Complaint Review: Primerica Canada - Coquitlam British Columbia

To Paul of Brooklyn: The founder of your company use to complain about A.M. Best as follows (and I'm paraphrasing, it's been a while.) Best? Who is Best, they're just a company that the industry pays to rate them This was when you're company was A.L. Williams and A.M. Best rated you an A-. So now that A.M. Best gives you a positive rating all is forgiven huh? Chances are A.M. Best is making a lot of money selling you PFS drones copies of the article, do I see conflict of interest? Secondly, Cullen is right you don't own your own business; further proof of this is the selling of the Travelers to Met Life earlier this week. One of your arch rivals. Art Williams himself use to call them names. So how much control did you have over that decision Mr. Business owner? And what happens to all the clients you have been sold Travelers Annuities through PFS. Guess what I'll bet Met life agents will welcome them, along with the opportunity to replace your products with thiers. But somehow, everybody here is wrong and you're right. Time to wake up. Regards, Ace

Paul has an additional job responsibility at his circus besides being a barker, namely being a clown. First to be fair to Paul, the spelling mistakes aren't his as the person he's quoting made those mistakes (but Paul you didn't use quotation marks as required by grammar). Now Cullen, outside of some quotation marks, Paul has made these bad grammatical errors: "In order to do our business you must be incense (STATE LAW)." Paul are you truly saying that you must be mad to do business? (with Primerica maybe you do have to be mad or crazy). Paul can you tell the difference between incense and license? "If we are a piece of garbage as you intimidate, why would we be the best?" Paul you must be a natural born clown as you have me laughing at you. Can you tell the difference between intimidate and intimate? (the second one in the dictionary Paul). My point is (besides how did you ever graduate school?) why should Primerica let you even be a representative. Insurance is a very serious business involving a lot of money. Why would Primerica risk its reputation on someone that can cost business with those types of mistakes and could even inadvertently risk being a factor in having a lawsuit brought against the company (I know that I would never do business with someone like you who can make such mistakes). Think about it Paul, put thst brain to good use for a change.

I have a very good knowledge of PFS. I was a rep for 2 years before I left to become a real financial planner unlike those of you at PFS. As an aside Paul, you should not be so quick to point out other people's spelling mistakes when your post was full of them as well. If you haven't seen any of my posts then I'll tell you the truth about PFS. PFS is a network marketing company first and foremost and a financial services company second. The needs of the clients are subjugated for the needs of the network. The motto is "recruit first, sell second". As for the business opportunity, it is not all PFS says it is. For one thing, you do not own your business. If you truly owned your own business, you would own your clients, your book of business and your sales team. At PFS, you don't own any of these, the company does. PFS is a captive company and its agents are contractually bound to it. If you think you own a PFS business, I suggest you read the contract. The no contact and no replacement clauses will affect an agent who leaves for at least 2 years and possibly forever because there is a clause that states even after you have been gone for 2 years, an ex PFS rep cannot replace an existing PFS insurance policy that is less than 7 years old. Talk about legal tentacles! Some of the promotion policies are draconian. for example, in order to become an RVP, you must give your best 1,2 or 3 producers to your upline as a replacement for you. If you owned your business, you wouldn't have to do this. If your best producers generate a significant portion of your business, I think that ia a safe assumption, then your business has just taken a huge hit when you need the income the most since an RVP can't even have a part time job outside of PFS. If you wanted to work at UPS so your family could have affordable health insurance, PFS would tell you that you could not accept an RVP promotion. Another example of captivity. Let's talk about financial plans. The Financial Needs Analysis (FNA) is NOT a financial plan. On the front cover it states " The FNA is not, nor should it be considered a financial plan." So then, just what is an FNA. An FNA is nothing more than a sales tool designed to make a potential client fearful of their financial future so they will be moved to buy a product. The FNA does a fair job at debt pay off and savings projections, but you could do the same thing with Quicken. Here is where the PFS "plan" fails. A financial game plan has several components. Accumulation (this is all an FNA talks about), Disbursement(actually generating income from investments) and Estate Planning (structuring your assets so your survivors don't get crushed with a huge tax burden). Any financial planner worth his salt can help a client maximize revenue from investments and structure an estate that will not burden survivors. PFS reps can't because they are salesmen, not financial planners. A PFS rep cannot help clients with the disbursement and estate planning and may be prohibited from referring their clients to someone who can help them. (I was told that I could not refer a client to any other professional,lawyer, real estate agent etc. because the home office was afraid of being sued) Again I ask "So whose business is it if you can't even refer your clients to other people?" O.K. Products. PFS insurance is expensive, especially for women. They use a unisex rate table where most companies use separate tables for men and women. PFS only uses 3 underwriting classes, Preferred, Non-Tobacco and Smoker. Most other companies use Preferred Plus, Preffered, Standard Plus, Standard, Preferred Tobacco, Standrd Tobacco or some variation thereof. The reason for this is to give as many people as possible a better than standard rate. Since PFS can't do this, many people are paying more than they have to. The mortgages are 2-4 points higher than the market. A PFS rep does a good job telling you that interest doesn't matter but it does. They do this by hiding the mortgage in the debt pay off section of the FNA. What you see is not a mortgage to mortgage comparison. You see your current debt payments compared to a proposed plan that includes the new mortgage. They give you an aggregate interest figure that obfuscates the high interest on the mortgage. In a pure mortgage to mortgage comparison, the PFS loan does not hold up. The mutual funds are pretty ordinary and are the only product that falls into industry averages for loaded funds. You can find excellent funds with lower operatind costs but PFs is no better or no worse than most in this department. PFS offers 2 variable annuity products through Travelers. Again nothing outstanding about these. They don't however, offer any fixed or equity indexed fixed annuities for those with less risk tolerance. This just limits the ckients choices even more.

