(lively music) - [Illuminaughtii] Hello and welcome to "Multi Level Mondays," a weekly series all about pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes, multi-level marketing, and other forms of business fraud. I'm the Illuminaughtii and today we are going to be discussing
American Income Life, an MLM. Now already from the title alone, this particular MLM worries me a bit. Plenty of multi-level marketing
companies such as Herbalife are known for targeting immigrants that are seeking a better
life for themselves by attempting to help them
chase the American dream. So with that being the baseline for what we're going to
be taking a look at today, let's jump right in and explore the MLM, American Income Life. (enigmatic music) Now when we begin with the history with a cursory search
of American Income Life, it already proves to
be pretty interesting. The top results are
articles that call it a scam saying please don't
get suckered into this. It's deceptive, it's crooked, you name it. And if those are the top search results when you're looking up a company, well you know this is gonna
be one hell of an episode and not the Lil Nas type of hell. Now before I do get into the episode, I want to make it clear that American Income Life Insurance Company and National Income Life Insurance Company are just about the same thing. If you've heard of one but
not the other, now you know. They're pretty much identical. The websites are pretty much the same except for the name change. It's a little freaky, honestly. On the American Income
Life Insurance website, this is how their About Us page reads, "American Income Life is
an international company protecting working families
in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and through our wholly-owned subsidiary, National Income Life
Insurance Company in New York. I guess New York gets an entire branch of this MLM to itself so sorry New York. But anyway, although we'll
switch between American Income and National Income in wording sometimes, I just wanted to make
the distinction clear. And as an additional side note, we've got Globe Life as
their parent company. So a lot of clone-looking websites here, so who exactly are they all? Well American Income
says that they've served working-class families since 1951 with life, accident, and
supplemental health products. And yep, that's the actual
wording on their website too. And I don't know why it
made me chuckle a bit but I think it might
be because the phrasing makes it sound like
they're providing people with life, accidents, and then they also sell supplements as opposed to providing
insurance in those three areas. But let's just move on though. This American Income saga was all started by a man named Bernard Rapoport. Bernard had a pretty
difficult life growing up as he was born in 1917 and
his family struggled a lot during the Great Depression,
as many did during that time. His parents peddled blankets
from a pushcart in San Antonio trying to make ends meet
but they were evicted. It's said that one event
when he was 13 years old really shaped the man
he would later become. As one source explains, "As he rushed home from
Yom Kippur services, he was hit by a car. The accident forced him to be bedridden for a year and a half and left
him with a permanent limp. As a diversion, he read many
books while he recuperated, perhaps one of the reasons
he is such a proponent of reading programs to this day. As if poverty and
disability were not enough, Bernard would come to learn first-hand about social injustice. Growing up in an era of
anti-Semitic and anti-black bigotry provided its own lessons
in overcoming prejudice. He learned what it was like
to be a second-class citizen and learned tolerance from his father, who often rode with blacks at the back of the bus in support. These formative years shaped and formed what would later become the undergirding of the Rapoport Foundation, a pursuit of social justice and equality, a desire to help the
disadvantaged and underserved, a love of reading and music, and a will to provide
children with an education and its resulting potential." And honestly, these are
some fantastic beginnings and I don't want to diminish
what Bernard started here. The Rapoport Foundation does seem to have some incredible messaging behind it, and I think Bernard's morals
growing up are commendable, to say the least. Hell, it's not only the
good thing he's done either. According to yet another source, "Rapoport's time at University of Texas greatly influenced his success in life, and his pride in his alma
mater resulted in both financial and service
contributions to the University. in 1991, Ann Richards appointed Rapoport to the UT System Board of Regents, on which he served as chairman from 1993 until his retirement
from the board in 1997. During his tenure, the board approved the South Texas-Border Initiative to increase access to higher
