PREPAID LEGAL SERVICES SCAM!
(ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT)
April 2005
I once worked with a man who was heavily involved in a Prepaid Legal Services scam. The love of money blinds people oftentimes from seeing the truth, and this guy worshipped money (although he would deny it, like most covetous people do). Mike went around to all the employees of the company he worked for, trying to seduce them into buying Prepaid Legal Services. One day Mike approached me, trying to sell me Prepaid Legal Services. I just knew there was a catch, so I wanted to hear everything he had to say. I listened to Mike for several hours over the course of the next couple weeks. I wanted to to give this "too good to be true" opportunity an honest evaluation.
I can confidently tell you that Prepaid Legal Services is a waste of money for MOST people. I only saw one possible benefit. The Prepaid Legal Services company offers to send out a legal letter on your behalf if any situation arises where such a letter might resolve the matter. This might be a benefit to you if you frequently run into situations where you might need such a letter. I can think of ONE time in my life when I needed such a letter. Prepaid Legal Services would be a big waste of money for me (and for 95% of the suckers buying it). $400 a year is not a bargain.
BOGUS COVERAGES
I looked through all the Prepaid Legal brochures that Mike handed me and I had a good laugh. The company was advertising that they would legally represent you in court if you were ever wrongfully arrested on the job. The brochure said they would represent you if a police officer ever pulled you over for no apparent reason (discrimination, etc). I couldn't believe how lame the coverages were. The brochure went on to say that the Prepaid Legal Services company WOULDN'T cover bankruptcy, divorce or any criminal charges. So basically they are offering insurance to cover things that would rarely happen. Mike had made prepaid Legal Services sound like the greatest thing since peanut butter. As I read over the brochures, I realized that he hadn't told me the details (the ugly details). Mike had said that prepaid legal services would represent me in court if I ever needed a lawyer for any reason. The fine print said that Prepaid Legal Services would NOT pay for the retainer (about $5,000) or ANY of the costs involved. Prepaid Legal advertises that they'll find you a lawyer at a discount (or use one of their own). I know all about their "discounts" and how they work. I had a lawyer tell me one time that he usually charges $350 and hour but was going to do my a FAVOR by only charging me $250 an hour. Listen friend, lawyers are scum-sucking crooks, 99% of them! If you shell out money to purchase Prepaid Legal Services, you might as well flush your money down the toilet. Like I said, the ONLY exception I can see if IF you needed to scare someone by having a legal letter sent to them. But is it worth $400 a year?
The company basically charges you around $400 per year in exchange for quick legal advice or to send a letter. I contend that the coverages are extremely minimal and highly overrated. If you ever get into any type of legal trouble, you can plan on hawking your home to pay the $50,000 lawyer's fee. Most lawyers are merciless fiends. Prepaid Legal's salespeople regularly misrepresent their services in order to sucker people out of their money. If I walked up to you and only read the fine print in the Prepaid Legal Service brochures to you, you'd walk away. What prompted me to write this webpage is my disgust at Mike's deceitfulness when he presented Prepaid Legal Services to me. Mike wasn't just a newbie in the company, but a district manager. He elevated to this status within a few months because he had been aggressively recruiting people at work and from his church. I want to warn others about these type of companies, they are just taking your money. According to the Prepaid Legal Service company, they are one of the fastest growing companies in America. To me that just shows how gullible many people are when it comes to money. It's not just Mike misrepresenting the company either, I watched the company videos and saw the same overzealous hype about an inferior service. Prepaid Legal is NOT all that it's cracked up to be, it's a scam for a few people to make a lot of money in a short period of time. When all is said and done, the top executives of Prepaid Legal Service companies become filthy rich and multitudes of less fortunate people have an inferior service provided to them. This is just my opinion, but I believe accurate.
PYRAMID SCHEME
This is a good time for me to bring up the business end of the proposition. Mike had told me that I just could buy the Prepaid Legal Services plan, but he also spent much time trying to recruit me into the business end of the company as well. Mike told me that I could become "rich" by selling Prepaid Legal Services. He told me about several other sales people within the company who had become millionaires. The typical get-rich-quick style of propaganda. He even showed me a few videos of top sales associates who had bought new homes, boats, fancy cars, vacations...life couldn't be better. Prepaid Legal Services claim that they are not any type of pyramid scheme, but that is simply not true in my humble opinion. A pyramid scheme is when a lot of people on the bottom do all the work so a few at the top can become FILTHY RICH. Though some sales people do aggressively work their way to the top and become millionaires, they have risen on the recruitment of thousands of people who never became successful. Let me put it another way, the rich people at the top couldn't have got there without YOUR HARD WORK. Mike desperately wanted to recruit me so he could make more money. I had fun wasting his time. I meant absolutely nothing to Mike as a friend, he just saw me as a potential dollar sign. Sadly, he called himself a "Christian." I think not.
Prepaid Legal Services sponsor nationwide rallies to challenge all their greedy members to "Get out there and make money!" You get to hear pep rallies by some of their top earners and listen to "how simple" it is. What you don't hear is that the top people were often previously positioned in jobs or organizations where they had access to thousands of people. The average person does not know enough people to get rich. This is why Prepaid Legal Service companies LOVE to target pastors of churches or leaders over any substantial number of people. It's all about trying to sucker in as many people as you can. I learned year ago to ALWAYS READ THE FINE PRINT. If you overlook all the hype in Prepaid Legal Service's brochures and go straight for the FINE PRINT, then you will see the truth. The fine print is their disclaimer as far as I'm concerned. Mike kept pointing out the fact that his particular Prepaid Legal Services company was a member of the Better Business Bureau and also featured in Fortune magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in America. Again, it just shows how easily a fool and his money are soon departed. People make the common mistake of listening to what the salesman is saying instead of reading the fine print. Maybe I'll go into business selling insurance to pay for frozen water pipes in the Florida Keys. Maybe I'll sell earthquake insurance in Wisconsin, or how about insurance to pay for your car if you're ever hit by a meteor? This is about how lame most of the coverages are with Prepaid Legal.
