My pleasure.
CCLC,
I have to strongly disagree with your previous statement about PrePaid Legal. Yes, PPL is a Network marketing company and a highly respected one at that. They are also 33 years in business and have doubled 5 times in the last 4 years.
If you want the attorneys to appear on your behalf, you do get a 25% discount or in some cases more off the hourly rate. They will refer you to a local attorney that would assist you with that. They are not 25% more than a regular hourly attorney.
My question to you is how long were you an associate for?
There are a lot of people out there bad mouthing the company because most people expect to have everything taken care of for 35.95/month. Case in point. If you went to your doctor and wanted plastic surgery would you have to come out of pocket some money? Of course you would.
They provide you with a comprehensive will that is a $500+ value. You could also go to office max if you would like and spend $10 and you will realize you get what you pay for. The truth, they WILL NOT hold up in a court of law! You can also have a trust prepared with them as well.
PrePaid Legal is an excellent company with an excellent product. We have attorney generals behind our back talking good things about PPL. First off, you don’t become a http://www.nyse.com (PPD) company by providing bad service to the marketplace. We are in the top 1% of all publicly traded companies. Thats called a clue. Also you are not featured in highly respected publications if the company is not doing good. I would suggest that before you start bad mouthing a company don’t be nieve to what you do not know.
JayDee if you really want to research the company, go to respected individuals in the marketplace and get their opinion. I am sure CCLC doesn’t have a better research team than steve forbes.
Yours Truly,
Josh
I agree with CCLC.
I found that their “letters” did nothing to resolve my legal issues in the past.
If you need to pursue something they refer you to their “discounted” attorneys that are definitely overpriced.
If you need help for an issue in another state, forget it. There will be no letters…
Just the referral to the “low” fee atty in that state that really isn’t low.
The only reason I still keep them is for those times when I need immediate legal advice.
They are my back up until I hear of another legal plan. I look at it like having legal insurance coverage that I get to write off.
For me, the $26 month is worth it to be able to pick up the phone with a new question. Even if they couldn’t help, I got the gist of how to deal with my problem.
I certainly wouldn’t hire one to appear in court for me. That’s where they REALLY make their money.
If I had time and if I were an attorney, I would create my own “prepaid” national service promoting a “one stop” legal service for ALL your needs and then compete with them.
There are lots of us that would switch in a heartbeat to receive personalized legal care.
There is no need to waste my time writing posts about the benefits of PPL. Actually they wrote a letter for me to switzerland, if you want to see it, let me know. Anyways, I challenge you to start your own PrePaid Legal business and when you begin to break records like Prepaid Legal, e-mail me and I will congatulate you. Have a merry christmas all.
Yours Truly,
Josh
>>Actually they wrote a letter for me to switzerland<<
Hmmm… then I wonder why they refused to do a simple letter on my behalf to an AZ tenant???
>>I challenge you to start your own PrePaid Legal business and when you begin to break records like Prepaid Legal, e-mail me and I will congatulate you<<<
If I had time to start another business, I would love to.
But I don’t, and plus I’m not an attorney. I just think that’s it’s always healthy to have competition in every business. It makes you work a little harder for your customers.
I merely gave facts regarding on my own personal dealings with prepaid legal since 2001.
That’s the great thing about boards like this.
It allows us to share our own personal experiences to hopefully help somebody else who is seeking advice without trying to sell something.
You are obviously an agent of PPL.
I know a lot more about the company than you know and I am not here to have a debate with you.
What I stated in my previous message is true and stands.
I hold many licenses, including insurance, investment, mortgage, etc. I have prepared many wills. Their will is far from comprehensive and I have seen a number of them. They are form letter canned wills. You would do better buying willwriter for 50 bucks and doing your own “COMPREHENSIVE” will.
Let’s see… 40 bucks a month for a year is just shy of $500.00
That measn that, in effect, you are paying $500.00 a year (at least for your first year) to get a $49.00 will.