education in South Texas, the purchasing power of the Permanent University Fund increased, and the University
created the UT Investment Management Company. Rapoport also established or contributed to numerous endowments for
scholarships and chairs in economics and the liberal arts and funding the Blanton Museum of Art and the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice. Named in recognition of the couple, the Bernard and Audre Rapoport Building on the UT-Austin campus houses
the College of Liberal Arts." So credit where credit is due. Bernard sounded like he
truly wanted to help others and he went the extra
mile to do exactly that. But how do we get from this, to selling insurance? Well it's sort of a
strange position to be in, where I truly admire how
much Bernard advocated for the arts and social justice but I think he made one key mistake. By all accounts, he firmly believed in the freedom of speech and
the freedom of the press, he cared about equality. So I really don't have
anything against him personally at least on that level. In many ways, he reminds me of
the founder of Color Street, another multi-level marketing company. Both of them immigrated to the US, struggled for many years but made millions and seemed to remain
humble through it all. It's so unfortunate that the companies sort of left in his wake leave much to be desired when his legacy seems anything but. (enigmatic music) As for American Income itself, well, Bernard got his start by selling Pioneer American Insurance. He opened up his own
Pioneer Insurance branch before opening his own
insurance MLM, American Income. One source states, "Bernard
Rapoport rose from general agent in the Pioneer American
Life Insurance Company to fill executive roles
in the American Income Life Insurance Company
and a political activist." I really want to believe
that Bernard simply didn't see the problem with
being in an MLM at the time. After all, if he did well enough to open his own branch at Pioneer, then he probably saw that MLM as a way of getting out of poverty and, as a Hun would probably call it, a fantastic opportunity. Bernard doesn't come across
as a scammer or a slimeball like frankly I expected him to. It seems like he might have thought, hey this business model worked for me so I'll adopt it myself. I'm not saying that's an excuse. Bernard absolutely should
have done more research and looked into how MLMs
take advantage of people, but at that time in the mid-1900s I'm also not sure that
information readily was available. According to my source, "In 1951, Rapoport and his wife's
uncle, Harold Goodman, founded the American Income
Life Insurance Company with $25,000 in Indianapolis, moving the headquarters to Waco in 1958. Under Rapoport's leadership, the company spread into labor union and credit union markets and became one of the first
Union Label insurance companies. In 1994, the insurance and financial services holding company,
Torchmark Corporation, purchased AIL for $563 million." Torchmark Corporation changed its name to Globe Life in 2019, which, as we stated earlier, is the parent company of American Income. Maybe they changed their name
to escape a checkered past but, you know, we'll get
there in just a moment. By 1963, American Income's income was between 6 and $7 million. In another 10 years, it was 31.5 million. In the '80s, Bernard was
named Fortune Magazine's 40 Most Generous Americans. And in '94, as we said,
Torchmark took over. I obviously never met Bernard. I can't say for sure he
was a fantastic person. I just wonder how legitimate and wonderful this company can be when it operates under
this business model. Spoiler alert, it's not
super reputable at all. I wish Bernard had started a
genuine life insurance business because he sounds like the kind of person that could have made it fantastic and everything it needs to be and everything that
follows in his own beliefs. He seems to care about people, he knew what it was like to go through a traumatic experience where
insurance could have helped. His insurance might have been fantastic but we just will never know because, unfortunately, American
Income is what he gave us and it just, well, it isn't it. (lively music) Now before we discuss
what makes them infamous, let's get into the products. They offer life insurance, as we said, and explain on their website how this would help someone
looking to help their family if they pass away unexpectedly. I assume most of you listening to this understand how life insurance works so let's just kind of keep things moving. In order to see how much this would cost, you would have to find an agent. I found a random one in Colorado and it led me to the distributor website. And already there were
quite a few red flags as I immediately started
to glance through. First and foremost, the
agent's website doesn't say hey I'm here to help you buy insurance or whatever you might expect. Instead the blurb underneath