VALUE?
It's just NOT worth the money. You get what you pay for...$400 won't buy you anything more than a letter or maybe some advice over the phone. Honestly, I have just picked up the phone in the past when I needed legal advice and I've never had a problem getting free advice from a lawyer. Usually I had to call a few lawyers, but eventually you'll meet one who's willing to help guide you. There are still some nice lawyers. Also, most Bar Associations offer free legal advice at scheduled times during the month.
THE PRODUCT DOES NOT SELL ITSELF
Mike kept saying that Prepaid Legal Services was so great that it would sell itself. He said that the company discouraged people from going to door-to-door and preferred the word-of-mouth method through family and friends. This type of mentality is flawed because you'll never get rich unless you have a giant family and they're all VERY popular. Unless you know a lot of people (or recruit someone who knows a lot of people), you'll never make any serious money. Some associates within the company have created websites to promote Prepaid Legal...they're dime a dozen. A big problem I have with the sales approach of such companies is that they try to SCARE people with legal horror stories. Then they try to convince you that having Prepaid Legal Services could have saved them. It's simply not true. Like I said earlier, you're going to pay dearly if you ever need any type of legal representation. Lawyers are out to make money, big money. They don't care if you end up in the hospital, out in the street, or in your grave...they WILL get their money! Prepaid Legal Services is out to make a buck also and they're not going to do anything for you that's going to cost them over $400 (what you paid them). The only exception is if you actually find yourself in one of those weird situations.
If the product/service truly sold itself, then the company wouldn't have to have all kinds of fine print on the brochure. Salespeople NEVER mention any of the fine print items, YOU must bring them up. Its all the one-sided hype that sells their services, not the truth. If people were presented the WHOLE picture, sales would plummet.
GREED APPEAL
Mike kept telling me how much money I could make, like a worm on a hook dangling in front of me. It's the main motivation behind Prepaid Legal...making money. My problem with that is one of ethics. I have to sleep at night. I have to look in the mirror each day. Prepaid Legal presents itself in a very attractive wrapper, but there's really nothing inside the wrapper. I can't try to sell a service or product to people that I don't believe in myself. I am leery of any company that uses the tool of greed to motivate it's salespeople. I realize that companies are out to make money, but there are ethical lines which should not be crossed...like making something look better than it really is. Again, this is just my opinion. I have no doubt that some people think Prepaid Legal is a great deal. That's fine, everyone has a right to their own opinion. This is America. I personally think it is way overblown and misrepresented. I think a lot of folks wouldn't sign up for Prepaid Legal Service if they carefully read and understood the fine print. It's no accident that the fine print on ANY document is always located in VERY small letters at the bottom (or on the back) of the contract. I've always had a problem with that. I think that it should be a law that ALL fine print MUST be at the top of ALL contracts and in the same size lettering as the rest of the document. Let's face it, business is often not fair in America.
CHRISTIAN TESTIMONY
When I think of Mike, I think of a money-hungry phony. He was very involved in his church and liked to talk about religion at work. Unfortunately, Mike didn't have as much concern for the souls of others as he did for making more money. Mike was actually my manager where I worked. He took a trip down to Oklahoma for some big Prepaid Legal Services rally. When he came back, those dollar signs in his eyes were popping out of his head. Mike was all bubbly and ecstatic from the meeting...man he was excited about making those bucks. I saw the gleam in his eye and thought he was going to have a religious moment at one point. All the time he was talking, I couldn't help but realize that Jesus didn't mean as much to him as did money. He wasn't concerned about winning souls to Jesus Christ, he was only concerned about making money. Mike is caught up in the cares and riches of this world.
I remember years ago being pressured by my old boss (at a different company) to sell Amway products. His name was Dennis. He knew that I was active in my church and a soul winner. He targeted me because he knew I was not afraid to go door-to-door and speak to people. I declined his offer because I knew what he was trying to do. That fat old man wanted me to make him rich. I could make some serious money selling things if I wanted to, but I don't. I don't sell anything on my website and never will. This is God's website and money means nothing to me. I sure am glad that I didn't get sidetracked form serving the Lord. Little did I realize at the time that the founder and Chairman of Amway, Rich DeVos, is a 32nd degree Freemason (a Satanic organization).
When I was a young man, one of the ministry leaders at my church tried to recruit me into selling A.L. Williams life insurance. He actually pressured me to give him the home phone numbers and addresses of the people I worked with. I wisely declined and never had dealings with him again because I perceived that he had a spirit of covetousness controlling him. I've been around enough greedy believers to know the look. It is tragic. The world is going to hell and Christians are more concerned about getting rich, retiring early, or achieving financial independence.
Truly, Satan is the god of this world and he uses MONEY to lure many people into scams and away for God. May God help us to stay focused on the bigger picture...the world is going to hell without Christ as Saviour. Let's lay up treasures in heaven, not upon the earth where thieves break through and steal and rust doth corrupt. It's a sad day in the business world when pyramid scheme companies are actually in good standing with the Better Business Bureau.
NOTE: This article is NOT intended to target any particular Prepaid Legal Services company, but the industry as a whole. Also, all of the information presented on this webpage (and website) is merely the OPINION of this author (webmaster). I do NOT guarantee the validity or accuracy of ANY of the information presented to you on this webpage. I am simply expressing my opinions which are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Please do not consider any of the information on this page as advice in any form.
