Complaint Review: Sumner Financial & Insurance Service - Lakeland Florida

This is a forum to report wrong doings and hopefully help others avoid being taken advantage of.  If you are considering employment with this company, please read on, please!!!

Through the last several years I have watched my husband work for a company that sits behind the altar of Christianity, yet takes financial advantage of their hard working field agents, not to mention an affair with a office worker who was married to a top agent at the time.  This story is one for Jerry Springer himself....if you'd like to hear it...read on, if not please refrain and go to the next paragraph/below: **Fred Sumner, owner/operator/head poop-pah also a married man with children, was having an affair with a deaf office girl who was also married and to a top field agent at the time.  This top agent even went to Fred's home and dried in the roof, fell from the roof and was injured and out of commission while he healed.  All the while Fred was having extra marital affairs with his wife.  Nice guy, huh?  This is just a little extra info, that matters not to the business at hand, but does spell the quality of the individual you are working for.

My husband worked as a representative for Sumner Agency/Fred Sumner Agency, and a few other miscellaneous names throughout the years (which always struck me as funny, that the name would change). Let's just refer to them as The Clan.  In the beginning things were good, money being made and quickly turned to duplicate leads that had already been appointed/rise in lead costs/bogus leads, all the while my husband is paying a pretty penny for something that is false.  Never could you voice this with The Clan, they took the criticism to heart and wouldn't validate your complaint.  In fact, they would only encourage you to order more leads (get further in debt).  Charge backs...and how!

Now lets cover renewal checks....this one should make you shutter and vomit!  In October 2008, Mr. Fred Sumner reported to their Hard Working Agents that you are going to be receiving some nice renewal checks from an Insurance Company that was rewarding the agents with a set amount for each policy that continued to renew.  This renewal amount could be a considerable amount of money per agent, per month.  And this check would be coming over and above any commissions earned.  Times are hard and policies are harder to sell, and then throw in bad leads....nearly impossible to sell a policy of any kind in this current economy.  So, with that said, the mention of a renewal check is like a blinding light from above/a gift from the heavens....only to find out it is nothing more than a dangling carrot.  This renewal check, if it exists is going towards charge backs.  And lets do the math. 11 months have passed - NO RENEWAL CHECKS....how much could a person owe in charge backs, to not receive one red dime?  AND this is the kicker - get this, it is time to sign or resign contracts with the Insurance Companies...and in the e-mail sent it states, if you don't sign the contracts, you void any renewals.  HA'  It is almost funny, almost!  NOT!

These are things I know about.  I am sure my husband has spared me many details as he knows how upset I am with this company.  A bunch of "bible thumping" fakes who take and take and take more.  Before my husband leaves the house each day he is in the hole trying to dig himself out.  He fills his tank with gas, he's paid for the "leads" and he pays a young lady to set the appointments.  If he fails to sell a policy he paid everyone else to work...he gets nothing but a little further in debt.  And then lied to on top of it all!  No one will confront Fred, as whiny little Fred has stated to The Clan, "if anyone asks about the renewal checks...I am walking out of the meeting"....can you believe the cahonnahs on this guy???  If an agent is asking or dare ask about his hard earned money, he will walk out, who says that? 

Agents have left because they can't make it with Sumner...so they forfeit this "possible" renewal check, and by the treatment of the "clan" it seems that this is their method in motion.

Please beware.  I am not sure how deep all this goes...I would like to think that Ken Parker isn't aware, but that is probably a stretch.  I think this is a system they have to keep the agents they have working all the while thinking they have an additional source of income due them.

I would like to think, if nothing else, maybe this experience will help others make a wise choice.  Good luck and God Bless!