but really I got nothing, the presentation was too fast paced and the presenters were very excited, for what reason I do not know. A 26 and a 21 year old both came onstage and boasted about their earning power. OK, last part of the pitch. $212.93 will get you trained for the provincial license to sell life insurance.

Their Mission is to help families become debt free and financially independent, they called themselves “Crusaders”, Sounds great to me, I am an excellent student. Here’s the thing, they want me to provide 5 names of friends and family so that a “Field Trainer” and I can go to their home and get them to take an RRSP loan, pay off their debt, switch their insurance and invest the difference…and then provide some more names to my field trainer. I have a diploma in Business admin and Accounting, I’ve heard of the rule of 72, I’m great with accounting, however I do not feel comfortable giving my friends and loved ones financial advice. This is a good thing, because I might have paid $212.93 and gotten ripped off as so many others.

I was really interested in the job; Everything would be done in teams and that it seemed like a pretty good support system, even though the office was pretty dumpish. When we took a break I turned to my colleague and asked about the training…. She stated that she was the only person to pass thus far, because most were new to speaking English… Hmmmm… I shook some more hands, made another appointment for 10:00 the next day, cause I was still really interested in the job. I like the idea of helping others out of tough Situations.

Next day, I show up 20 minutes early, they are having a team meeting so I wait, it sounds like they are having fun in the meeting. I read the newspaper and wait, I find it strange that they have the Music blasting in the waiting room, I think it’s because they didn’t want me to hear what’s going on in the meeting, that’s cool though. So after the meeting, the 26 year old comes out and shows me to another office, where yet another guy is waiting, he has a real raspy voice, like he did too much Heroin; he said it was from drinking coffee, anyway so he was real nice, asked about my past jobs and stated that He too was involved with the Kiwanis Music Festival, an event that I had Planned and worked with for 3 years. The 26 year old and raspy voice then proceeded to ask for my $212.93. I didn’t want to part with that money, hell, I don’t have a job, I needs all the Monies I Gots!! they said that it COULD be refunded after training, but I have been told to never pay for a job, the job pays you!

I told them that I forgot my checkbook, and I really don’t have a Credit Card, so I asked if I could pay cash. The 26 year old offered to write a Cheque for me, but I declined. Haha Good Thing too.

So I left the office, really confused, no info on the Job, really worried about employment. What am I to do? INTERNET!!!! OK, so I get home, I have been to the Primerica website, but no other websites. Google saved my butt, Luckily I surfed into

Ripoff Report
And
Primerica Busters

After I found the first link and read into it a bit, I immediately called Mr. 26 Y/O, His cell was busy (funny no Voice Mail!) so I called Mr. Raspy Voice and told him that I was not interested in the position, he tried to say something, but I just cut him off in a polite manner, and said, No Thank you I am not interested in a position with your company. I was relieved that the websites backed up and answered most of the questions I had about this company. Answers that the representatives just danced around. Multi Level marketing like Pampered Chief, Fantasia or even Gin sue Knives is not a pyramid scheme, but dang are these folks shady. I won’t go into it too much, that’s what the links are for, I just wanted to post it here so that some others might be saved the trouble. Their financial advice is not professional, they use poorly educated people to spread financial lies to sell their crappy term insurance, so basically ya have to know when you will die, cause if you live after that age, then you won’t get the benefit and you will be too old to renew, nice way to help people eh!

I guess my recounting of this tale leeds to the question, are any ehmacers happy customers of Primerica or Happy Employees even??? As far as I can tell, unless you have a plethoria of people below you, getting you the $500 per person they sucker in, you could never make the hundreds of thousands they projected.

Primerica seems to misrepresent itself, on quite a few instances, I would never feel good at a job where I rip people off, lie to my friends and family about their finances (the stuff they teach doens't seem correct, I don't know for sure, I will never pay that fee... By the way, you can take the training for free if you are sponcered by an Insurance agent, (They give ya this BS about it being $2500 that the company is spending on you! haha!) If I was to be Vinnie The Financial Crusader, I think I would put my time into it that way!

 

[Mongrel4u]

Primerica is teh butt of most of the jokes in the Financial Services Industry.

They are more interested in recruiting someone than solving a need within the realm that they are actually "in the business of"

 

[Shades]

Many years ago I got dragged to one of the Primeamerica "presentations". It most definitely is a pyramid scheme or MLM. I couldn't believe the number of people I saw signing up after the presentation. I couldn't get out of there fast enough!
Clarica, now Sun Life Financial is totally legit...have been with them since the Met Life days...and now own shares and look at a nice little quarterly dividend.
Good company.