The following is a response to the post titled "Pinney Insurance Review" on selltermlife.com.
History
Pinney Insurance has had a long and successful relationship with Jeff Root over the past six years. In the early days, Jeff was a tremendous personal producer. Eventually, his business expanded to include a small group of agents working exclusively on leads generated from his website. During this time, the majority of his business flowed through our agency and we assigned dedicated staff to support him in his efforts to grow his considerable business. As Jeff continued to expand his business model and sales aspirations, he further expanded to offer everything from leads to websites to instruction for agents on how to replicate his success – including partnering with Pinney. All in all, it was a good relationship and one that benefited us both.
Unfortunately, business relationships end, and just as in personal relationships, those break-ups can be drama-filled and nasty. To avoid a “he said/she said” type of response and be as factual as possible, we will address some of Jeff’s specific claims below. We hope this will provide the context and insight needed so those to whom Jeff disseminated his propaganda can see the truth of the matter, and where blame and fault should reside.
We acknowledge at the outset that we made mistakes – principal among them being not terminating our relationship with Jeff sooner, thus putting ourselves and our employees in a position that they now need to respond to and be burdened by this entire matter.
Now, let’s move on to the facts of the matter.
Jeff Root references 4 agents that we did not pay, citing three other wage disputes filed.
- The first agent (actually a former brokerage manager) left Pinney under good terms and without any disputes; we aren’t sure why he was even mentioned – other than to possibly lend credence to Jeff’s claims?
- Regarding the three wage disputes filed, the wages in question are advances on future commissions that were not earned by the time all three of the employees in question (a former brokerage director and two former call center agents) had left Pinney Insurance. One was fired for creating a competing product and redirecting business relationships and leads to Jeff (in what was later learned to be a pre-planned departure in order to partner with Jeff). Two quit without notice while taking a longtime partner and lead source with them (again, later learned to have been pre-planned with Jeff’s knowledge). All three now work directly with Jeff Root, one as his partner in his brokerage agency, and the other two as Virtual Sales Agents (VSA’s) working life insurance leads in a direct-to-consumer call-center-style environment.
- Our Employee Handbook specifically states that to receive bonuses and commissions, one must be an employee at the time any bonuses or commissions are paid. Each of the three employees who filed wage disputes signed acknowledgements of the handbook’s provisions on multiple occasions over their terms of employment.
Outside of this group of individuals, we have not had a single complaint or instance of failing to honor or pay any legal or contractual obligations.
Regarding our former brokerage director, Jeff Root writes that we “called most carriers and told them never to work with him and tried to smear his name.”
- In fact, we corrected misinformation the former brokerage director had sent to these carriers. He had indicated that we were both aware of his efforts to create a competing product/service, and that we had agreed to partner with him in this endeavor. These claims were disseminated to our carrier partners from the employee’s Pinney email account, adding further weight to the former employee’s claims of our support. Neither statement was true.
Jeff Root wrote that Pinney Insurance does not honor its contracts.
- The contract he referenced is from 2011, and was written specifically for his personal business. Over the years, Jeff’s business model has changed and he now rarely writes personal business – in fact, he submitted zero personal business through Pinney last year. Even if the terms of the contract were extended beyond the original agreement to cover his call center agents (essentially, employees he refers to as Virtual Sales Agents), they also submitted zero business last year. With zero business, there are zero contractually obligated overrides.
He wrote that we are keeping his override commissions.
- We were paying a non-contractually-obligated override on Jeff’s largely passive recruiting efforts (consisting of an occasional blog post, podcast, or referral to one of our brokerage managers). This was done to incentivize his continued partnership with Pinney, and encourage him to continue promoting the same services and processes he was using to others. However, in light of his dismantling his hierarchy, eliminating carrier contracts, and moving agents, that is no longer feasible. We discussed this with Jeff in December of 2016, at which time he claimed ignorance of these changes, that he wasn’t involved (laying blame on our former brokerage manager), or that he was independent and could do what he wanted relative to carrier contracts (“it’s a business decision”). We agreed that he was independent and could do as he wished, but that there were ramifications to doing so.
He wrote that we terminated him in part because he intentionally transferred hierarchies.
- In a conversation at the beginning of December 2016, Jeff agreed to do three things: (1) submit business, (2) not cancel any additional contracts or move hierarchies, and (3) have his affiliated call center agents submit business through our EZLife process, to determine whether his claims of service problems were still an issue – an excuse he used to justify no longer submitting any business. After 30 days, none of the above had occurred, at which point his contract was formally terminated.
- We notified him of this termination in writing, per the terms of our agreement.
- This is a personal contract and does not address his hierarchy. As stated in the contract, it only applies to business in which he is personally involved in the placement.
- We responded that any carrier overrides would be paid per the carrier appointment contracts.
In his original post, Jeff indicated that he “had filed” a lawsuit, which he later amended to “is going to file” – to date, we have not been notified of any pending or filed lawsuits.
Bottom Line
Don’t be fooled…
Jeff’s unethical, premeditated, and deliberate actions - as well as those of our former employees - caused the outcome now being seen. It seems he’s upset that he miscalculated - and that we actually cancelled our contract with him, terminated his remaining carrier appointments through us, and stopped paying him non-contractual overrides on agents and groups he is actively attempting to recruit away from Pinney. It appears he was counting not only on our past good will toward him, but on poor advice from our former employees (now his business partner and VSA’s) related to our business model and structure - as well as our perceived fear of him harming our reputation. He counted on these things to create a business environment that allowed him build a new, competing business venture at our expense.
