LifeTel Financial Agents Beware: They Take Your Money And Run Ontario California

I am the one who originally posted this complaint. After receiving a notification in my email that there has been more activity on this complaint, I felt the need to respond as well. As Elly indicated, once the two of us had a chance to talk, everything got straightened out quickly. As Elly indicated, I did recieve a full refund. Even though the misunderstanding was entirely my fault. It was that misunderstanding left me feeling helpless which led to me posting this report because. At the time, I didn't realize I could just reach out to Elly and he could fix this for me. Knowing what I know now, I deeply regret ever having filed this complaint.

I’m writing today for my friends and colleagues at LifeTel. I’ve known and have worked with these guys for over 8 years. I started working with Jim back at MSDSI and I continue to proudly work with Jim and Elly today with LifeTel. I’ve met up and hung out with these guys more than 50 times. Because of knowing and working with Elly, THE MAN, I’ve been able to escape from a hostage taking IMO, I’ve been able to pay off my house and put my son through college. This time last year, I was on an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii with one of the companies that I ONLY qualified for, because of working with Elly and following his direction. I was a hero to my wife again after 25 years of marriage, it was the best trip we’ve ever been on and I owe nobody more than Elly. He’s an honest man, he takes care of his family, friends and agents and is just an all-around good human being. And Jim and the rest of the folks there are every bit the same.

As the company owner, I don't really have much choice except to provide a respose to any negative comment made here, when the comment is not accurate or factual. Therefore, in a solemn effort to provided ONLY factual information, I'll keep my response as short as I possibly can and just address each claim.

First, respectfully, this commenter has never spoken to myself, any of our partners, any of our associates, staff, etc. He/she has had no actual direct dealings with me, us, there is not now, nor has there ever been, any sort of business relationship, he/she has never participated in any of our agent program(s) and he/she has never made any payments of any monies to us in any way, shape or form. In short, there has been practically no interaction whatsoever between this person and any member of LifeTel, outside of simply receiving a program description of ours via email. In fact, this person knows so little about me, though he/she references and attacks me, that the person refers to me as "she" repeatedly not even knowing that "Elly" is a childhood nickname and is a shortenting of my legal name. I'm actually a male and not female.

Second, this individual makes reference to my earlier use of the term "customer", not fully understanding that this site, from the company response side anyway, uses certain terminology including the terms "consumer", "owner", "client" or "customer", etc. Concerned the site may not understand the term "agent", as it pertains to someone working in a contract agent salesposition with us, I chose to attempt to frame our company response using what I believe to be this site's particular vernacular.

Next, what this individual doesn't know, and really couldn't possibly know, is that in fact I did refund the author of this original report several weeks ago. The original author wrote this report, before he and I ever had a chance to communicate directly on his situation. I responded initially to the report prior to our dialogue as well. As you will note, the original author then later responded withdrawing his complaint and I appreciated so very much his comments and that he even chose to praise me and my response personally, again once he and I actually had a chance to communicate. I have to say that I happen to think very highly now of the author of the original report and I just thought that it was an incredibly nice gesture of his to post those subsequent comments. He didn't have to do so and it quite frankly restored some of my faith in the overall decency of people. This current commenter greatly diminishes that restored faith with just an out of the blue, viscious and uninformed attack, even directly on me, and honestly I really don't understand the mentality. Unfortunately, it's just indicative of the times, I suppose.

I've worked in insurance for 20+ years and have built an impeccable professional and personal reputation. I think any reasonable person would agree that it's entirely unfair to attack that hard earned credibility, especially when the person has never even spoken or dealt with me and/or my company. I personally defend anyone's right to comment, but I simply ask for me and my company to at least be given the chance to show ourselves deserving of the comments, whether they be positive or negative. Once again, these comments are just an unsolicited attack.

Thank you for your review and consideration of my comments.

Elly Weatherby      

 Elly refers to the AGENT in question as a CUSTOMER. That alone speaks volumes in that she plans to make her income by charging job seekers a FEE TO WORK. If your such a respectable and upstanding company, you should just have refunded the $595 and spent $600 worth of time with your, WAY overspoken rebuttal. I too got baited and switched by this "Elly" however saw right through her SCAM and officially reported her to the U.S. Attorney General, .CA Attorney General and the CO Attorney General and anyone scammed by her needs to do the same. These kinds of business opportunities should NEVER be allowed to advert themselves as a JOB to JOB seekers!

