Complaint Review: transamerica financial - Select State/Province

I play soccer and meet random people  once a week, one of the men remembered I was looking for work and said the company that his wife works for is expanding and perhaps with my degree in finance they could find a position for me. Of course I didnt ask too many question because we were playing soccer.

The next night, his wife and i spoke on the phone about my financial background and later she texted me about meeting the next day on Wednesday at 730 pm. Of course I though it was late, but maybe they were a start up company and they work very late with the nature of their business.

I show up to the office thinking it would be a one on one interview in the sense to see what were my skills and how i could fit into the company, which is what she told me over the phone. As soon as i entered the room, there was a group of 20 or so people and the lady told me that she wanted to speak one on one but she didnt know that a big group was going to be there. Being excited for a job opportunity I did not think twice about it as we were led into the next room for a financial presentation.

For the next hour and thirty minutes we sat and were basically taught about the rule of 72, annuities, life insurance, diversification, and the time value of money. These were all things I knew from university of course but was paying attention because I wanted a job. It ended by saying they would like you to fill out a comment form about how you thought the presentation was and if you were interested in their services or working as a financial advisor. This is the job of course I wanted and there still was no reason to be overly suspicious.

Afterwards, because they already knew of my interest, I sat down alone with the lady who contacted me and the lady who gave us the presentation. I told her about my financial accumen, my personal knoweldge, my university studies. I said I specifically want to just get my foot in the door and work my way up. She told me that I needed to pay a $100 dollar background fee to get some kind of code and that I would be able to go to all their finanical classes they provide over either the web or in person. It still did not seem shady to me so I paid the money excited that I would be getting my foot into being a financial advisor.

I immediatly get home and research the company and do not like what I am reading because literally it just happened to me a few hours back. The next day I receive a text to schedule another meeting this time to meet with another boss to get an orientation about "starting the business." Now I am conviced this is some kind of scheme but I am still interested to find out and go anyways.

I meet with a gentleman that afternoon who lives on the east coast and is in the Seattle area for one week. He immedialty tells me there is a huge convention in two weeks in Las Vegas and they would like me to go. It is their corporate yearly meeting with 30,000 people going. He is also very skilled salesmen if you arent ready for it ahead of time. Uses common fear tactics that we all harbor inside of us such as failing our family, not helping our parents when they are old, and not being financially stable.

He talks about my goals and gets really specific such as how big do you want your house to be and in what street? All this is possble with our company. He also keeps pushing this Las Vegas convention which is not a lie by the way, that part is legit. He opens Forbes magazine and shows the pages where his company has the faces of all the sucess stories with their company. On left side million dollar earners, right side $500,000 earners. No doubt this is true but underneath their faces it also said what their previous jobs were. Some of their previous professions shocked me, such as, Investment advisor, marketing director, people with quality jobs. And wait why would a guy leave being an investment advisor to do this if he was going to be an "investment advisor" again.

That is when i decided I had enough and was thinking about how to get out of that place asap. I said I had to leave in 15 minutes to meet someone for a late lunch. He finished up by pressuring me to call my friends in Seattle which are few since I am new in the city to talk to them about opportunities, better yet for him to talk to them. I said well since I am from Vegas my real friends live there. That got him all excited and said that he really wants me to go to the conference and also be close to contact my friends. He wanted to know their names, jobs, income, everything. So we finished up and i will not go to Monday's appointement i made with him because he could not truly in an hour and a half explain the process.

Now, I do not know exactly what a pyramid scheme is, but I do know that if it is not one, it is close to one. Also it takes the government years to build a case, so just because it hasn't happened yet does not mean it won't.

I was under the impression that an investment advisor sits in his office and gets clients through referals and makes comision selling them various products, annuities, stocks so forth. But never have I heard that you need to recruit people to work for the boss "to build an army" in his words.

Naturally as a new IA, you will struggle for the first few years to build a customer base, but why would you hire people to take commision from you?

Lastly, if you cannot explain to me how I make money in less than ten seconds there is a problem isn't it? If you bought and apple for ten cents you sell it for 20 cents you made money case closed. This guy just went in circles talking but he did not explain anything. This company does require licensing to sell their products of course, so in that respect it is legal. They lie about getting you, what you think you are doing there, and are not sure what you are doing there when you get and leave there. Typically scams always show the succesful cases, such as the faces in the Forbes magazine but never show the other 30,000 people.

I will be more than happy to answer anyones questions.