this agent's name is this, "American Income Life Insurance Company is all about opportunity unlimited. Opportunity unlimited
means there are no limits to how much you can earn, how far you can advance in your career, or how many people's lives
you can help protect. As an independent contractor, you are in control of your financial worth and leadership performance. If you're looking for a
flexible career opportunity where you can help change
the lives of others, take a closer look at
American Income Life. Beneath this agent's name, there's also the words business owner, which is kind of depressing. But let me say this nice and clear. If you are an agent or
distributor for a company, you don't own that company, you are not a business owner. (gentle music) Now don't get me wrong, someone might own their own branch but ultimately their money is still going to the tippy tippy top and not to them. There's no way to get an
online quote from them either which isn't necessarily a
shady thing in and of itself, but I could see this
going wrong really fast. I remember other insurance
MLMs I've discussed asking for your social security number, which they shouldn't
really need for a quote. So I wouldn't be surprised if this one asked for that as well. I'm just saying, if someone
wanted to be an identity thief, it would be really easy to sign up for this MLM as a distributor, ask for people's socials, and then bail. Their philosophy is also somewhat standard for an insurance company and it states, "We contribute to various organizations that research, analyze,
and propose solutions on fair trade, good jobs,
environmental sustainability, and electing fair-minded candidates. Publicly, we defend workers' rights, we advocate for financial reform, we champion for a fair economy. Privately, we offer affordable, permanent, portable life insurance; we support independent agents who visit thousands of families a year." Generally, I don't see
anything that stands out or separates them from any
other insurances I may search. Everyone is going to say they believe in affordable quality care. It's seeing if they put
those practices to action that really matters. They do have a qualifier
on their product page and that did catch my eye a little bit. Here's what it says, "This life insurance does
not specifically cover funeral goods or services and may not cover the
entire cost of your funeral at the time of your death. The beneficiary of this life insurance may use the proceeds for any purpose unless otherwise directed." I'm sure this is a qualifier that plenty of other companies have but I made a note of it because, well, I think most people
expect life insurance to cover at least the
cost of their funeral. And if it doesn't, then
what are you paying all that money for, right? I guess it all depends on
what policy you've got, as any other life insurance
website seems to imply. And that's all I've really
got for what they sell. It's insurance. I can't look at the ingredients and prices and definitively state
whether or not they work. However, what I can do is
take a look at some reviews and see what American Income
Insurance holders have to say. (lively music) It's not hard to find biased
reviews about American Income. Other insurance MLMs aren't
going to have great things to say about them because
they're a competitor. I wanted to find as unbiased as a source as I possibly could though, directly from consumers and former agents that were willing to speak out. Although American Income
is accredited on BBB, they have an extremely poor rating, only two stars out of over 300 reviews. They've also got almost 300
complaints in the past 3 years, and only 100 have been closed. I understand that some people may not want to withdraw their
complaint and you're always going to have a bad customer here or there but 177 that you can't
come to a solution with, that's not a small number. Plus when you're handling a topic as life-changing and
important as insurance, how the company handles
things really does matter. I can't say for sure that this
is how the company operated when Bernard was in
charge and I don't know if this is how he would
handle these matters. At the very least, it's not a
good look in the present time. Now as for those reviews, here's what a few of them had to say. "We have had two policies
with American Income Life for over 25 years. Each year when they get a
new crop of sales people, they contact us to review our policies and try to sell us something else. They tend to show up at dinner time, in the evening and are quite pushy. When we deleted our telephone landline, we gave them a cell phone number and they already have our address. Well their salesperson never updated our files with the phone number, so for the last six months they have been googling
our name and address and calling my 85 year old mother-in-law harassing her for our phone number. Not once did they send
us anything in the mail to update our information, just continue to call and harass her. Luckily she will not give out phone numbers to random people. I emailed American Income