I hereby withdraw my complaint. I was contacted by Elly Weatherby personally and he cleared up the matter for me. It was a misunderstanding on my part, and he's gone above and beyond to help me out and ensure a full refund.

My name is Elly Weatherby and I am the president of LifeTel Financial & Insurance Services, LLC. I am responding on behalf of our company to this report. In fact, I am the representative of the company that denied this customer’s refund request. I did so for the following reasons.

First and most important, NO representative of our company, including myself (I’ve never actually spoken to this customer), ever told this customer that he was “not eligible” to participate in our agent program. That’s an intentionally false statement. The truth of this matter is that this customer is completely eligible to participate in our program. I have learned through contact by one of our agent managers today that this customer is claiming on his own to be ineligible to participate, due to the fact that he has current contracts in place for some of our typical starting core insurance carriers. Mind you, we’ve yet to hear any of this from him directly, but had he bothered to actually voice this concern, he would have been told that we represent nearly every A rated insurance carrier, and even some others, and that any possible contracting conflicts could be very easily worked around. Having contracts in place with a handful of our carriers and our having the ability to align an alternate and equally strong starting portfolio for him would not be a reason we would refund our agent program fee.

Second, this customer claims not to have received leads to date, which we actually provide at no cost, and he also claims not to have received “training”. In fact, when this customer enrolled in our program, he spoke to one of my partners and had more than ample opportunity to discuss with him any possible concerns he had about contracts, leads or anything else. He did no such thing. He went through our entire and usual interview and onboarding process. He obviously voluntarily joined our program, voluntarily gave payment and we sent him immediately ALL of our prepared agent materials, prepared webinars, links to resources and links to begin the formal online appointment process. This customer was also sent a welcome and instructions email and he waited 5 days, actually 7 including the weekend between his onboarding and official company welcome, and during that time he said absolutely nothing to anybody that we can tell. After 5 official days of total silence , he sent me an email and claimed himself to be “not eligible” for our program and requested a refund. I replied same day to him and told him simply that the reason, or lack thereof of any valid reason to withdraw from the program, was not a reason that would warrant a refund be granted. My actual response to him was that I would not grant a refund based on actually being given absolutely NO true reason for his withdrawal. And, finally, he has not received leads to date, as he had not reached that stage in our process and he has not received one-on-one training yet, as he hadn’t reached that stage of our process either. As it stands today, we most certainly have NOT “taken anyone’s money and ran” and we stand here firm and fully ready to follow through on our commitments made to this customer. We simply ask the same in return. Once more, I simply told him, I believe, that at this stage, his program fee would not be returned, but that his position with us was secure and he could move forward as originally planned whenever he was ready. I have copy of that email, if anyone would care to see it.

We take the satisfaction of our customers VERY seriously here and we ALWAYS try to be very fair. We’re OVERLY fair, as a matter of fact. If an agent encounters a true personal situation and needs to withdraw, depending on the circumstances being honestly conveyed to us, the odds are overwhelmingly that we’d grant a refund and we and I have on multiple occasions. The same would be the case for an agent who was not able to be contracted with any of our carriers, perhaps due to a background situation, agent debt, etc. I just want to say clearly once more that nothing of the kind exists with this particular customer.

In closing, this customer claims to know absolutely nothing about our policy towards participation, when and when we would not refund our program fee, etc. I submit to you that we go to exhaustive levels to disclose absolutely everything through various steps up to and through our onboarding process. His claiming to know absolutely nothing is nothing more than a blatant attempt to advance a completely false narrative. Under the circumstances that I was given, I stand completely behind my decision not to grant the refund and “Dave”, as he already knows, is fully eligible to continue on and participate in our program and we continue to welcome him. If he, or anyone else, wishes to contact me directly regarding this matter, my email is E.Weatherby@LifeTelWeb.com. Neither myself nor any other member of our staff has “run” off anywhere. This customer posted this report quite simply because he was given an answer to his request he just simply didn’t like.

Thank you.