They can’t even get you out of a ticket. You can pay 65.00 down here to have a traffic ticket eliminated or your money back.
You can go to Office depot and get a program that has tons of legal letters you can send out. You can download for free form the internet all the forms you need to dispute credit agency issues…
And as for their 25% discount off of THEIR legal fees, Check their prices against nationally bublished attorney rates and you will find that their rates start higher than the published rates.
It’s a great program for MLM junkies that like to dream big and remain broker waiting for that huge downline to develop that will earn them the mother load.
Take a look at the companies own published records and see what percentage of membership earns over 100k a year and how many earn less than $1000 a year.
MLM is a cute little gimmick to make the companies wealthy.
Yadda Yadda Yadda. You know the deal.
I’m also affiliated with PPL and I’m quite pleased with the business. Although I’m new, it has certainly more than paid for itself and those are the business opportunities I like. The business opportunity doesn’t require selling - either you get it or you don’t. Next…
In my opinion the ability to consult with a licensed attorney by phone on any issue I want is worth more than the paltry monthly fee. And yes, I still have other attorneys with whom I’ve done a ton of business in the past. As I said, I’m still figuring PPL out and still need to sign up for the business-related services.
MLM isn’t much different than REI in regards to success stories so that’s not a valid stat. Most do nothing. Like anything in life, those that create, implement, and model others typically have success. Those that don’t, don’t.
Fortunately, not everyone sees the benefit of the MLM model. Otherwise, it wouldn’t work as well as it does.
Just figured I’d throw in my two cents here.
It seems to me that everyone I talk to that is an associate of PPL is only interested in marketing the business opportunity to others rather than marketing the product itself. I am interested in some testimonials regarding the marketing of the product and the success that goes along with that.
Thanks
JayDee
JayDee,
That’s definitely true of me - got way too many other things going to be out selling the service. My wife, on the other hand, plans to do both. She didn’t even know I was signing up for the biz and now she’s on board as well.
Sorry, but I don’t have a personal testimonial on the service yet. I called about a biz issue a couple of weeks ago (before I snapped to the fact that it was a biz issue and not a personal issue). I received return calls that Friday afternoon, another one Saturday morning (which surprised me) and one early Monday morning before I even knew they had called back the first time. The attorney still spent about 15 minutes on the phone with me discussing my issue.
Josh and any PPL supporters.
Do what you want.
PPL is a MLM joke. Very profitable for the company, worthless to most users and profitable for a small handful of extremely talented MLMers.
I do not have the time nor the energy nor the need to convince you otherwise. Hopefully, my statements will at least ward off others from making a foolish mistake.
As for when I yadda yadda yadda… as PPL does then yadda yadda yadda
My friend, I am not an MLMer, however, I have had many yers experience with MLM. I am in the commercial lending business and do between 100 - 200 million in commercial loans a month. I am not here trying to compare one MLM to another, nor am I here to discredit you or make you look foolish or start a hissing match with you. If you are happy with them and making all the money you want with them then I am truly happy for you and wish you all the success that you could possibly deserve.
Best wishes and the best New Year.
I am a true believer in the Pre-paid Legal system. It does provide access to the legal system that the average American normally would not be able to afford. No one can dispute that. I live in Florida, and they have willingly written me several letters, most of which have had successful outcomes. Most of the referral attorneys that I have used have been excellent. A family member of mine was in an accident involving a death, and was represented by an attorney from Pre-paid Legal who was EXTREMELY knowledgeable and professional. Regardless of the positive outcome, the peace of mind of having an attorney available to you in such a circumstance is priceless.
Its funny, too, that I used attorneys prior to being a member of Pre-paid Legal. I was involved in a civil case at such time, and had I been a member, I would have saved thousands off my bill. It turns out that the excellent attorney that I had retained was also a part of the Pre-paid referral network, and also AV rated.
