This company was holding a carrot out of a free dinner session promising to give social security maximization advice. At the talk (which was pretty good) they introduced nicely and mildly the real pitch, which was to sell you annuities. So far, o.k. They did not give the specific information I was looking for in regard to Social Security maximization, so I agreed to follow-up pitch appointment to get my information.
At the follow-up appointment, they still did not give the information, but instead wanted more data from me. The data I gave them was all of the social security information at the first meeting. They wanted more information on my other assets. I went ahead and submitted that by mail, and had another appointment set.
The day before this second follow-up appointment, they left a message saying they did not have the information I provided them at the first appointment and in which the sales guy specifically took notes off of the Social Security information sheet provided.
I called back, got voice mail, and asked for them to call me back. They did not call back until about 7 minutes into what would have been the appointment. I informed the assistant that called, that they had lost my trust to follow-up since after two sessions already since they did not have the simple answer I was looking for. I thanked her for again for the dinner, and informed her that there was no reason to waste my time, nor to waste their time any more. The interchange was pleasant and she apologized profusely.
Ten minutes later, I got an angry call from the sales person accusing me of being rude to the assistant. Even if I had been rude to her (which I was not), this angry behavior is not only not called for, it is extremely unprofessional. Do understand that until that point, they had been completely professional.
I then looked up their LLC on the State of California Secretary of State's web site. The only result of the search that I got was under the other co-owner's name as agent for service of process, and had the status of "SOS Suspended". The Secretary Of State shows the reason for that status as:
"We suspend businesses for at least one of the following reasons:
- Failure to file one or more tax returns.
- Nonpayment of taxes and penalties, including the SOS penalty, fees, and interest."
I would not feel comfortable investing my retirement money with a company that (1) Has a co-owner that is rude and appears to have an anger management issue.
(2) Has had issues staying registered properly with the State of California apparently due to tax filing reasons.
(3) Does not appear to be properly currently registered (Maybe I could not find it under their name, but the one I did find was under their name with one of the current owners as the agent for service of process.
(4) Is not detail oriented enough to keep information presented to them.
(5) Is not customer oriented enough to answer the question presented in the first two meetings, especially when the topic of the dinner would lead you to believe they would give you the answer. read more