Life to place my complaint. I gave them a phone number and
policy number to contact us, yet last week my mother-in-law
got two more phone calls. The customer service, or should I say the lack
of customer service, is unbelievable. If we weren't going to lose so much by trying to cancel our policies, we'd be gone long ago." And let's just be clear here, there is no excuse for
that kind of behavior. Calling and harassing an 85 year old woman for a phone number, when they've already
provided that number to you, what the actual fuck? It just seems especially horrible that they do this to this elderly woman because she isn't even
a customer of theirs. Now it's not to say that,
if you're a customer, you deserve this treatment, but this person isn't even your customer and you're harassing them. That's insanity! Also, and this is pure speculation here, but I've got to question
some of the positive reviews that are on BBB as well. Four or five positive reviews
all came in in the same day and they almost say the exact same thing with just slightly different wording, like someone got creative
with the thesaurus. On February 18th, four reviews say, "The agents are helpful," or "The business has great opportunities and the agents are passionate
and well educated." There's two or three sentences
on each one, nothing more, whereas just like we saw, these negative reviews go
into incredible detail. I'm not going to say that
they're definitely fake but I find it very odd how these positive reviews come in bursts and all at the same time and they all say the same shit. And this literally happened again in December 5th, 2020, as well. I'm not saying that they're not real. I'm just saying it's
really oddly convenient that all the positive reviews
say nearly the same thing and all happen on the same day. Now the negative reviews
are far more spread out and use very different language. You know, like, they're
being written by real people that clearly weren't instructed to say anything in particular. But, hey, personal take. Feel free to take that one or leave it. Some reviews have said
that their information was sold, by the way, which, when we get back to the
identity theft matter that I just kind of
hypothetically proposed earlier, that gets a little more terrifying. Other reviews say that, "They were not allowed
to surrender the policy and got hung up on." "It was an unbelievably convoluted process to remove coverage." And plenty say they were
overcharged by hundreds of dollars. Here's a few more of these
brilliantly glowing reviews. "I canceled my policy but
they continued to bill me. Slow response to my inquiry I canceled my policy in
September before my billing date. I submitted the form and was
told my policy was canceled. I was then billed for September, which I thought was because
I canceled that month. I was billed again in October. At this point, they have taken around $150 from my bank account. I emailed two separate people and was told to disregard billing. Yeah sorry, not going to
ignore you taking my money. I emailed screenshots
of my cancellation form and the amounts taken from my bank account and I have yet to get a response." American Income statement
was sent to this person through their email and it
says if they wanted to cancel, to email them. Nothing was resolved, however, until two months after
the complaint was filed. Here's another review, "I have asked repeatedly to
be taken out of their records and to stop calling me. I'm still being called and harassed. I had this overpriced life insurance back when I worked at Safeway
and I didn't know any better. Once I realized how much
I was being overcharged, I discontinued coverage
and asked to be removed from their records. They keep calling me anyway
using manipulative language to confirm that I want
their awful insurance, starting off with 'I'm
here to talk to you about your benefits under American
Income Life Insurance,' insinuating that I have
coverage through them. I told him firmly that
I asked to be removed from their records a long time ago and to never call me again. 'So yes, you do not want benefits?' Sick to death of these scammers." American Income's response was to say "We added your information
to the do not call list. Please allow seven business days for this change to take place." Other complaints claim that they aren't even a real insurance company. A representative took
four hours at their home, and at some point they
were pressured into buying a Cancer Protection Policy. There's just an insane
amount of red flags here, though these are unfortunately
pretty standard red flags when we look at MLMs. To get a better feel for what's
happening behind the scenes, I decided to take a look
at what agents had to say about the company. After all, as we saw with Kirby Vacuums, an insider's perspective often holds some pretty valuable information. One YouTuber that goes by Buckyman claims he was promised he'd make six
