Pre Paid Nothing!

I while ago I had the unfortunate experience of dealing with people associated with the Pre-Paid Legal market. It was a miserable, long run experience.

I was at my house one day hanging out with my roommate when he gets a call from an acquaintance. The person on the calling end of the line invites him and all his friends to a barbeque at their place. Who’s going to pass up a free barbeque?

We showed up at the house as planned and we all just talked and mingled for a while waiting for the food to start cooking. By the time people stopped showing up there were about 20 of us gathered in this little house waiting for our food. It was a good time though. We played video games and watched T.V. on one of the many TV’s in the room.

After about a half an hour, the host comes in and asks if all want to watch a movie. We said sure and he proceeded to put in the DVD. The opening title comes on with the sound of triumphant music and then came the title, “Prepaid Legal”. We thought it was a joke but the host just said, “Watch it for a few…it’s good.” Sooooo, we watched it for a few, 30 few minutes to be exact. Over the course of this entire movie clip were several people giving testimonials about how rich they are and how rich we can be too if we join the prepaid legal team. It was ridiculous! Not once in this entire presentation did it explain what pre-paid legal is, how it works, and what it takes for us to get involved. It just wanted to make the point that we were all going to be millionaires by joining and paying an enrollment fee of $300. I don’t know about you but I don’t normally have to pay my employers to get a job.

The host walked into the room and started passing out information papers that we needed to fill out to become a part of his “Legal Team”. He started getting angry with those that weren’t interested in the program saying we were stupid and that we were missing out on a chance of a lifetime. After about ten minutes, most of us had gotten up and left the house with the host screaming behind us “how am I going to pay for all this food I got for you guys?!” I didn’t remember anything in the invite that said “come over and buy my barbeque food from me.”

Two days later, the harassment phone calls begin. Somehow this guy had gotten my phone number and most of the other people present that day. He continues his bully tactics and says sometime I’m going to need prepaid legal and that I’m going to regret it.

In reading an article “Is prepaid legal a good idea?” my assumptions about the prepaid way are seconded by the author. Throughout the ‘recruiting’ process, the guy kept telling me that there’s no way to make it in this world without legal advice from a lawyer. I’m twenty three years old and have had to consult a lawyer once.

My one experience cost my about 100 dollars. Pre-paid Legal usually costs anywhere between 18 – 25 bucks a month……let’s do the math. By not going with pre-paid legal, I’ve saved myself nearly 5,000 dollars.

Dave, the author of the comment on “Is prepaid legal a good idea?” says that it costs nearly “$25 a month is $300 per year. Over ten years, that's $3,000. My contention is that the typical Joe and Suzy American will not have $3,000 worth of legal needs or average expenses in a given ten-year period. If they did prepaid legal would be losing money, there would be no profit in it. And I don't think they are in the business of losing money.”

My need for such an expense just isn’t there. And, as I found out later, the guy would have gotten a pretty nice amount of money for signing my friends and I with the company. No wonder he was so persistent and nasty.

As a final note to this over-lengthy blog, I saw this guy last week. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in 2 years. When I saw him, he was handing me my hamburger through the drive up window. I guess the prepaid legal idea wasn’t such a lucrative idea after all!