Job Title: Investment Rep.
Location: Mt. Horeb, WI
Submitted on: 07-Sep-04
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| Investment Rep. |
First I was a client, wanting to believe my broker was working in my
best interest. As my confidence waned and it became obvious, he
suggested that I should try it myself. He said, "After all, we ARE the
#1 employer in the US for fortune 500 companies". More or less as a
dare, I applied. Surprisingly, they contacted me the next day. I
guess after 25 years in business, I was flattered they had any interest
in me at all. What was about to begin would unravel my family,
personal, and financial life to the point of almost vengeful
retaliation. I was "homeschooled" on one of their company laptops.
This 2 1/2 months of studying for the series 7 test left me with little
time for anything else. A year later, I found out I could have taken
the training for $400 on the internet. All of the recruiting
literature that was shown to me was later explained to me by my
attorney as being spurious, (symbolic) and had nothing to do with the
actual working conditions that I could expect. In other words, when
Jones says that you will "likely" be in an office in 4 months, they can
take 10 years if they want. When they tell you that you will have an
assistant, it means you have to damn near walk on water to get one.
When they say that the AVERAGE broker makes $140K per year, it means
that there are about 100 brokers who make over a million annually out
of the 9000+ brokers and pull the average up and way out of proportion
for the average person. Eg; The highest grossing broker in our area
made 78,000 a year, worked 60 hours a week, and did some things he
should probably get arrested for. Jones talks about their Funnel
System for marketing. After a year, you realize that you are actually
in THEIR funnel. They will tell you anything to get you opening new
accounts. It was common knowledge that if you tried to open a new
branch as a new broker, you would fail, and so would the next 2 brokers
who followed. With Jones, they own all of the accounts, so you can't
take anything with you if you stay in the business. I opened 40
accounts in 8 months, and never opened an office. I was digging a huge
hole financially with the pittance of a salary I was on quickly coming
to an end. Still not in an office, I went to another institution and
left Jones. After my license transferred, they sued me for $75,000
for "training costs". Remember the $400 for series 7 on the net?
I was caught in the oldest scheme in modern history. Pretty much like
the insurance game, only played out with a brokerage this time.
They never actually expected me to succeed, just paid me enough to open
accounts, gather assets, then drag their feet on their promises.
Eventually, we settled out of court for a fraction of what they wanted.
They are thieving bastards who have no regard for their brokers,
(unless they're partners) or their clients. Recently they were named
in a class action suit because their so-called "preffered" vendors had
given them 100 million to become preffered.
For most of the brokers who have come and gone, they are still scared
out of their minds because of the threats made by Jones to them.
The most insidious part of the whole slimy mess is the part in their
Employment agreement called an Integration Clause. It basically means
that anything they said, did, or represented in any way is now B.S.
The agreement has you doing everything, and them doing nothing, unless
they want to, and they usually don't.
An interesting statistic: Last year Jones trained 1200 brokers, and
1150 of them left, leaving behind all of the assetts that they had
gathered, under the threat of being sued for 75K each for training
costs. This is a juggernaut of marketing that someone should stop. I
was lured out of a 25 yr old business to pursue what turned out to be a
pack of lies and broken promises. Many of the people who started with
me went broke and were living on credit cards.
Here's one more nauseating caveat: The broker who recruited me won a
trip because of my hiring.
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