American Income Life

[TheSaint]

I've been job hunting recently and got a voice mail from "(person's name) at AIL HR regarding my resume." It sounded like an ordinary call you get when you've been applying for jobs, but they never said what AIL stood for (red flag). I googled it up, and it reeks of MLM. Their website is full of the usual testimonials and other vague entreaties about how much money you can make. I particularly liked this attempt to diguise the true nature of the business (from their FAQ page):

Every time you make a sale, or as a Manager, one of your Producers makes a sale, a percentage of the premium paid on the policy each month is credited to you.

So upline and downline are "managers and producers." Which is hilarious if you're a poker player, since "producer" is a derogatory term for a weak player who is likely to lose money to you.

I didn't find any existing threads on AIL, so just adding it here in case anyone looks here for information about it. There's plenty of info on the web, and their official websites are easy enough to find. But these guys are reaching out to people with posted resumes on job sites, and going to great lengths to sound like a legitimate job offer, at a time when many are desperate for work. Man, that's sleazy.

[Kestrel]

Youtube video: American Income Life Ottawa employment SCAM!

The company also appears to go by the name of Altig International.

If you received a call from them turn down... not an actual interview... it is a 3 part sales pitch asking you to pay them $750 for their so called training and licensing

Not that I'd ever want to sell insurance anyway, and certainly never for any company that no one ever heard of.

[Burnaby49]

A Canada-based scam in our nation's Capital! Close to the apartment I used to rent in Ottawa in the early 1970's.

[TheSaint]

Not that I'd ever want to sell insurance anyway, and certainly never for any company that no one ever heard of.

Which is the fatal flaw in MLMs like this. Anyone who wants to be an insurance salesman can just get a job as an insurance salesman. I don't care what the unemployment rate is, people who can move product are always in demand -- if anything, more so during hard times. Every company in every industry needs salespeople. And they can't hire them from overseas.

MLM, assuming it were on the level, requires selling and networking skills. Anyone who has those should have no difficuly getting a legit job. Getting hired is just persistence, networking, and selling yourself. If you can do those things, you don't need MLM. If you can't, you probably wouldn't be good at MLM. And in the rare case you are, you wouldn't be rewarded for it; your upline would be. People below you have to be successful before you can get paid.

Even if you ignore the scam aspect of it, MLM is a completely unnecessary way of doing business.