I have a very good knowledge of PFS. I was a rep for 2 years before I left to become a real financial planner unlike those of you at PFS. As an aside Paul, you should not be so quick to point out other people's spelling mistakes when your post was full of them as well. If you haven't seen any of my posts then I'll tell you the truth about PFS. PFS is a network marketing company first and foremost and a financial services company second. The needs of the clients are subjugated for the needs of the network. The motto is "recruit first, sell second". As for the business opportunity, it is not all PFS says it is. For one thing, you do not own your business. If you truly owned your own business, you would own your clients, your book of business and your sales team. At PFS, you don't own any of these, the company does. PFS is a captive company and its agents are contractually bound to it. If you think you own a PFS business, I suggest you read the contract. The no contact and no replacement clauses will affect an agent who leaves for at least 2 years and possibly forever because there is a clause that states even after you have been gone for 2 years, an ex PFS rep cannot replace an existing PFS insurance policy that is less than 7 years old. Talk about legal tentacles! Some of the promotion policies are draconian. for example, in order to become an RVP, you must give your best 1,2 or 3 producers to your upline as a replacement for you. If you owned your business, you wouldn't have to do this. If your best producers generate a significant portion of your business, I think that ia a safe assumption, then your business has just taken a huge hit when you need the income the most since an RVP can't even have a part time job outside of PFS. If you wanted to work at UPS so your family could have affordable health insurance, PFS would tell you that you could not accept an RVP promotion. Another example of captivity. Let's talk about financial plans. The Financial Needs Analysis (FNA) is NOT a financial plan. On the front cover it states " The FNA is not, nor should it be considered a financial plan." So then, just what is an FNA. An FNA is nothing more than a sales tool designed to make a potential client fearful of their financial future so they will be moved to buy a product. The FNA does a fair job at debt pay off and savings projections, but you could do the same thing with Quicken. Here is where the PFS "plan" fails. A financial game plan has several components. Accumulation (this is all an FNA talks about), Disbursement(actually generating income from investments) and Estate Planning (structuring your assets so your survivors don't get crushed with a huge tax burden). Any financial planner worth his salt can help a client maximize revenue from investments and structure an estate that will not burden survivors. PFS reps can't because they are salesmen, not financial planners. A PFS rep cannot help clients with the disbursement and estate planning and may be prohibited from referring their clients to someone who can help them. (I was told that I could not refer a client to any other professional,lawyer, real estate agent etc. because the home office was afraid of being sued) Again I ask "So whose business is it if you can't even refer your clients to other people?" O.K. Products. PFS insurance is expensive, especially for women. They use a unisex rate table where most companies use separate tables for men and women. PFS only uses 3 underwriting classes, Preferred, Non-Tobacco and Smoker. Most other companies use Preferred Plus, Preffered, Standard Plus, Standard, Preferred Tobacco, Standrd Tobacco or some variation thereof. The reason for this is to give as many people as possible a better than standard rate. Since PFS can't do this, many people are paying more than they have to. The mortgages are 2-4 points higher than the market. A PFS rep does a good job telling you that interest doesn't matter but it does. They do this by hiding the mortgage in the debt pay off section of the FNA. What you see is not a mortgage to mortgage comparison. You see your current debt payments compared to a proposed plan that includes the new mortgage. They give you an aggregate interest figure that obfuscates the high interest on the mortgage. In a pure mortgage to mortgage comparison, the PFS loan does not hold up. The mutual funds are pretty ordinary and are the only product that falls into industry averages for loaded funds. You can find excellent funds with lower operatind costs but PFs is no better or no worse than most in this department. PFS offers 2 variable annuity products through Travelers. Again nothing outstanding about these. They don't however, offer any fixed or equity indexed fixed annuities for those with less risk tolerance. This just limits the ckients choices even more.

