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YIdon'tgotochurch
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I posted a reply to someone about a week ago with a devestating loss. I told them I had started working a home-based business. Several people sent me mail requesting information.

I was visiting the chat room when someone remembered my post and asked me about my business. I endeavored to explain the benefits and the service provided. I'm not trying to sell it here. But in defense, I thought it was appropriate to post this.

I sell dental and medical plans. NOT INSURANCE! ! ! It's affordable.

Now, 70% of America has not dental coverage. And some 46 million people have no medical coverage. Not only does this mean a lot of people with bad teeth. But a lot of people with no real help when they go to the doctor. For those of you in St. Mary's, this means there is a MARKET! ! ! !

The person in the chat room said he had been paying $400.00 a month for insurance. Our plan is $59.95 a month for an entire family. I help people save money on almost every medical event. Anyway, I pointed out to GXXXXX an obvious choice. Would you rather pay $4800 a year or $720?

Then another person came in a yelled "ripoff"! ! ! !!

They posted the ripoffreport.com and sure enough, I went there. Found our company and stated that we had almost a 90% retention rate. That's higher than most companies

This morning I went in and re-visited the site. I looked up Wal Mart, Sears, Dell computers and tried Penneys. All had complaints. About the same number as the company I represent.

As long as there are people, there will be those that pixx on an electric fence and scream about it.

I reviewed the complaints about my company. In every case, it was a case of people ignoring or not reading the procedures or the rules. So, now they ache and whine on a web-site that most would consider reputable.

What I found extremely odd was "guess who" was missing from ripoffreport.com? The Way International has no complaints on ripoffreport.com.

Go figure.

We are a 100 million dollar company with a target of 1 billion by 2010. Some insurance companies are pulling out of Florida and many more will change to our program within the next 5 years. HMO's as you know it, will be a dinasaur in 5 to 10 years.

So, don't believe everything on the internet. I'm on track to make a 6 figure income in the next year. While some are reading the ripoffreport and treating it like it was written by the hand of Gawd.

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TWI and LCM are on RipOffReports, check under the Bally's threads. They have been mentioned there 2 or 3 times by Lorraine, one of the site's consumer advocates. There have been mentions of those reports in threads on this forum at least twice in the recent past that I've read too.

Since I know both the EDitor and Lorraine, I can assure you they are both real and are not afraid to speak the truth. I'm one of ED's advocates, but don't often deal with the medical threads. I will attempt to reply to you here though, since you obviously have declined my offer to speak more in chat tonight and posted in the forums instead.

Now on to your company. It is an MLM/Pyramid Scheme. It's got 2 to 3 pages of reports on it, which is more than most companies will get if they aren't well known .. and your company isn't. They aren't a WalMart, Dell or KMart, so you can't even put them in the same league.

You are accusing the people who wrote ROR's of not being able to read. All good and well. Now respond to why once they joined the plan, they could find NO doctors or dentists, from your list in their area, that honored the plan. After requesting a cancel of said service, they were then put thru hoops trying to get a refund. This is not good business any way you look at it. Most never received their refund either, even after faxing their info as requested to the company.

So now you are coming in here and doing a post, trying to convince ex cult members that your company is a good thing to join and you question it when they resist? We've been ripped off by TWI, do you really expect us to blindly join an MLM? Or do you feel we are gulliable enough we may not question or research the company and you will benefit by making 200 bucks off each person you can get to join up. Funny too how at Ameriplan meetings they ask you to hold all questions till the end, then usually don't answer those who have some. Wow, sounds like PFAL all over again to me!

You also talk about how wonderfully cheap this plan is. Are you making sure everyone you talk to is aware of the fact it is NOT health insurance? It's a health PLAN that only pays a set amount of the doctor or dentist's bill. It's not health insurance coverage where you pay a small co pay when you go visit your doctor or get your meds.

Tell me. How much would each doctor visit cost me on your plan? Can I see the same doctor I've been established with for the past 6 years? How many drugs are on your formulary? How much will each script cost me? My meds retail run about 100 to 500 bucks each script a month. (Total of 1800 to 2000 a month, if I could afford to be on all I should be.) Health insurance would pay all but between 3 to 20 bucks of the cost for each script. How much would I be paying per script with your health plan?

Will you give me a list of the doctor's names that honor your plan before I join and let me call all of them to verify they will take it? When I am put in the hospital so a surgeon can remove another foot of my small bowel the Crohn's has destroyed with scar tissue, how much of my hospital stay and surgery costs will your company cover and pay for? How much will I have to pay? Will you give me a list of hospitals which take your plan before I join up along with the doctors names?

Are you telling people that once they give any hint of interest in your company that they will be talked into buying in as a broker at 95 to 300+ bucks (not all of this is refundable) if at all possible? When recruting becomes more important than sales of product, people must start to question the company's motives.