figures within his first year, $100,000 exactly. Bucky says... - Honestly, I have experience in sales and I know when someone
says you're gonna make such and such amount of money
your first year in sales not to always believe it but I also know the type
of salesperson I am, and then my background
and my success history and I know that I can sell. And so I knew that I was
going to be able to do this, at least from what they were telling me and I was going to do it well. - [Illuminaughtii] Bucky was lied to in more ways than one though. He says American Income
claimed to only sell to unions, that means policemen, firemen, etc. This doesn't seem to be the case, at least not from the reviews I saw and certainly not from
what Bucky explains. I don't know if American Income
lied about selling to unions to simply seem more legitimate but it's extremely questionable because we're seeing two different things based on the complaints. And again, I could be totally wrong. Maybe every single one of those reviews comes from someone who's in a union but it just doesn't look that way. Now I know that people make fun of hunbots and question, "Oh how
could you be so stupid to join an MLM?" and things like that. And to some extent it's something
that I wonder a lot too, is how do you get someone in that mindset that they willingly join
one of these things? And I also agree that to an extent, distributors need to do
some kind of research before just joining a company and to a degree that
that mistake is on them. However, what I found especially important to recognize in Bucky's video, and something that he
made very clear here, is that American Income used very peculiar manipulation tactics. Bucky claimed that he was called
in for a second interview. He told the man over the phone... - I understand the sales industry, I get how it is, I don't need to be
promised all these things that don't hold true or only
hold true for top producers, just give me like a ballpark
average understanding of what this position is going to be and what I'm looking at as far as pay. He, again, swore up and down like, our starting agents are
making a 100,000 a year and you're gonna do great. - [Illuminaughtii] What makes
this so disheartening too is that Bucky apparently
told the recruiter that at the time he had a son in NICU, the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, and he needed something stable. So this agent knew that
Bucky was taking on this job to provide for his sick son, and still lied to him. I think that's pretty disgusting. Bucky tried to get his training
done as quickly as possible since it was unpaid training which is a whole different
problem in and of itself too. And he needed to start earning
money as soon as he could because he left his
other job for this one. He says that he realized rather quickly that although they did
work with union members, the letter was sent to everyone and it was a bait-and-switch. Information was sent to people asking if they wanted to receive a booklet about Amber Alerts and child safety but instead when they
filled out the information, they'd be signing up for an agent to come sell them insurance. In other words, you take
advantage of a parent's concern for their child's safety. Bucky explains that while this isn't his ideal selling situation, he'd sold for bait-and-switches before and he was willing to do this
to provide for his own family. Still American Income
could have and should have been upfront about something like this. And if I'm not mistaken
from my own past in sales, that bait-and-switches are
illegal in some states. I don't know if they're
illegal in all states but I do know I believe
they're illegal in Colorado. Bucky also shares that three weeks in after he got told he got the job, the agent simply stopped answering him, ghosted him and went dark. Bucky claims that he genuinely thought he did his research on this company but because there wasn't
much information about it, he didn't think it was a scam. That's another reason
why I wanted to include his story specifically and why
I believe it's so important to even make these types of episodes. Companies like Monat, sure, there's an abundance of information there and it just seems like it's
spilling out wherever you turn. But American Income Life? Like, I never really heard of this company until it was requested of me and then when I started digging into it I was like, holy shit, what a hell hole. But there just doesn't
seem that much in general. You really have to dig to start digging up what this company is actually
doing behind the scenes. Bucky said that though he saw
some bad and good reviews, he thought that perhaps the bad reviews were simply from poor salesmen, as that's the nature
of the sales business. Nothing jumped out to him
saying, hey this is a scam. Now again, this is only
one man's experience. And if the reviews on