I have a very good knowledge of PFS. I was a rep for 2 years before I left to become a real financial planner unlike those of you at PFS. As an aside Paul, you should not be so quick to point out other people's spelling mistakes when your post was full of them as well. If you haven't seen any of my posts then I'll tell you the truth about PFS. PFS is a network marketing company first and foremost and a financial services company second. The needs of the clients are subjugated for the needs of the network. The motto is "recruit first, sell second". As for the business opportunity, it is not all PFS says it is. For one thing, you do not own your business. If you truly owned your own business, you would own your clients, your book of business and your sales team. At PFS, you don't own any of these, the company does. PFS is a captive company and its agents are contractually bound to it. If you think you own a PFS business, I suggest you read the contract. The no contact and no replacement clauses will affect an agent who leaves for at least 2 years and possibly forever because there is a clause that states even after you have been gone for 2 years, an ex PFS rep cannot replace an existing PFS insurance policy that is less than 7 years old. Talk about legal tentacles! Some of the promotion policies are draconian. for example, in order to become an RVP, you must give your best 1,2 or 3 producers to your upline as a replacement for you. If you owned your business, you wouldn't have to do this. If your best producers generate a significant portion of your business, I think that ia a safe assumption, then your business has just taken a huge hit when you need the income the most since an RVP can't even have a part time job outside of PFS. If you wanted to work at UPS so your family could have affordable health insurance, PFS would tell you that you could not accept an RVP promotion. Another example of captivity. Let's talk about financial plans. The Financial Needs Analysis (FNA) is NOT a financial plan. On the front cover it states " The FNA is not, nor should it be considered a financial plan." So then, just what is an FNA. An FNA is nothing more than a sales tool designed to make a potential client fearful of their financial future so they will be moved to buy a product. The FNA does a fair job at debt pay off and savings projections, but you could do the same thing with Quicken. Here is where the PFS "plan" fails. A financial game plan has several components. Accumulation (this is all an FNA talks about), Disbursement(actually generating income from investments) and Estate Planning (structuring your assets so your survivors don't get crushed with a huge tax burden). Any financial planner worth his salt can help a client maximize revenue from investments and structure an estate that will not burden survivors. PFS reps can't because they are salesmen, not financial planners. A PFS rep cannot help clients with the disbursement and estate planning and may be prohibited from referring their clients to someone who can help them. (I was told that I could not refer a client to any other professional,lawyer, real estate agent etc. because the home office was afraid of being sued) Again I ask "So whose business is it if you can't even refer your clients to other people?" O.K. Products. PFS insurance is expensive, especially for women. They use a unisex rate table where most companies use separate tables for men and women. PFS only uses 3 underwriting classes, Preferred, Non-Tobacco and Smoker. Most other companies use Preferred Plus, Preffered, Standard Plus, Standard, Preferred Tobacco, Standrd Tobacco or some variation thereof. The reason for this is to give as many people as possible a better than standard rate. Since PFS can't do this, many people are paying more than they have to. The mortgages are 2-4 points higher than the market. A PFS rep does a good job telling you that interest doesn't matter but it does. They do this by hiding the mortgage in the debt pay off section of the FNA. What you see is not a mortgage to mortgage comparison. You see your current debt payments compared to a proposed plan that includes the new mortgage. They give you an aggregate interest figure that obfuscates the high interest on the mortgage. In a pure mortgage to mortgage comparison, the PFS loan does not hold up. The mutual funds are pretty ordinary and are the only product that falls into industry averages for loaded funds. You can find excellent funds with lower operatind costs but PFs is no better or no worse than most in this department. PFS offers 2 variable annuity products through Travelers. Again nothing outstanding about these. They don't however, offer any fixed or equity indexed fixed annuities for those with less risk tolerance. This just limits the ckients choices even more.