You might want to check with your attorneys to see if they are in the referral network. Many of them do not advertise. I’d rather get the 25% off, wouldn’t you? Use the membership one time and it could pay for itself for years.
Traffic tickets? I have yet to hear of someone not at least having the points withheld, if nothing else, by using Pre-paid. I’ll take my chances with a PPL lawyer any day than trying to wing it or paying and taking the points.
Happy New and Empowered Year to you all!
Hi Joe,
Happy New Year.
I think we’ve beaten this horse to death by now lol.
Lets not overlook the obvious fact that they are real attorneys solving real problems and it done cheaper than you can get a consultation. Its all about value for the money
!
good luck to all,
Tony
I thought you would stop already… You are obviously PrePaid Legal MLM agents.
Let me just leave this caution to those reading all of this nonsense.
I have been involved with PrePaid as both a client and an agent.
The program was useless to me and the advice that I got from their attorney’s was really worthless. Their level of “Free” help was useless.
I am not speaking as anyone with a vendetta or a competitor. I am speaking from personal bad experience with them, as well as the experiences from a number of my clients at the time who had similar complaints.
It is useless for us to waste time debating this because you can banter all you want about their virtues while that will not change our very poor experiences with them.
If you are making your fortune there with them and you are getting great legal service from them, I wish you luck.
It’s amazing though, how current PPL agents always sem to be having great experiences 
Jeff
Jeff,
Sorry that you had bad experiences. I sell the products BECAUSE the services worked for me. Not the other way around as you are insinuating. Seems to me that you are using the “pyramid scheme” or “MLM” tactic to try to discredit also.
“Useless” service companys do not last 34 years with record growth on the NYSE, and have numerous States Attorneys endorse them. There are several other legal service companies around competing in the same market that have been around for a while, so this isn’t just some fad or spin off.
I think what you are trying to say is that you have very specialized needs that the PPL provider attorneys could not accommodate at that time. At such time, you could have requested a referral attorney similar to the one you use today for the same service, but at a 25% discount. Sounds like you gave up without asking around… I’ll take the discount.
Do you have health insurance? Automobile insurance? If the answer is yes, then one day you will more than likely have a Pre-paid Legal or similar plan again.
I must say Jeff that I am a bit confused with all your contempt for MLMers. How is your network marketing mortgage business going? I sounds quite good!!! All those overrides and that leveraging of others that you talk about on your web site. Not to be clever, but just curiously perplexed…
Sincerely,
Joe.
You seem so defensive. You shouldn’t have to defend something that stands up for itself. Just so you know, I am not some amateur MLMer that couldn’t make it in PPL. I was involved with MLM probably before you were born and made quite a bit of money. My complaint is not with the MLM aspect, it is with the company itself. I can give you ten times more testimonials of unhappy ex ppl agents then you could possibly give of success stories. etc. You really need to let go of this already and go make some money
However, let me clear something up for you.
I have nothing against MLM. I think it’s a great way for the average person with no particular skills that could earn them a truly decent income to get involved with a program where they can recruit people and get paid on other people’s work. I have no beef whatsoever with that.
My criterea for judging an MLM is: If it were not MLM, could you still earn 100k a year and could you do that the first year and consistently after that. If the answer is yes, then it is a good program.
Secondly… I do not run an MLM company. I run a company where an agent can come on board and hire or recruit other agents and build a professional brokerage agency of active agents.
We provide training for our agents nad we have requirements and expectation. There is no charge or fee to work with us,
We do not have a system in place where you can recruit, recruit, recruit, and do nothing yourself and just get to override people a zillion levels deep.
Our system is simple… We hire and train commercial Brokers and help them to build their own commercial brokering agency… Just like in the residential mortgage business with net branches.
We take in between $100 - $200 million a month in commercial loans.
I hope this clears things up for you.
Jeff
I have yet to hear of any actual experiences, so I will share some of my own personal dealings with PPL during the last 5 years.