Indeed are to say anything, well it seems to be an
unfortunately common one. I can't say for sure if Bucky is lying but the way this is set up is incredibly reminiscent of other MLMs and a very traditional pattern I think most of us have
come to recognize here. We've seen this kind of manipulation and heard this story before, so I am more inclined to believe him than to throw his opinions
and his story aside. Already there is a lot
of extremely questionable things about this business,
that much is clear. And now it's time to jump in to see what the law says about American Income. But before we do that, we're
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a month at MintMobile.com/MLM. Now continuing on into the episode, we need to discuss the lawsuits. And the lawsuits I want to start with are the ones against
Torchmark, the parent company. Namely because I feel that, if you have a horrible parent company overseeing your business, well the business underneath are probably going to follow in those same footsteps and abide by similar rules and guidelines set up by the parent company. I'm not saying this is true in every case but you know like we say, the rot starts at the top
and works its way down, especially in MLMs schemes, scams, and you know all the
fun stuff that we cover. One of the first lawsuits I could find, before Torchmark became Global, was between 1995 and 2000. According to my source,
"This lawsuit began in 1995, as a breach of contract complaint brought by several insurance agents. The agents alleged that
their former employers, the defendant insurance companies, conspired to prevent the agents from receiving vested renewal commissions under terms of their contracts, thus allegedly breaching
the terms of the contracts as well as violating
provisions of the Racketeer Influenced and Corruption
Organization Act." It doesn't seem as if the
plaintiffs actually won this case. Torchmark was able to
defend themselves in Court. Perhaps the plaintiffs didn't
have enough information. Maybe there wasn't grounds for
a lawsuit, I'm not certain. But here's what my source states, "Plaintiffs mistakenly
presume that the Court considered contract claims not an issue in the summary judgment motions to reach its conclusion that
defendants were entitled to summary judgment on the ERISA claims. On the contrary, all the Court did was use the terms of the contract
which the agent signed upon commencing their employment, to determine that those
contracts evinced an intention to preclude the agents from later claiming that they were entitled to benefits other than those provided
for in the contracts." However, this lawsuit,
also in the mid '90s, Torchmark was sued for fraudulent and misleading sales practices. According to this source, "Plaintiffs in the April 22nd action filed in Oklahoma County District Court are Ussery Moore of Georgia
and Oklahoma resident, Lila Van Dusen. Globe is based in Oklahoma City. In 1993, it had more than $310 million of annualized premium in
force, the lawsuit states. The health insurance
products named in the lawsuit are sold in all 50 states. The case claims there are
an estimated 35,000 people who might potentially belong to the class the lawsuit represents." And look, I'm not trying to
say it's okay to scam people as long as you're selling
clothes or beauty products, but if you're selling a
scammy life insurance policy or a supplemental health policy, then it's especially scummy and damaging. Health and beauty products
can be dangerous too and we've seen that with
Herbalife and the liver issues, Younique and the eye infections. You name it, it's probably there. There's just something
that rubs me the wrong way knowing that these insurers supposedly wrongfully canceled policies or, quote, "induced
policyholders to switch to inferior policies
that were misrepresented as comparable in quality," end quote. Though this case was in Oklahoma and Torchmark tried to contest it, they settled one in
Alabama for $55 million, and contested two others
in Mississippi and Georgia. I'm not saying they were definitely guilty in all four states, but if there was enough
evidence of manipulation in one, well then I'm pretty sure
there'd be more evidence of guilt in another. Also just to briefly note this here, Torchmark used to be
called Liberty National. So if you do look into
these cases yourself and see that name, that's why. They don't become Global for some time. And again, I've got to wonder
if all of the name changes are simply escapes. After all back in '99, people were catching on to their antics and the Orlando Sentinel
warned people to stay away from Torchmark and their
insurance whenever possible. Their article read, "Four
lawsuits involving Globe Life and Accident Insurance and
United American Insurance, both part of Torchmark Corporation
of Birmingham, Alabama, have dredged up testimony that
should affect your approach to buying individual