When a company makes you pay to get a job with them, that is a major red flag. The employee should get paid for doing a job, not pay the company to work for it! You are telling people you sign up to be brokers that it will cost them 35 bucks a month, every month correct? They are also responsible for all of their long distance phone bills when they call leads (the company does provide some leads after you use up your warm market [family/friends] at 10 bucks a lead), the cost of all advertising, etc.

Last, you mention the BBB. I'm assuming everyone reading this isn't stupid and are aware of the fact that businesses pay to join the BBB. That's how the company gets their income to pay their employees. Do you really think the BBB is going to say how bad a company is and lose it's income? The only time they give a bad mark to companies is long after other sources have exposed it for bad business and then they don't leave complaints public very long. They also can't do anything more than talk to the company for you, they have no legal authority to make them comply. Read the ROR on the BBB and you will see many who were ripped off by only checking BBB files and finding nothing on a company. ROR reports are written by consumers, giving their version of their dealing with a bad company. They are never edited (except for dirty words being ***'d on occasion and email addys and competitor links removed) and they are never taken down, no matter what. The owner has been sued many times by companies that were exposed for their bad behavior and he has proven time and time again to the courts that he doesn't put the reports up and everything on his site is done legally and he has prevailed.

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Several weeks ago I met you in chat and we discussed your alternative to health and dental insurance. I was very interested to talk to you due to my concerns and alarms over the state of healthcare insurance in our country. My husband is a health care provider and his small business provides health insurance for our family as well as his employees. Skyrocketing premiums keep us in a state of alarm.

You mentioned a fellow who had been paying about $500/month for health insurance. He and his family were healthy and rarely went to see doctors, and when they did, they still had to pay a $20 co-pay. So he was paying $500*12=$6,000 a year in premiums, plus about $80 a year in co-payments. I assume he nor any member of his family was taking any medication, either routinely, or related to the four visits they did make annually to physicians as you mentioned no other spending this fellow was making for health care. You also mentioned that several months after taking out your plan, he had to go into the hospital for major heart surgery and that your patient advocate was able to reduce the amount of his hospital bills from over $500,000 to about $112,000. My initial question was, who pays the difference, the $388,000. Obviously it is the hospital and doctors in that they must write-off that amount, to which you responded that the hospital and doctors overcharged, so that was okay. I mentioned that who really pays for it is all the other people who use the hospital or doctor, because they have to make up the losses somewhere.

Now the fellow who was paying $500 a month for insurance, but dropped it in favor of your plan, has to pay the $112,000 for the hospital/doctor bill. (Your company pays nothing to healthcare providers, your role is to negotiate lower fees for your plan members. You keep the full fee/premium paid each month by the plan member.) That will take him 224 months, or 18 years and 8 months at $500 a month, if the hospital and doctor will accept such a payment plan (quite doubtful they can). And he still has to pay for any medication, follow up appointments, rehabilitation therapy, etc. all out of his pocket. And since he has voluntarily dropped his health insurance and now has a pre-existing condition, no insurance company will insure him until he has been symptom free (usually including medication related to the condition) for at least 5, often 10 years. He’s in a world of hurt now! He and his family could have been insured for 14 years, and paid less than what it will now cost him for this one illness!

Sure, for several months he saved some money, paying you $59.95 per month, for your medical plan which contracts with health care providers to accept a lesser fee in exchange for you sending them new patients. So let’s say the few months was 4 months that he was on your plan, so he saved $500*4=$2,000 less $59.95*4=$239.80, or $1,760.20. That won’t go very far in paying off his new debt of $112,000, plus all new health care expenses once he leaves the hospital. Most insurance companies cap the annual out-of-pocket expense at about $1,500 or $2,000 per family. Thus if the man had paid $6,000 and $2,000 for the hospital stay, he would owe no more out-of-pocket. The insurance company would use premiums collected to pay the remainder of his bill. And they would continue to pay for all medication, doctor’s visits, therapy, whatever needed for he and his family. As for me, I would rather pay $8,000 in premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, and get the health care I need from the doctors of my choice, rather than pay your company about $720 a year, have difficulty finding a doctor (and knowing that as he’s going to be taking a huge write-off on me, he has no incentive to provide thorough care, but minimal care), and get stuck with a $112,000 bill, and be uninsurable. After all that’s the purpose of insurance, to protect you in case of “catastrophic illness” and insurmountable debt associated with it.

Now which health care providers accept your plan? From the example above, they must write off $388,000/$500,000, or 78% percent of their normal fees. They get paid less than a quarter on the dollar. Bad business sense. We looked at dentists in the Memphis area where I live and found that less than 1% participated in your plan. Of the thousands of general dentists, not including specialists, only 8, including 4 specialists, accepted the plan. Of those, 7 were located in areas I would not visit in broad daylight, accompanied by large dogs, and a body guard. One name/location I was unfamiliar with. Because of the huge write-offs, health care providers cannot afford to participate in your plan, unless they are absolutely desperate for cash flow. Is that who you want to entrust with the care of your health?