2001- A national touring company failed to pay my production team and other celebrity dance artists for our work. I had all the goods on them because I always kept excellent records.
I figured it was a slam dunk case.
They wrote their little letter with copies of all the necessary documentation that I had provided proving that they were big time scammers and needed to pay up.
Outcome- NOTHING
We didn’t get paid…long ugly story…
2002- I had a woman stalker who was trying to destroy my professional reputation by sending false information to others. Since I used to work as a PI in Los Angeles, I did my own investigation and successfully tracked her down by having the handwriting analyzed to legally identify this witch.
They wrote their letter requesting that she stop.
Outcome- Nothing
But later I proceeded to take care of her nonsense on my own time
2003- Associate doctor was soliciting our patients, stealing corporate records after they quit and opened up their office just 100 ft away.
I had signed letters from patients who were angry and I had all the black and white documents that attorneys just love.
They sent their “letter” and presented the case with lots of damaging evidence I had provided.
Outcome: NOTHING
2004- Major problem with a psycho tenant and I told them to make sure to send the letter to me first before they mailed it out so that I could carefully review it.
Outcome- NOTHING
Not only did they not let me review it, they screwed it up with wrong information and left me with no recourse causing the tenants position to strengthen.
I was fit to be tied because they wouldn’t take responsibility and denied that I ever said such a thing to them when I called!
When I asked to speak to somebody else in charge after arguing for 20 minutes, they hung up!
I was very busy at that time and couldn’t pursue the complaint and since I was so fed up, I just retained another attorney.
2005- I had a few questions about breaking down a corporation. I was not a stockholder and realized that they couldn’t prepare anything even if I asked. I was merely seeking general information on the procedure for the state of CA.
Outcome- NOTHING
They said, sorry…since the director is not an added member on your plan, we can’t help. But they KNEW that the corp had MY name on it and I was the administrative director for 23 years… I thought that was really unfair to not even answer simple questions for a long time client.
2005- I called to ask a question regarding an AZ eviction procedure.
Outcome- NOTHING
They said sorry, can’t help. We are happy to refer you to the AZ attorney for the great discounted fee, blah, blah, blah. I called and he quoted me something like 225 hour…can’t remember exactly…but it was definitely NOT discounted as far as I was concerned.
Even though I am obviously dissatisfied, I only keep their service as an emergency back plan. I have another new issue pending and I might give them one more chance to redeem themselves. We shall see.
PPL has a hyped up marketing program and use their “34” years to say how great they are and how much they help people. So far they never helped me.
Just my 2 cents.
Thank You Investing Lady,
With me I had an illegal judgement entered by a rogue attorney landlord. We had been leasing a building from him with the inclusion of the parking lot in the lease.
The landlord/attorney decided he wanted to use the attorney for another purpose and roped it off so that our agents and clients could not park. This was in a heavily trafficed area. We took the attorney/agent to court and he lost and was required to either remove his barricades or we would be released from our lease.
He did not remove his barricades and we gave him 2 months notice and moved. He entered a judgement as if he had gone to court and won. PrePaid Legal did absolutley nothing to remove the judgement. I did it myself. that was case number one.
Case two. I got a parking ticket for parking in no parking zone.
The sign that said no parking had evidently been removed.
This was in an area that I was unfamiliar with and would have no way of knowing what sign was on the pole that was still there.
PPL, once again, was totally innefectual and I had to go to court and handle this myself with pictures and statements from the store owners affirming that the sign had been missing for some time.
I had a couple of other issues where they were totally ineffectual and at that point decided to drop their plan and their program.
I would think 4 bad experiences with them was enough.
I will admit, however, I did make some money on their marketing plan by recruiting a lot of agents into PPL when I thought it was actually a good thing. Unfortunately, I did not do enough due dilligence in checking them out before getting myself and others involved in the program.