health insurance policies. For example, if a new agent calls and wants to replace a policy you own, insist on a point-by-point comparison between the old policy and the new one. Don't go by the first,
and probably biased, comparison the agent offers. Then check with your former agent. The new policy may be inferior, benefiting the insurance company or new agent at your expense. If you have a health problem and an agent offers you a low-cost policy, individual, not group, something is wrong. The policy won't stay
low cost for very long. What's more, the insurer may find excuses to deny your claims. Even if you're in good health, the design of a low-cost policy may cause your premiums to
soar a few years down the road. Those are among the key issues
in the current lawsuits. Lawsuits against Torchmark
dragged on and on and you can find these
cases in 2004 and 2006 too. One from 2004 was in Kansas and the plaintiffs sought
to recover under RICO, the Racketeer Influenced and
Corruption Organizations Act. Torchmark seemingly tried
to make excuses for itself on their website when the
lawsuits were dismissed. They talk about how they're
nationally recognized, one of the oldest traditional
insurers in the south and the largest life insurer in Alabama. That may be true but isn't
that all the more reason to take these concerns seriously? I haven't run PR for a
multi-million dollar company before but so far I'm not seeing
any statements like, "We hear your frustrations and we're going to make sure
this doesn't happen again." Like, none of that exists. And hey I get it, they're
a company that's trying to cover their asses and not look guilty. However, it's kind of a
bad look when not only were they sued by multiple
states for that same thing but they're still being
sued for it to this day. (lively music) One article released
october 2020 says that Torchmark consistently acts in bad faith. It states, "Some of the tactics that were highlighted in lawsuits included selling replacement policies
that did not actually replace all of the person's coverage. Company agents would
convince policyholders that their current coverage
would be discontinued at age 65, even when it was guaranteed for life, and then would offer new policies that were not worth as much. Another tactic involved
offering low-cost policies at rates that quickly shot up. One such case in 1989, a
Greenville, Mississippi, man bought a policy with an
$86 a month teaser rate. Torchmark did not disclose that the rate would immediately go up, and within two years, the
rate had more than doubled." They also explained that in the mid '80s, half of all Alabaman
residents who passed away had a burial policy from Torchmark. No wonder they made so much
money when half an entire state's deceased were
their customers, holy hell! Apparently though, these
burial policies were sold at a higher price to black policyholders. In 2000, a Florida Court had to order them to stop collecting premiums
on an old burial policy because, you know, race-based
pricing is fucking disgusting. Another example on the site reads, "Olga Hall sued Globe Life
Accident Insurance Company for the proceeds of a
life insurance policy she purchased on her husband, and for damages she allegedly suffered because of Globe Life's bad faith in declining to pay the proceeds. Upon investigation of the claim, Globe Life determined
that Mrs. Hall answered the fifth question incorrectly, that is, whether Mr. Hall had been treated for cirrhosis within the past 12 months preceding the application. After trial, the Court entered judgment on the jury's verdict awarding Mrs. Hall the amount of the insurance proceeds plus damages for bad faith." There's been even more
cases against Globe Life finding any excuse they possibly can to not pay their policyholders' claims. Another says that Karen
Peters filed a claim when her mother passed away. Globe Life said that her
mother hadn't paid the premium, so they refused to pay, even though Karen had a
receipt which stated otherwise. It seemed they may have
tried to get around this because Karen's mother
paid her premium in cash because the policy
application had a box check that said CWA or Cash With Application. Thankfully, Karen Peters
won attorney's fees as well as half a million
dollars for breach of contract. Again, there's something
especially despicable about telling a person whose
family member passed away that you just don't care about them even though it's kind of your job to. I understand that insurance
companies have their limits, truly, but their job is to
help you at the end of the day. It's places like Globe Life, and by extension American Income Life, that give insurance companies a bad name. It's hardly a surprise then that they've been rated one of the top 10 worst insurance companies. They discriminate, lie to policyholders, engage in fraudulent activity, and over 50 percent of
