A Letter from a Happy Farmers Agent letting me know that I have "Way too much time on your hands". Do we have a solution to the ezpay inetbiller problem? As always, I and the rest of us at farmers-online.com appreciate the input and your submission! Thanks!

<Letter Start>

Hi, I'm a current Farmers agent and I just stumbled on to this website by chance. I must say it is rather interesting. But I just read the Farmers billing article and you asked for an answer to the monthly billing. It's just as easy as the other examples you show. You just take the total premium divide it by 6 or 12 mo's and that's their monthly premium plus the monthly service charge. For the down payment collect 2 mo's premium plus policy fee. Very simple.

Response: Thanks for taking the time to check us out. I disagree on the billing, you cant possibly divide by 6 or 12 and get the monthly amount for the payment after the down payment. Farmers bills ahead 45-60 days in advance depending on what day of the month you submit the application on.

But your first mistake is even allowing someone to pay monthly.  When somebody asks me how much does it cost a month I send them down the road.  If someone can't pay at least half the 6 or 12 mo premium I don't want them as a client.  They don't stay on the books for long and go in and out of force and just usually are a pain in the a**.   Commercial accounts I allow monthly but nothing in personal lines.

Response: on the order of 70% of my clients choose to pay on a monthly basis. If i were to refuse to allow this, I'm ruling out clients and I'm ruling out income. I would never conduct business in this manner, especially as a Farmers Insurance Agent. Its already hard enough to find a client and make them fit into Farmers. Forcing clients to pay full or quarterly is definitely not a solution.

Back to why I thought this site is interesting.  A little background on me.  I've been a Farmers agent for 20+ yrs.  I'm not a big producer nor do I have a large agency.  Matter of fact I write very little and have a small agency.  I am profitable though.  I do my little thing and don't bother anybody and they (Farmers) don't bother me.  I have heard about the things you write about on your website but I have never encountered any personally.  Most of the bad mouthing comes from agents that Farmers has dumped, or would like to, or have personality conflicts with their DM.

Response: The great thing about you being a 20 year agent as opposed to being a new agent is that you dont have to get a Series 6 and 63 license, nor do you have to comply with the same production requirements else lose your contract and have your agency stolen out from underneath you. Farmers Insurance has been also taking many actions that will affect the way you do conduct business in your agency. The policy allocation 5xx and 7xx policy transfer ownership states that you have to have a growing agency for 3 years to gain ownership. New commission structures are in the works that have a scaled down commission percentage if your agency is not growing year by year. Dont think that flying under radar is going to allow you to continually run as you currently are.

"I'm not a big producer nor do I have a large agency.  Matter of fact I write very little and have a small agency." - Which is a direct result of how business is conducted. Many of us dont wish to commit 20 years of our lives to something to merely eek by with our existance. We want to be able to write insurance for the average person and make a comfortable living. Being a Farmers Agent does not allow us to afford that opportunity.

DM's will put anybody on as a reserve agent as long as they can chew gum and walk at the same time.  It's a numbers game, just like selling insurance.  Some can succeed but most don't.  There are a couple career agents in my district that are doing incredibly well.  How they're doing it I have no idea, but they're doing it.

Response: Agreed, and the reason they do it is to support the Farmers Multi-Level Marketing Scheme

But the most interesting thing is why you would spend the time and money on this website, unless you have lots of both, when it doesn't benefit you in any way other than personal gratification I guess.  It appears there were many reasons why you or Farmers canceled your contract.  Deep down you must really resent not being a Farmers agent to go through all the trouble, cost, maintenance, etc. of this website.  Why wouldn't you just wipe your hands and move on to better and more lucrative things that you mention other companies offer?  Telling people not to become Farmers agents and bad mouthing Farmers does not really hurt Farmers.  You're just helping them.  Bad publicity is good publicity in reality. 

Response: Why would I spend time and money on this site? Creating the website and hosting it costs me nothing, the domain name costs me $8.95/year. How would this effort benefit me? For a person who has committed 20 years of his life with the result of a mediocre performing Farmers Agency that you have no ownership of, that is a funny question. Are you doing what you do for personal gratification? Have you just been doing this so long that you feel you have too much invested and its too late to get out? I want to educate current and potential Farmers Agents to the scam of being a Farmers Insurance Agent. There werent many reasons for the cancellation of my contract. There was one and only one from their standpoint. It was Life Insurance Production. I did have opportunity to keep my contract, I was given the ultimatum that I could beg to keep my contract and write some life insurance or I could do nothing and have it cancelled for lack of life production. Since I had already become disenfranchised from selling Farmers Life Insurance, I chose to let the whole thing go.

The bottom line is the following. I founded this site because I believe that you should be able to walk away from a "Job" that you've invested $50,000 of your own money and not receive a bill for it. It makes no difference to me what my contract said and committed me to. I had no previous insurance experience and I thought Farmers Insurance was a trusted name and wouldnt have expected that their Farmers Agent Program is a Predatory Practice to sucker agents in and deplete their life savings and send them packing. The way the system was presented to me, I was told that the success rate of agents was extremely high, their income on average was extraordinary and the opportunity had unlimited potential. I was lied to on all counts. The Farmers Agent Program needs to be exposed for what it is, current, potential and future Farmers Insurance Agents need to be warned!

I will guarantee you that I am not helping Farmers in any way whatsoever. The response to this site has well indicated that we are turning away potential agents from being screwed by Farmers. Had I seen a site like this before I became an agent, I would have definitely had a different opinion and not have wasted my money.

Farmers is doing something right.  They've been one of the largest property and casualty insurers for some time now.  They have lost market share recently but that's quickly changing now with their new auto and homeowner products in Mid Century.  They're growing at a phenomenal rate right now.  They also just purchased Bristol West last week.

Response: One of the largest doesnt mean anything. Farmers Insurance has more agents than carriers that are larger than they are! Why would they do this? That is the only possible way they can sell their product. You can continue to wave the Farmers flag all you like. Just wait until Zurich completes a program to phase out Farmers Agents. When their done taking away everything from you and laugh in your face. Look at the footings their pouring right now. Centralized support numbers for clients to take the support load off of your agency. Hmm, why would they do that? To slowly teach your clients that they no longer need you. Then we'll see 1-800-FARMERS turn into the number that you can call and get a 18 year old pimple face getting paid minimum wage to peddle polices. Bye bye Farmers agents!

Curse me all you want if this prediction turns wrong, but shame on you if you ignore the warning and its right.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know that not every Farmers agent is unhappy and there really is two sides to everything.

Response: The Farmers Agents that are not unhappy are the ones that are still under the influence and brainwashing of the Farmers Insurance machine. The successful Farmers Agent isnt wrong in staying. Just as long as they know their exposure to the collapse of the system. These being, abrupt unavailability of core product offerings (if farmers decides to stop writing Home or Auto), restructure of commission and agent contracts (decrease in commission percentages and removal of agency based model).