Jeff
JayDee, I hope to give you a balance of opinion in this thread. You have plenty of information here to make up your mind. I do not benefit from you joining financially, so why would i bother with challenging some of these criticisms of Pre-paid? Because I feel the vision and intention of Pre-paid is to improve on the quality of life for the average American (that does not sell $100-200M worth of loans a month). I feel I am making a difference, as corny as that sounds. And I believe the service is improving every day.
Jeff, I think the thread speaks for itself regards to defensiveness… you are defending your opinions, as I am defending mine.
Semantics, if you ask me, regarding your business being a MLM or not - very similar principles, come on! But I’m glad you cleared up your disdain for the company and not the idea of recruiting and overrides.
Does PPL qualify as a Jeff Worthy MLM business?
Our group sales sales associates do very well, meeting your ‘criteria’ WITH NO RECRUITING. And group sales are a big part of our revenue. Many of our small business plan sales folks exceed 100K per year also, from just sales. You said yourself you did very well in PPL with sales. When I sell a small business plan, I make almost as much as you do when one of your recruits sells a mortgage or a loan (according to your site) on my advanced commission. However, there are residuals paid out over the life of the membership, which add up over time (not to be competitive). Your program actually looks very enticing indeed and I also wish you ‘luck’, but we all know, it comes down to hard and smart work combined in the end.
As far as charging to be an associate, there is a one time fee, but it is very small. After that, for any money to exchange hands, a membership sale has to occur, just like a mortgage having to be sold.
And yes, like any other legitimate MLMs, you can receive overides from many levels deep in Pre-paid, but you have to put much effort into building your team, training and dealing with the negativity you are faced with.
I think that Pre-paid is unique however, in that it gives the average person a chance to earn real income fairly quickly from sales with no overhead, stocking of lotions and potions, etc. or storefront costs. I made up my initial investment in the first month.
There is nothing wrong with Pre-paid’s business models, MLM or direct sales.
And to investor lady, although Jeff may not believe me, I am sincerely regretful for both of your bad experiences with some of the services. I hope that I can help improve the consistency of the quality of service provided by my company’s attorneys. I don’t think it would be in Pre-paid’s interest to pay their provider attorneys hundreds of thousands of dollars a month and have them cut corners or offer sub-standard services. Since you still have your membership, please use the customer care line if you are dissatisfied in the future. Tell them about your experiences if you haven’t already done so, please.
As for my personal experiences, I told you of the family incendent involving a vehicular death - OUTCOME - Charges dropped, family member not billed a dime.
I have had several contracts and and employment agreements reviewed by my provider attorneys. - OUTCOME - I least 3 I did not sign or execute due to the advice given. No additional cost.
One of my associates had her closing papers reviewed. Although it was well over the 10 pages, they highlighted the financial part and found where they were charged twice for the title insurance - OUTCOME - She saved $1,200. No cost to her.
To my knowledge, 7 of my customers have received moving violations and used a PPL referral attorney - OUTCOME - not one of them has NOT had judication withheld (points removed). Two of them had the charges dropped because the PPL attorney showed up and the police office did not.
Not to mention, dozens of business and personal questions answered for me personally - OUTCOME - informed of my rights, result made better decisions. No charge.
In all fairness, I have had two customers drop the plan because they did not like the price of the referral attorneys, but they were GOOD ATTORNEYS. I could not talk them into trying another. The others have dropped due to financial reasons. Not all of the outcomes are positive, but a have not yet heard of any complaints of quality from my customers yet. My persistency rate is around 90 percent, and I am learning how to improve that.
I am getting to know some of the referral attorneys in my area and plan to use them in some of my future real estate investments. Know any good mortgage brokers? Looking to start building a rental portfolio… need somewhere to invest my Pre-paid earnings 
I guess a question on the rental market in W. Florida better be started on a new thread… if you made it this far, youre sure to get a good nights sleep!
Joe.