Torchmark customers, according to a free advice survey, are very unsatisfied with their treatment. And this is exactly how they were rated. Globe Life and Accident Insurance Company, Extremely Satisfied, 0%; Very Satisfied, 25%; Somewhat Satisfied, 25%; Unsatisfied, 0%; Very Unsatisfied, 50%. United American Insurance Company, Extremely Satisfied, 29%; Very Satisfied, 2%; Somewhat Satisfied, 0%; Unsatisfied, 7%; Very Unsatisfied, 61%. Prudential, State Farm, Transamerica, other well-known life insurance companies may not be perfect. Bad reviews and bad experiences do happen. But clearly based on their reviews, the majority of their own customers are not only left just
furious, overcharged, and upset, like you name it, they pretty much have
that negative feeling. The way American Income Life treats their customers and employees is enough for me to write
them off completely. Now this last portion is
normally where I would talk about the numbers and explain
why you can't make money with American Income Life. However, they haven't released
their income disclosure and I don't know their product costs, so this one is a little hard for me to actually give a
fairly accurate estimate. Some sources claim their
commission is as high as 50%, but those same sources also say, "for newbies and for those who are new in this kind of business,
it's a low success guarantee. It would really be of
low-income potential! They are not even transparent when it comes to their
income disclosure statement. And one reason that I
don't recommend AI Life is because it would cost
you a lot financially, not to mention your starting fees but even your AI Life
business-related transactions that you will all pay on your own. No company benefits and
no company incentives!" Even if people did make good
money at American Income, and I doubt they do, it only takes a cursory search to see just how not great this company is. Hell, American Income
themselves knows this because they've sued Google in the past, in 2012 for unflattering search results. This lawsuit is, it's just hilarious. Like, if you don't want unflattering search results, American Income, then maybe don't treat
your customers poorly and it won't happen. Pretty sure Google can't help the fact that most people seem to hate you. According to the lawsuit, "Google uses a patented
page rank algorithm called the Black Box
algorithm to determine which sites are the best
sources of information, according to the lawsuit. American Income Life Insurance said content from two websites,
including www.scam.com, is prominently featured in web searches for American Income Life Insurance. Those two results falsely assert that American Income Life is
a scam, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit was filed
against Google directly, as well as the unnamed
owners of the websites. In a May 20, 2010, letter to Google, included with the lawsuit,
William J. Braxley, an attorney for American
Income Life Insurance, points out the problem and asked Google to move these scam websites to
the second page of results." Here's a suggestion, if you don't want your
website to be called a scam then maybe don't be so scammy? I don't think Google
can help with that one. Google said they wouldn't take action, and that if American Income Life didn't want to see
those results to appear, they should resolve any
disputes with the owner of the website in question. Don't get me wrong, Google
is not perfect, by any means. Not even when it comes to
which results they display. But in this case, I don't
think American Income has a leg to stand on. I tried to figure out
how this lawsuit ended but just looking up
American Income and lawsuits leads to so many more of them that it's just overwhelming, honestly. Like how bad is it that American Income has so many lawsuits against their company that it's just hard to keep them straight and ordered and all of this. Anyway, the point is I
finally did find a source that states what happened. And they say, "In November 2011, the US 9th Circuit Court of
Appeals sided with Google when a construction firm
sued the search engine for posting an anonymous review criticizing the construction firm's work. 'The district Court properly
dismissed plaintiffs' action because plaintiffs seek to
impose liability on Google for content created by a third
party,' opined the Court." Overall, as frustratingly as expected, I don't have anything positive
to say about this MLM either. It's another MLM that
may work for some people but fails for countless others. And if this does happen to work for you, and you're in that very
very small minority, just remember that you're
most likely the exception and not the rule. But with all of that being said, that's where I'm going
to end today's episode of "Multi Level Mondays." I hope you enjoyed it and if you did, make sure to Like, follow, and subscribe, wherever you're listening
so you never miss a new upload from me. Thank you again for making it to another "Multi Level Mondays." And I'll see you in the next one. Bye! (lively music)
