Primerica is not what it seems

by BS
(Pennsylvania)

I was interested in joining Primerica after seeing the financial guidance capabilities during the first interview. The interview went like this. It was a zoom call and the sales rep showed us a spreadsheet of a customers debt. Multiple credit cards, showing the interest and principle payments.

We were then shown the payoff schedule and a new payoff schedule when using Primerica. The advantage that was given for using Primerica was that the amount paid to the debt would stay the same, but the payoff term would drastically shorten. The amount of interest paid would also be tremendously smaller.

That sparked my interest because it was something I could use for myself and would be a great tool to help others. Not knowing much about financial management, I figured this was a great place to start. Not only that but I could sign up for $99 and gain access to courses to become licensed as a life insurance agent, mortgage agent, disability insurance agent and a couple more licenses.

For an extra $25 a month I could gain access to their online portal that has a lot of videos and ideas to grow a business. It sounded great, so I signed up.

The strange thing was that my sales agent signed me up for the life insurance course during the sign up. I realised the next day after doing more research on Primerica, that even though I had a hunch that Primerica was an MLM, I hadn't known they had been sued for $15 million (info is on Wikipedia) and that the contract that I had signed the day before stated that I will not be eligible for a refund of the $99 if I had started the life insurance course.

The fact that my sales rep had signed me up for the life insurance course before I had checked out the online portal, or had a chance to get to know that company, was too much to ignore.

Especially after I learned that Primerica primarily makes money from term life insurance policies, and for 10s of thousands of signups like me that they do every month. Lets say they sign up 30,000 people per month, that's $2,970,000 just in sign up income. Their company states they have 100,000 sales reps. That means if 100,000 sales reps are signing up just 3-4 people a month, Primerica earns $2,970,000 every month. Im not buying into that type of company.

I have requested my refunds, which have to be done separately by email. One for the membership of $25, the other for the $99 sign up fee.