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Ok, I'll tag in...
Is it a scam? All insurance is a scam to someone.
Primerica is not horrible.
Is it great? I didn't say that.
I started my career in sales with Primerica. Yep, I was that starry eyed young lad of 26 hoping to find my dream with an MLM.
However, this was back when they were actually decent. Owned by Citi, I had access to mortgages, investments, legal, life, and they were just rolling out their Answer affiliation for P&C. (I actually landed the love of my life by saving her $80/m on car insurance through there during my time... we are having our fourth child next month. I never would have landed such a babe without my access to P&C. lol).
Primerica had a solid term product. Being able to refi a mortgage, write a term policy, and get them set up with LTC in one setting was a big selling point and I made some cash doing it.
However, Primerica now isn't Primerica then. Being sold off by Citi killed much of their access to the higher end products I liked.
All sales gigs are MLM in some aspects. Managers, Regional managers, etc... make money off your sales. Therefore, the MLM aspect didn't bother me as much as other stuff.
My complaint... their training sucked a$$. You want me to sell? Teach me more about these products. If I am coming in on a THursday night and Saturday morning to sit with a bunch of pseudo-positive Kool Aid drinkers, at least train me on the product. Instead, the meetings were watching hokey motivational videos, sales tips, RVPs talking about the $1000s of dollars we are making them every week, and a glorified Hootandnanny on passing out checks. Blah blah blah..
Then there is credibility. If I pick up a part time job now, I'm moonlighting. I'm an insurance professional first, bartender on the side. If you are dedicating part time hours to insurance while being a daycare worker full-time, you are moonlighting and your credibility as an insurance professional is nil in my book.
And then there is the BTID stance. Look, I like term just as much as the next guy... but there is a place for WL depending on where your customer wants to be.
"Oh... you listen to Dave Ramsey? I have the perfect mouth breather term policy for you."
The aggressive stance against WL and their propaganda opposing it is very one sided with 0 room for logic.
Recruiting was pushed way too hard. Getting people excited about insurance when they have no real interest in it to begin with is an uphill battle and honestly, if the product and system is so great.... why push so hard on recruiting?
tl;dr- Good place to get your feet wet, but you will not find massive success in their system unless you have a ton of friends who have $125 to throw away on signing up under you. Can you make money there? Sure, but you can make money selling crack rocks to homeless kids... doesn't mean it is the best way to go.
For the agent it was scam then and it's scam now.
