Complaint Review: Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc.

I was signed up under a misquided friend about the great legal coverage and opportunity to make an honest part-time income being a Pre-Paid Services,Independent Associate. My personal experience has opened my eyes to the scandalous bunch of lawyers that have perpetuated the lie of unlimited legal representation and income projections by this company.I live in Kansas City, Missouri but the only law firm that would get in cahoots with this company is over 250 miles away in St. Louis, Missouri.

During the weekly briefings/meetings at which Associates are highly encouraged to bring people, a lot of lies are given during the presentation. The first lie is that PPL lawyers are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The truth is Your parent law firm can only be reached during regular business hours 8:30am to 5pm.

The second lie is that coverage includes 26 areas of law and that the law firm will represent you in every area. What they don't tell you is that you get a 25% discount on the hourly fee of your out of town attorney. If you get a moving violation ticket, the law firm will get you legal representation for a fee paid in advance 5 days prior to the court date. There is virtually no bonafide coverage provided by Pre-Paid Legal Services, Inc. Even the "will" coverage is questionable in that you still must pay a fee and a stipulation in it informs you that your assets still may go into probate.

The third and most troublesome lie is about the so called "opportunity" to sell this worthless scam. You are told that for every person you sign up you will receive $103.00. This is just as an Associate. Not True! The stipulations are very well hidden. They tout the saying that "the bold print giveth and the fine print taketh away".

This is exactly what they do! They don't inform you of the "Fast Track" sales quota that must be fulfilled to get this $103 for every person, and that in order to get this much you must sell the prospective client the $26 coverage and the Indentity Theft Shield for $9.95 together, evethough their is a $16 policy that can stand alone and do nothing as you cannot sue anyone with both policies.

This so called coverage only applies to you yourself being sued by someone else. The parent law firm still reserves the right under their discretion to represent you at their discount rate as basically nothing is covered. The fourth and most frustrating thing about this company is that they flat out refuse to refund money back to consumers within the 30 day stipulated time frame of cancellation.

I unwittingly signed up 3 family/friends to be Associates and members in one day. I shipped their memberships UPS at a cost of $24 on 12/29/05 as the start up Associate Fee of $49 was supposed to expire on January 1, 2006. It is still $49. Their Marketing Dept.,Membership Dept., and Identity Theft by Kroll., acknowledged receipt of the one package on December 30, 2005. The company immediately cashed their checks and charge cards.

After actually reading the fine print versus what was explained during the briefing, all 3 decided to terminate the agreement and requested refunds. The cancellation letters/materials were shipped back on January 17, 2006. The signed receipt by PPL from UPS was on January 18, 2006.

My friends and family are upset with me because as of this date only 1 person received a pro-rated refund after speaking with numerous PPL staff. He paid $49 for the Associate Agreement + $35.95 Memberhip ($26 PPL and $9.95 ID Theft) + $10 nonrefundable processing fee, for a total of $94.95. He received $40 Associate , $9 membership, and $3.50 ID Theft. Eventhough he never used the company for anything, the refund was prorated based on January 26th! The company told him he had coverage eventhough he never used it.

The company claims not to have received the cancellations (UPS)but they had no problems with receipt of the money. I've found out that you must go through Marketing, Memberships and Identity Theft which are all separate departments and each must receive a separate cancellation from the member eventhough we were told that they will share the cancellation information. We have all spoken to too many people who don't know what they are doing!

Faxes were sent on the 26th and 27th of January 2006, yet the company has yet to make full refunds and even drafted one person's checking account after acknowledging receipt of the cancellation. I the seller of the memberships/associate agreements received only $147 for my commission on January 12, 2006.

I would warn anyone considering becoming a Member/Associate not to get involved. The $147 that I made is being charged back to me so I have lost money. The tapes and magazines etc. cost money. You must recruit, recruit, recruit other people to make any money. The focus is on recruiting participants, not on selling a product. The legal product sold is overpriced and nearly worthless.

A Pyramid is an investment scheme in which a participant primarily makes money by recruiting members who, in turn, make money primarily by enticing others to join. This definition is from my State Attorney General's Office who informed me that they have never recommended this company as they PPL claims that every state in the USA has done.

SR
KANSAS CITY, Missouri
U.S.A.

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