Any of you worked for Primerica? My experience at their "seminar."

by truthseeker 26 Replies latest jw friends

  • exjdub
    exjdub
    If any of you aren't familiar with Primerica, it is basically a dubious pyramid multi level marketing company.

    Ahhh, the wonderful world of multi-level marketing . Well, let's see. I have been pushed, cajoled, falsely flattered, lied to, and buttered up to try and get me to sell Primerica, Amway, LifePlus, Blue Green Algea, Sunshine Herbs, Melaleuca (sp?), Noni Juice, Golden Eagle coins, and Alpine air purifiers (those are just the ones that I can remember). Most of these schemes were offered to me by "Brothers". What a bunch of flim flam artists.

    My favorite offer was from my brother-in-law (an elder in Ft. Lauderdale, FL who, at the time, was giving talks at the circuit and district level) who is/and was quite enamored with himself. He told me about a "can't miss" scheme to sell vitamin and mineral compounds from a company called LifePlus and also, as an added bonus to me, he was going to let me market the Alpine Air Purifiers too. When I politely declined the offer, he told me I was lazy and he accused of not wanting to provide for my family. Poor brother-in-law's greed was showing and he couldn't even see it. What really got me laughing was that he told me with a straight face that the reason he wanted to get rich from the multi-level marketing was so that he could Pioneer...bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!m It is amazing how the JW's seem to gravitate toward those scams opportunities.

    exjdub

  • Swan
    Swan

    It sounds a lot like the sour milk scam my parents were involved in in the eighties.

    http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/67751/1.ashx

    Are JWs just a bit more gullible than the rest of the population, I wonder? Naw! Probably not, but it sure seems like it.

    Tammy

  • ball.
    ball.

    Most of these so called companies have advertising material of a chart with you at the top and below different levels like a tree. And you can nearly dispell all of these companies using their own chart. On Amway's chart which appears in their book, for example, only one person in the whole of the UK has made it to the top. I guess most companies, you could say only "x" number of people have made it to the top or only 1 person has made it to the top in "x" given area.

    I like this approach as it uses their own marketing material against them and they cannot argue with it.

    p.s. of, course I don't actually know how many people are at the top level, but you can work out from their chart how many people it would take to replicate the tree in real life and therefore would have to allready be part of the program to support one person at the top of such a tree. A tree of 1 x 8 just 6 lines deep is 2,097,152. So turning that tree on it's head - there would have to be that many people already signed up to make just one person in that company match the tree.

    I realise I didn't explain this very well.

  • orangefatcat
    orangefatcat

    A few years ago my son was trying to find a job. He had gravitated from one job to another, looking for his niche in the business world.

    He replied to an advertisement that was in our local paper and decided to investigate. Right away he was taken in. I had mentioned to him that if ancompany or organizations & persons asking you to pay them money then its not a good thing. As I had had this experience with Amway twice and I knew what all the scamming was about. You'd think I would have learned the first time.

    Anyways he went to their (Primerica) seminar and came home quite excited. He told me that he met some really nice people. Who ever moderated the seminar was a real gung ho kind of guy, high pressuring too. My son said in order to get started he needed $200.00 CN. Automatically my antenni went up and I said to my son, " remember I told you, that people who ask you to pay them will lead to nowhere". I said to him it was like Amway, Melaluca, and other MLM schemes and pyrimiads. Oh he said, "no mom they are nothing like that." Boy I knew then and there he was hood-winked for sure. So his father gave him the 200.00$ for the start up fees for whatever. He kept going to the meetings and then he need another 200.00$ for another level of licensing. I told him you haven't made any money thus far and your asking for more money. I said they've got you. Hook LIne and Sinker. Poor kid. I know I wasn't being supportive but I knew what was happening. I said to him, can't you see, your filling their coffers and you aren't getting any clients and your making them richer. I told him off the bat he was not to apporach any fellow witnesses with this because the next thing you know you"ll be at the recieveing end of one unhappy JW wanting to see you in trouble with the elders.

