Complaint Review: Legalshield - Dallas Texas

After 14 years of hard work and dedicated service to Pre-Paid Legal Services Inc and now called LegalShield,  we are the unfortunate recipients of a kick in the a*s.  The ripple that I started by Joining in 1998, and now by October 2, 2012, we had brought in over 111,000 Legal Memberships and over 32,000 Sales Reps (Associates).

After a call by Patricia Hunt (in between us and Mark & Tammy Smith's position) notify us that Brian Carruthers was showing up as an ACTIVE Platinum, in our downline, actually when I researched my geneaology, in the place of Mark and Tammy Smith's id that used to say "NO Recognition", Brian Carruthers Name, email address, physical address and his phone numbers were replaced into this record, you could clearly see that the login id still showed up as Mark and Tammy Smith  however all of Brian Carruther's information was all over this record.  

I place a call to Legalshield corporate to find out how, a positon could be taken over or purchased WITHOUT all Executive Directors above that position SIGN OFF on the Buy/Sell Agreement that is required in any purchase or sale of a Legalshield Position.   I even contacted Patrick Shaw that Owns - Gung h*o Marketing that overrides's Brian's Positon, and HE wasn't notified EITHER.  Not that is would affect his money much or at all, but it completely WIPED us out of our overrides.  We lost almost 70% of our income stream when Brian's Name showed up on this positon.  Somehow it was "activated" or turned back on... and because, the position went from NO Recognition to his name... our income dropped from an average of $8,000-$9,000 those last three months to under $1,107.92 when we printed out our commission report... we did creep over $3000 at the end of the month.

After we called the corporate office, they wouldn't answer any of our questions, about the buy/sell or how/why Brian's Name was on that position.  They said that someone would call us back on Monday.   How interestingly but within a FEW Hours... we got a call directly from Brian Carruthers trying to dance around this issue.  He proceeded to call us 3 more times over the weekend.  Brian Never calls us.  He then starts accusing ME, and us of being in another company and that we're calling and recruiting other people, which was NOT true.  He started making allegations and accusations, then he started saying that other people were reporting us.  Which could not have been true.   I recorded the end of the 3rd call that is posted on YouTube the title is called: "Brian Carruthers Takes over Mark Smith's Positon WITHOUT signatures from John and Kelly Fraser".  I also wrote a blog that you google called:  TOP 7 Reasons for MLM Termination - Empower Network and you'll see that the #1 reason for a person in MLM getting terminated is Vulturous Acts of an upline, making allegations and accusations, and then getting others to make those accusations and eventually gettining those people or persons TERMINATED from Legalshield in our case.  

Within 2 Weeks on October 2, 2012, our Legalshield Business was Terminated, NO Notice, Nothing in Writing, No Communication, except calls from Tony Pitrell and Legalshields Corporate Attorney Kari Prince, who were calling around to people in Tusla Area.  I know because a number of our Friends called us and they said that they were being recorded, and they were asking probing questions as to Kelly or Me trying to Recruit them into any other business (Nerium or Seacret Direct).  They asked our friends if they were using any products from any MLM Company and that if they were they were NOT allowed to do that.  And if they were part of any other MLM that they would be Terminated as well.  

In Network Marketing and especially with Legalshield, we are all 1099-misc, Independent Contractors.  That means they (Legalshield) cannot control, who you talk to, what you market, and control ANY PART of anything about the independent contractor EXCEPT as to making sure that the SERVICES are represented in an ACCURATE and LEGAL Manner, without making any EXTRA representations of what the memberships will NOT do as if it does... i.e. DONT misrepresent what the product does.

As long as an agent is truthful, represent the company and the product in a good light, Legalshield PROMISES that you will build a BOOK of BUSINESS, that NO ONE CAN TAKE AWAY FROM YOU.  The Promise that if you work hard for them, they will provide for you a LEGACY INCOME that will CARRY ON to not only YOU, but to your CHILDREN and your CHILDRENs, Children.  So basically people give their lives building their customer base and in some cases, recruits to leverage themselves out of a job, like I did from 1998 to 2012.  We had a good lifestyle.  We had time freedom, and when MidOcean Partners took over Prepaid Legal and took them from a Publicly Held company to a Privately Held Corporation ALL BETS WERE OFF.  These are some of the LARGEST Distributors or independent Agents that were either terminated, their income(s) placed on hold, or simply they turn off your website and back office, and we were left with NOTHING....  Most of these people left AFTER MidOcean Partners purchased Legalshield...  Mark and Tammy Smith, Joe Valenzuela, Ben and Lauren Bradshaw, John and Tiffany Mallott, Josh Denne, Jesse and Patricia Macpherson, Danny Gasemy, John and Kelly Fraser and MANY MANY More.... the list keeps growing daily.

So going back to the story... it took Legalshield 4 months to Respond to us by letter saying they were NOT going to give us a reason, a copy of our original Associate Agreement, nor our Associate Compliance file whereby we could identify any allegations against us.  The told us that they would be happy to comply if we sued them in a court of law, which in our case when we were growing our business, and our income was about $90,000-$100,000 by year end in 2012... as Brian says in his audio recording that for every $5000 in monthly income that like having $2,000,000 dollars paying out about 5% in annuity income each year, and our income was nearly double that... so what would $9,000 per month equate in todays interest rates of less than 1%?  The answer is 1% Annuity on $8,000,000 million dollars that would about NET what we were making on a monthly basis that has been taken from us.

The ONLY person who was financially able to gain from both Mark & Tammy Smith's position being taken over and ours being taken over was Brian Carruthers.  Without either of our two positions in the way.... he would in my opinion gain an EXTRA $25,000 to $45,000 per month in income or nearly a Quarter of a Million to a half a million dollars a YEAR in increase to him.  And I think that, this is exactly what happened, when MOST of his leadership FLOCKED away from his team to leave to go to other businesses....

So we're PISSED off and BURNED out with Network Marketing in the traditional sense... and would NEVER do this type of business again with companies or people that DO NOT KEEP THEIR WORD, let alone their CONTRACTS.