I was contacted by Christian at Nationwide Financing to explain their "referral" program. She went into detail explaining that the clients that they wrote mortgages for have expressed a need for various lines of insurance coverage. "These are not cold call leads, as they have specifically asked to be contacted".
I was told that there were 53 leads in my specific region and that they could go as low as referring 45 leads to start. We would need to pay $10 per referral and they were "guaranteed replaceable". I indicated I would like to review information regarding this and was sent over a fax which was basically an EFT form to withdraw directly from a checking account. They wanted me to complete the form and send back along with a copy of the check for $450. They would then provide a password and user name to log in to receive the "referrals".
When I had not called back immediately, I received a call from Mark -the "President" asking if I had any questions about the program. He gave me exactly the same speach as the prior person with a little more pressure to decide right away. Because if we were not interested, he needed to "find an agent that would take care of their customers".
After Googling Nationwide Financing and finding multiple reports of fraud, I called Mark back to tell him to take me off his lead list as I was not interested. He again said "they are not leads, they are referrals". I stated I didn't care what he called them, I was not interested. He wanted to know what he had done to offend me. I bluntly told him that I had Googled the company name and after reading multiple reports of fraud, I was not interested. His reply was (exact quote) "I'm glad you found out what we are all about. I didn't want you to buy the leads anyways." And he hung up. I guess it was time to move on to the next prospect.
I then took a minute to Google map w / Street View of their address. Just a dumpy little Mail Box store.
Five minutes later, I received a call from the original solicitor Christian. She said she had talked with "the President" and he had told her I was going to sign up, but she hadn't received the fax back yet. I very shortly told her that I had spoken with Mark again and firmly told him to remove us from their list.
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