Complaint Review: Primerica

My husband and I are ex-employees of this company. Now my husband is still a bit smitten with this company. I rarely participated in the actual work part of it, I never finished my testing, but went along with my husband as the supporting spouse. The particular group of Primerica that we paid our over $400 to be part of had meetings every Tuesday night. I went to a few of these with my husband but they became an inconvenience as they were every week and required I have day care and stay away from my young child and newborn. When I quit going it seemed the group latched onto my husband, who at this time was still working 50-60 hrs per week at the job that was feeding us, the only one I might add that would ever feed us. Eventually I rarely saw my husband, when I did attend functions to do with the group (as quite a few started attending our church at my husband's invitation) I was constantly bombarded with them trying to get me to do my testing so I could start and my husband and I could launch our business. This was causing a lot of tension between us as spouses. I was lonely and he talked constantly of how great they were, and I admit he was happier than he had been since when we first married. One day though to appease me he missed a meeting (by this time the meetings were sometimes twice a week or more) and received a phone call about 10 minutes after the meeting started asking if he was coming. He told them that he really needed to be home right now and he was spending time with his family, I heard the other man tell him but this is really important. Thankfully my husband still declined. After that I told my husband I was sorry but I could never support him in this venture, I didn't tell him he had to quit, I just refused to talk of the company, to go to any more functions and boy did I get treated cold at church by these oh so pious christians. I told him he needed to either let me talk to the guy he had spoken to or he needed to tell him that our family was more important than any fancy house, expensive house, stupid umbrella pin, or tacky plaque they could ever supposedly provide. This is just a small (albeit a lot) part of my experience with this company. They are not family friendly, in fact a large majority of the families in "our team" had some serious problems when it came to their children. I don't know could that be because you can't make it unless you happen to be the first person at the top of the pyramid in this scheme? Oh yah and one last thing when you no longer work for this company you are apparently no longer licensed because that belongs to them, don't forget to read the contract very thoroughly.

That's why you can't get a straight answer out of the frauds that come here and talk the company up.

How can you put a good spin on a job that offers you no salary or benefits? Information available on the internet and this site shows that the average person puts in 60 hour weeks for $15,000 a year! That's $5 an hour!

I think that says it all!

From what I was able to gather, Primerica looks like they're hustling off life insurance and mutual funds. It says they use 100,000 sales representatives to peddle their trash. I guess that's the $5 crowd.

Plus, they're part of the Citigroup. Aren't these the same people who are running the credit card scam? Maxing out Americans with high interest revolving credit?

Pictures of employees living in luxury? If you're making $5 an hour, you better plan on marrying Anna Nicole Smith. Oops, scratch that. She just lost all her money.

Both insurance and investments come loaded with high fees for what you get. A big part of those fees goes to the salesman who is able to con people into buying this overpriced nonsense. It takes a special kind of con artist to get someone to hand over thousands of dollars for a life insurance policy. You get nothing tangible. They send you a policy in the mail, and then put you on their payment plan. No thanks, I'll pass!

Normal insurance and investment companies can pay their salesmen. It's a real job, with real wages. So why are these frauds hustling it off as a business opportunity? Doublespeak like this always means some kind of underhanded nonsense. In this case it means going out hustling all your friends and relatives and trying to pawn off this garbage on them. All without a regular salary. Remember, commission only!

The original complaint speaks of recruiting people. Isn't that the responsibility of the human resources department? Do I have to sell this trash, plus hustle others into joining me too? d**n! Do I get paid extra for each new sucker, I mean salesman, that I find?

This has all the makings of a MLM scam. Kind of like Amway. Except it's run by Citibank. They've got plenty of money. So, I assume this a new way of hustling off this garbage. You need salesmen that can connect with the victims. Speak their language. Identify with them.

Plus, Citigroup is so cheap that they don't actually want to hire anybody. They'd rather have freelance salesmen. Unbelievable! Why am I surprised? After all, a bank thought this up! You have to expect this kind of thing from a bank.

The cult part is what they do to the salesmen in order to motivate them. It's like a rat on a wheel. It's led to believe it's actually getting somewhere. Just like the original complaint shows, the man spent all kinds of time, but had nothing to show for it. Kind of like the rat, huh?

This is almost identical to the scentura fraud that another crook is running. They recruit women to hustle off fake cologne in shopping center parking lots for $5 a bottle. Just like this nonsense, you're supposed to con your friends and relatives into feeling sorry enough for you that they buy some of your crappy cologne. Same con, different trash!

If you plan on working for Primerica, good luck! You're going to need it. Your parent company already has taken America's disposable income with their maximum interest credit cards. I don't see how there's much left over to sell anybody life insurance and mutual funds on top of that.

But, hey, if you're stupid enough to buy into the cult and the business opportunity parts, then maybe you're dumb enough to work long hours for nothing too.

Obviously, you didn't quite understand what was being discussed. That's not a insult to you, PFS people don't always make things as clear as they should. Regardless, the PFS opportunity is an business opportunity, not a job. You are not paying as a condition of employment, but making an investment in the company and yourself. You wouldn't object to paying money to invest in a Papa John's franchise, would you? Probably not.

Further, the $199. pays for state insurance licensing fees and education, not for your entrance into the company. If the states didn't require education and licensing, this fee would be unnecessary, but how much trust would that require?

And, you can keep your full-time job while trying PFS out part-time. If it doesn't work for you, you haven't burned any bridges.

To the first poster, I'm sorry you were given the impression that Primerica is down on people with regular jobs. That is an unintentional side-effect of trying to help people break the old line of thinking that helped put them in the position they are in. The fact is, if people weren't greedy (I'm referring mostly to top-level executives here), and if people didn't insist on spending more money than they make, or before they make it, there wouldn't be a need for people like us, or a company like Primerica - because all companies would do the right thing for all their people, all the time. I'm glad you were able to make it work for you. God Bless.

I was living in Florida about a year or so ago. I was in between jobs and Primerica emailed me to come for an "interview". It was scheduled in the lobby of a nice hotel near Miami International Airport.

A nice man interviewed me, started asking me questions about the company. It was explained that it wasn't a "job", but a "business opportunity". So I listened further. He talked about what Primerica did and then said that I needed to cough up $200 up front "to get started".

So at that point I knew to not pursue the opportunity further. I have no idea whehter the company is legitimate or not; but, as my career advisors in college and graduate school taught me, if a company asks you for money up front, then you should avoid it.

The man showed me these pictures of "successful" Primerica employees living in luxury. I politely told the gentleman that I wasn't interested because I needed to have steady income, took his card, and then left.

Again I don't know whether Primerica is legitimate or not. However, I would be very careful with companies that ask you for money up front as a condition of employment.