    So we told him no more money, either. If he was getting money then he could have paid for the new liesence. I think he began to realize what I was telling him all along, that it was just that, a high pressuring sales pitch and he'd have ulcers trying to please the Primerica organization. So he said," I think your right mom, I think I was being lead to believe I could be wealthy and that I was trying to do to help out you and have a more comfortable life". I appreciated the fact he wanted to do better for himself and us but I didn't want a life style that was going to cause him to please everyone else. I said you have to be true to yourself. So he gave up on the idea. Thank God.

    And yes your all right when you say, that witnesses seem so caught up in getting rich fast and dragging in other witnesses to their new found career. And also Amway is so much like a meeting at the KH> they are a bunch of fanatical religous leaders, trying to get you to believe them like the Yager's who are so damn righteous, that they have a Bible School that they encourage people to attend. They attribute all their success to God. What a crock of you know what. I went to convention in Clevland a few years ago and I was thinking these people suck up the the wealthy like J Ws. suck up to members of the Governing Body at a convention.

    Well that is my say

    Love Orangefatcat.

  • tazmaniac
    tazmaniac

    I attended the same kind of seminar a few years ago. The tactics they used scared the hell out of me. It is almost a religion to these people.

  • NeonMadman
    NeonMadman

    Being in sales, any time I decide to put my resume out there, I get scads of calls from all sorts of straight-commission, no benefits (and often multi-level marketing type) business "opportunities". Also, sometimes what seems like an ad for a legitimate job is also a cleverly disguised front for such a position. One thing I always insist on, before I will even consider going to an interview, is that I have a reasonably clear picture of what sort of position I am investigating and at least a general idea of the compensation structure (for example, base plus commission plus expenses vs. straight commission with no benefits). If the person to whom I am speaking on the phone tries to give me vague answers ("well, I don't really know anything about that, it will all be explained at the interview"), then I will ask to speak to someone who can give me some information. I may even go so far as to explain that I've wasted a lot of time in the past being interviewed for positions I would never consider taking, and that I feel a need to qualify the position before I commit my time to investigating it. If, after I've said all that, they are still evasive, then I feel pretty confident about passing on the interview. If it is a legitimate job opportunity, they should be willing to give me some sort of basic information to motivate me to want to meet with them. If they are so arrogant as to believe that my time is of no value, then I'd just as soon not work for them anyway.

  • NeonMadman
    NeonMadman

    But, speaking of business "cults," does anyone remember Glenn W. Turner and his Koscot/Dare to be Great scams in the early 1970s? I got involved with those for a while when I was young, stupid, and prone to cult involvement...

  • beebee
    beebee

    I'm in the financial trade and professionals view Primerica and WMA (a similar program) with some pretty strong disgust. Yes, they are MLM's and they do sign up people with grand promises that rarely are fulfilled. They also sell inferior products that cost more than competitors, and the reps make a far lower cut than if they worked for a legitimate financial services organization. Their sales practices are questionable as well. Imagine dealing with something as important as your client's financial security and working off canned, one size fit all presentations. The reps get no real knowledge, just a "memorize this pitch." Also you pay for all your licenses and training with this organization. By contrast if you go to Merrill Lynch or an insurance company, they pay for all your training and licensing and usually have a salary to bridge the career transition for the first year or two.

    And any organization whether its Amway, or Quixtar (also amway), etc. where you only make real money recruiting is bad news.

    I used to sell Tupperware and found the chanting and ranting in the meetings to look eerily like a revival, and yes, there is only one right way to think! At least Tupperware people make money..my guess is more than Primerica reps do.

  • catchthis
    catchthis

    Exjdub touched on it and I thought I would bring it up again. In the past, whenever a jdub would look to these get-rich-quick/easy money schemes, did you ever notice the same line of reasoning spewing forth from the dub's mouth about why they were doing it? In probably 99% of the instances that I can recall, each and every time the jdub would say, "It is so that I can pioneer." As long as they use that ONE reason for justifying these types of "jobs," they must feel that other witnesses will give their OK because it is for the right reasons.

    "It is so that I can pioneer" = "So that I can sit at home on my lazy ass"

  • Been there
    Been there

    I have had Primerica life Insurance for over 10 years and never hear from anyone, they just take my premiums out every month from my account.

    So do I have Insurance or not?

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