Option 1 Marketing Total Telemarketing Appointment Setting Service Scam Placentia California

Option 1 Marketing is a telemarketing service that claims to set business to business appointments for insurance agents.  However, their service is a total scam.  Their Agreement specifically states that they will set a minimum of four appointments a month for twelve months.  However, in order to do that they require you to pay a $350 list fee and then $15 for each renewal date they generate for business insurance policies (health and P&C) and an additional $75 for each appointment set.  This is how their scam operates.  Once the campaign begins, they waste no time in making calls to obtain the renewal dates at $15 each.  In the first two months of my campaign, they claimed to have generated 125 renewal dates and they charged me $1,875 for these dates in addition to the $350 list fee.  However, during those two months they only set one appointment.  Per the Agreement, eight appointments should have been set during that time.  When I contacted the salesperson Chris Semain at Option 1 he made a bunch of excuses as to why the appointments were not set.  Therefore, I gave them two more months to set appointments off of the 125 renewal dates they claimed to have obtained and which they charged me $1,875 for.  

At the end of four months they had only set a total of two appointments for the entire campaign.  Per the Agreement, 16 appointments should have been set during that time.  As all B2B insurance agents realize, renewal dates are worthless unless appointments are set off of them.  Option 1 perpetrates their scam by immediately claiming to set the renewal dates and charging $15 for each one before the unsuspecting agent realizes that the appointments they promise to set never come.  However, at this point they have already screwed the agent out of a couple thousand dollars.  Furthermore, when I checked the renewal date database that they claimed to create over the four month period, I was able to determine that some of the renewal dates were not accurate.  Employers with over 100 employees must file a Form 5500 which shows their health care insurance renewal date.  There were only a few renewal dates with over 100 employees so those were the only ones I was able to verify and indeed not all of the dates were accurate,  Therefore, they could simply be claiming to set renewal dates and charge the agent $15 for each one without even doing it.  

When I contacted the salesperson Chris Semain and the owner David Carmone after four months and requested a refund, they refused.  Even though I have the Agreement which clearly states they would set 4 appointments a month (which would have been 16 for the four months) and they actually only set 2 they still made excuses and wouldn't refund the money they scammed me out of.  Fortunately, I payed with a credit card and was able to dispute the charges.  However, I am writing this report so hopefully some other agents won't also be scammed and have to go through the same ordeal.  Also, if an unsuspecting agent pays by check they would have to sue this rogue outfit in order to get their money back.