Complaint Review: Primerica

Here's the story but forgive the english since it's not my native language.

You people know the works. This guy I don't know calls me, says he's from Primerica, part of the Citigroup and schedules me for a interview. Nice, but odd. How did he got a hold of my CV? He was pretty vague on what would be the actual job but I guessed it would be selling insurance or something like that. I was lukewarm over this, but I wanted to see what was that about anyway.

I get there on Saturday, the fat dude that called me explained: "Pershaps I forgot to tell you on the phone, but before the interview we have you attend this client presentation so you learn more about the company"

Fair enough.

Then says: "If I remember, you have a Bachelor of Business Administration (B.A.A.) with specialization in Finance, right?"
"nope"
"Marketing?"
"nope"
"HR?"
"nope, it was IT"
"aaaaah correct"
Odd, he said over the phone he had the same diploma and now he can't remember.

He showed me the room, with gold plaques musing the outstanding achievements of Primerica associates. plaques written 5000$ mostly. The fat guy had his for recruiting 14 people. Weird kind of achievement, I though.

They were about 30 people there to listen for the presentation. (mostly potential recruits, only 4 or so clients, despite the fat guy said it would be mostly clients) Two guys were doing the presentation, one of them was the head guru. He presented the other one like this: "he came to fix the coke machine, we got to talk and he's been working for us for 2 years now!" (Later on, the alleged ex-Coke machine repair guy said he had a B.A.A. That's funny, I must have missed those Soda Machine repair classes! ;))

The presentation was in two part. In the first part, the Coke guy was "teaching" us about home finance, dazzeling the audience with graphs and basic financial math. When I raised my hand to ask questions about a particular graph, he said to write my question down and save it for the end of the presentation. I had more questions pilling when they tried to rationalize that old people don't need much life insurance. (It's sure makes sense for the insurer since old people have the nasty habbit of dying. But let's not forget that the longer you live, the longer you would have time to spend the capital you have kept for retirement leaving less for your childrens.)

The Coke guy did his share of preaching too. "We save people from the evil banks"

I am not too fond of bank greediness, so the part about doing profitable business playing fair, being a good guy sounded good but cracks in the wall where already apparent in the Primerican utopia.

During the second part, the Guru talked about his own melodramatic story on how his whole family was "saved" from debt by Primerica, instead of being a lowly teacher like he was going to be, that he has been successful in Primerica since '93 and that his whole family is now working in the business. (He said earlier that Primerica had just starting operating here in quebec, so I don't know how he killed time in the last 10 years.) He talked about the story of this or that guy that used to be a milkman and now earns 120000$ working 5h/week. He made a big emphasis on how everybody could do it since it's so easy. Silly me, I had thought my diploma had anything to do with the "interview" call.

At that point, I stayed mostly to see how they would handle the question I've had pilled up. Of course, since I couldn't question any data as they showed it, they would be out of context by the time I have a chance to ask them but I wanted to ask them anyway. But when the coke-guy finished his part, he had quickly left the room has the Head Guru took over the presentation for the second part. So the question period was after the whole presentation?

The Guru finished with the pay system, to me that was third strike. 500$ commission to the guy that hired me each time I get 800$? Even if you say: "that's only 800$ for 10h of work!" That's still almost 40% of the total commision. And that's quite a hefty tribute while you're stuck in eternal vassalship. When he ended the presentation, he pointed to the corner where to register for the next week informational/training presentation and left the room in a hurry. I guess the scheme was so thin that neither of the two primerica guys couldn't afford to answer any questions. =)

Most people were lining up to sign while I left for the exit. The Fat guy was waiting for his prospects at the office door. He asked:
"So?"
"I don't think i'm interested"
"You're more looking for a job in the IT field,heh?"
"Not really, it's that this bordelines the pyramid scheme"

He gave me a uneasy smile, babbled something and the girl he was having a conversation with chuckled. He concluded with: "Well, I'll call you back anyway"

Now exept my time, I haven't lost anything. But my mother's boyfriend seems there's enough oddities to be reported to the authorithies. I doubt they can do anything, I'm sure the red umbrella crew have enough lawyer for immunity. He says he'll report them (he works for the police), so we'll see how it goes.

Any legal action precedents forcing the closure of an Primerica office in USA and Canada?

Andrew
Lorraine, Quebec
U.S.A.

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