Also, found it very interesting that you receive your medical care free at the Veteran’s Administration clinic and hospital now, and that your wife and family are covered under her health insurance plan at work through the public school system. You noted that when you could find enough people to work for you, and you start making a 6 figure income, you will be able to afford to pay any doctor you chose and leave the VA behind as you do not care for their treatment. But as you are not enrolled in your own plan, it is obvious you won’t be going to those doctors who have agreed to the huge write-offs. Gave me pause to think.

I, of course, am not familiar with everyone else’s health care needs. There are probably people who benefit from your plan. But even with the alarming state of health care insurance in our country, I personally prefer insurance, to a plan. Insurance protects me, a plan leaves me vulnerable in too many important ways. Guess it all boils down to, you get what you pay for.

Edited by sudossuda
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Well, the goofy part of this company's "business plan", from what I can tell, is that they provide...uh, nothing.

You pay them money and then the supposed members of their plan work for you on the cheap. O.K., but what does the company do to effect a savings? I don't get that part.

And then the MLM element really sent my B.S. meter into overload.

I think I'll pass YID. Maybe you should find a real job?

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Medical (and Dental) are both offered by the company I work for.

It used to be free. They apologized to all of us for *needing* to charge us

$15.00 per pay period ($30.00 each month).

There is a small co-pay, but it's insignificant. :)

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I had a plan similar to what you guys are describing for almost 5 years. I am pretty healthy, except for some ongoing eye problems, and then dental issues a couple of years ago. Since I didn't get any health insurance from the company I worked for, the discount plan worked well for me. I had a number of options in North Carolina, and several reputable options for dental and vision care in Ky. I can't say how well it would have done for hospitalization because I never used it, but my experience with a discount plan was overall good.

I will say this. I believe wholeheartedly that if someone shows up at a hospital or doctor's office with any kind of discount plan or card, they are likely to get at least a little better treatment than if they walked in off the street with nothing. IMO.

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When dealing with Chronic diseases, such as the ones I have, a health plan would get you basically nowhere with doctors. Unless they are assured they will be paid, a working wage, for their ongoing services, they won't help you.

I've dealt with docs having no insurance, then getting ignored, called a liar, a drug seeker or crazy. I looked into such health plans and docs still weren't receptive. When I finally got on state insurance, then later insurance thru a husband's job, I got tests run, diseases found, surgery done and meds given out for the pain and other problems they cause me.

IF you have no health probs and plan on seeing your doctor once a year for a checkup, I would think the cost of the office visit would be less than the combined monthly payments to this plan for the year. If anything major is found though, you can be assured plans like this don't pay anywhere near what real insurance does.

My main objection is they rave about saving you money .. but do they? I think MrsDoc explained it very well in her post. You can end up losing your shirt with these plans and end up with destroyed credit once all the unpaid medical bills hit it.

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Sosassuda,

As a matter of fact, I do make DXmn sure I inform them that it is a discount plan. Otherwise, they might cancel.

The email you are receiving is a copy of what I send to all most all interested parties by way of email. I wrote it up sometime ago and saved it on MS Word.

As for people that signed up with no local providers, that had to be some idiot that sold that for which our company will have to live down for a long time. Kind of like buying a dell computer without a modem. It's Dells fault.

It is absolutely recommended that each person look at the providers located in their area. We have that link on all of our web-sites.

I've had one lady that cancelled on me because a dentist listed was no longer accepting our plan. Oddly enough, she was refunded her money from the date of her request. Gee, the system can work. I even got a call from corporate about it to verify the problem....(this lady is a neighbor)

Across the board, I'd have to say that there is a potential for people with no real desire to help others to get involved in this business. I have seen a few around my town. They are not with the company long. Just long enough to dump on it and run. They think this is a get rich program. It's not! ! ! ! It does have the ability to make you rich slowly....but the work involved is more than most are willing to invest.

Like it says in one of our videos. "When you work for someone else, they are buying you wholesale and selling you retail." It just makes sense to invest in yourself to work a business that has a lifetime vested contract.

As for my particular instance of not having the medical plan. I do have the dental.... and use it. The medical is in my future. But not right now. I would be happy to explain why if I thought it was necessary... but I don't. Suffice it to say, I expect to have it by summer's end.

Oh yea. As for the MLM/ pyramid thing. We've been in business for 14 years. No AG has tried to shut us down. We are as legal as any company out there. And if you take a moment and think! All corporations are a pyramid. Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Sam Wal, all started a business. Worked it and expanded it. They built leaders to replace them and took an override on their success.

A grocery store usually has a Store Director, then a manager, then a department manager, then some stockers and cashiers. Who makes more money? Can you work yourself up?

We provide a service along the same vein as Sam's or Costco. When you go into one of their stores, you select a product and get a discount. In our case, when you go to a doctor or dentist or pharmacists for service, you get a discount. It's worked great for 14 years.

I've been in it just over a year. Inspite of all the reasons you think are grounds.... I think I'll stick around for a while longer.

"See you at the Top"

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