I have a very good knowledge of PFS. I was a rep for 2 years before I left to become a real financial planner unlike those of you at PFS. As an aside Paul, you should not be so quick to point out other people's spelling mistakes when your post was full of them as well. If you haven't seen any of my posts then I'll tell you the truth about PFS. PFS is a network marketing company first and foremost and a financial services company second. The needs of the clients are subjugated for the needs of the network. The motto is "recruit first, sell second". As for the business opportunity, it is not all PFS says it is. For one thing, you do not own your business. If you truly owned your own business, you would own your clients, your book of business and your sales team. At PFS, you don't own any of these, the company does. PFS is a captive company and its agents are contractually bound to it. If you think you own a PFS business, I suggest you read the contract. The no contact and no replacement clauses will affect an agent who leaves for at least 2 years and possibly forever because there is a clause that states even after you have been gone for 2 years, an ex PFS rep cannot replace an existing PFS insurance policy that is less than 7 years old. Talk about legal tentacles! Some of the promotion policies are draconian. for example, in order to become an RVP, you must give your best 1,2 or 3 producers to your upline as a replacement for you. If you owned your business, you wouldn't have to do this. If your best producers generate a significant portion of your business, I think that ia a safe assumption, then your business has just taken a huge hit when you need the income the most since an RVP can't even have a part time job outside of PFS. If you wanted to work at UPS so your family could have affordable health insurance, PFS would tell you that you could not accept an RVP promotion. Another example of captivity. Let's talk about financial plans. The Financial Needs Analysis (FNA) is NOT a financial plan. On the front cover it states " The FNA is not, nor should it be considered a financial plan." So then, just what is an FNA. An FNA is nothing more than a sales tool designed to make a potential client fearful of their financial future so they will be moved to buy a product. The FNA does a fair job at debt pay off and savings projections, but you could do the same thing with Quicken. Here is where the PFS "plan" fails. A financial game plan has several components. Accumulation (this is all an FNA talks about), Disbursement(actually generating income from investments) and Estate Planning (structuring your assets so your survivors don't get crushed with a huge tax burden). Any financial planner worth his salt can help a client maximize revenue from investments and structure an estate that will not burden survivors. PFS reps can't because they are salesmen, not financial planners. A PFS rep cannot help clients with the disbursement and estate planning and may be prohibited from referring their clients to someone who can help them. (I was told that I could not refer a client to any other professional,lawyer, real estate agent etc. because the home office was afraid of being sued) Again I ask "So whose business is it if you can't even refer your clients to other people?" O.K. Products. PFS insurance is expensive, especially for women. They use a unisex rate table where most companies use separate tables for men and women. PFS only uses 3 underwriting classes, Preferred, Non-Tobacco and Smoker. Most other companies use Preferred Plus, Preffered, Standard Plus, Standard, Preferred Tobacco, Standrd Tobacco or some variation thereof. The reason for this is to give as many people as possible a better than standard rate. Since PFS can't do this, many people are paying more than they have to. The mortgages are 2-4 points higher than the market. A PFS rep does a good job telling you that interest doesn't matter but it does. They do this by hiding the mortgage in the debt pay off section of the FNA. What you see is not a mortgage to mortgage comparison. You see your current debt payments compared to a proposed plan that includes the new mortgage. They give you an aggregate interest figure that obfuscates the high interest on the mortgage. In a pure mortgage to mortgage comparison, the PFS loan does not hold up. The mutual funds are pretty ordinary and are the only product that falls into industry averages for loaded funds. You can find excellent funds with lower operatind costs but PFs is no better or no worse than most in this department. PFS offers 2 variable annuity products through Travelers. Again nothing outstanding about these. They don't however, offer any fixed or equity indexed fixed annuities for those with less risk tolerance. This just limits the ckients choices even more.

Cal, While I am in the US, I think I know how Primerica works in Canada. First, you thank all those wrote negatively about Primerica. Do you really want to thank people who stopped you from investigating an opportunity to earn 6 figures???? It is true that it is hard to get there but why would you thank people who took that away from you???? You state: Many from Premerica [sic] will probobly [sic] bash me I answer: No, I will not bash you. But I will point out that you are deciding based on information that is highly bias (Including mine, so choose carefully). You then stated: I am no judge of Premerica through dealings but I deffinetly [sic] understand the scam as I have attended four other offers this year with similar MLM constructs. I answer: Look at what you said. That you had no dealings with us. HOW CAN YOU FAIRLY JUDGE US THEN?????? Unfortunately, many, if not most, MLM's are bad. I agree with that. But there are several very good MLM's besides Primerica: AVON, Magic Chef, and AMWAY. These are all credible corporations that sell good products. If you have a great sales job now, more power to you. What we offer is a part-time opportunity to set up another business. In today's global business uncertainty, it is prudent to have a back up. As for the lure, to correctly explain the business, you need to see the professional presentation. This business cannot be explained over the phone in a few minutes. So to equate that to a negative is wrong (which is very prevalent on this site due to people just not understanding). You further state that you would have to eventually pay for a course. Well you completely missed the point, the boat, and everything else. In order to do our business you must be incense (STATE LAW). To get that license, there are fees which are several hundreds of dollars (MORE THAN THE $199). You didn't even realize that you were being offered an opportunity to get trained at an extreme discount. But that is not unusual; most of the garbage on this site is due to people not having a clue as to what is going on. You state: but I have yet to find one that actually has a leading market product. I answer: This shows how clueless you are. We are the number 1 term insurance agency. We are the largest NASD client. We are the largest seller of Smith-Barney mutual funds. If we are a piece of garbage as you intimidate, why would we be the best? I suggest you read the January AM Best report which describes Primerica in glowing terms. So Cal, I suggest you look at this with a new set of eyes.