Yesterday, as the entry into a credit company debacle that I plan to write about later today (which, as you know, doesn’t mean that I will), about an hour of my workday was taken up listening to a pitch from a representative of Mutual of Omaha trying to sell me on taking out an home equity loan with the company.
I finally answered the phone call with company’s caller ID because I had not answered about 20 earlier calls, and also because I wasn’t sure why the company was calling me. I explained that yes, I do need cash for many things and yes, I have a lot of equity in the home I’ve been paying the mortgage on for 43 years. I also explained that I have no skills in finance or money generally, am swamped in the wake of my wife’s sudden death, and literally don’t know who to trust or listen to.
He said, “Well, we’re a large, well-respected company with an impressive track record in our field.” I had to wrestle my tongue to the ground to avoid saying, “Yeah, my business involves analyzing all the clever and not-so-clever ways companies like yours lie, cheat and steal.” “You’ve heard of Mutual of Omaha, I assume?” he continued.
“Oh, sure,” I said. “I was aware of Mutual of Omaha even before Henry Fonda started doing commercials for you.” I’m pretty sure he had no idea who Henry Fonda was.
Then he said, “Believe me, with Mutual of Omaha, you’re in good hands.”
I couldn’t wrestle my tongue to the ground after that gaffe.
“Wait,” I said. You just gave me the Allstate slogan. Now I’m completely confused. Next you’ll be telling me that Mutual of Omaha will be there for me “like a good neighbor.”
This is a special category of incompetence that you just don’t see very often. It’s like a Democrat saying that their party wants to make America great again. But the laugh was almost worth the time I wasted listening to the guy.
Almost.
Ethics Alarms 
I first heard of Mutual of Omaha when I was 5 years old. Like most young kids I was interested in animals, and I’m sure you remember Lorne Greene hosting “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom.” The show still exists now, although it’s substantially different, and of course Lorne Greene is long gone. Come to think of it, this is about the same time that Leonard nimoy was hosting the 1970s crypto everything show called “In Search Of.” Of course both those guys still had some acting left in them before they would retire from the stage or pass on to that great stage in the sky, as opposed to some of those other performers doing infomercials now.
YIKES! You got Lorne Greene mixed up with Marlin Perkins! (Or Wild Kingdom mixed up with “Bonanza,” which would really be disturbing…)
I wonder—would that make Jim Fowler Hoss, or Little Joe?
Adam
What?
You are absolutely right, I did not check Wikipedia before I made that post. Marlin Perkins was in fact the host. I do not know where I came up with Lorne Green as the host of that show. However, Leonard Nimoy was the host of “in search of.”
Yes, indeed he was. If you had said it was Lloyd Bridges, I would have been worried about you.
The insurance industry leverages an insanely corrupt corner of telemarketing. The big companies insulate themselves behind ‘independent brokerages’ who hire ‘independent agents’.
The agents are recruited with flashy ‘get rich’ videos online, essentially the bottom rung of a MLM scheme. They pay for their own licensing and the brokerage between $50-100 each for ‘qualified leads’ that they hope will earn them a commission, and unknowingly take the liability of the illegal calling.
These ‘leads’ are often fractions of a percent of billions of illegal cold calls made by one of several telemarketing and robocalling call centers in Pakistan, India, or the Philippines.
it’s really surprising that your call was directly from an employee. If your not a customer of theirs or did business with them recently, the call was illegal under the TCPA. Initiating this marketing overseas and layers of plausible deniability moves it outside effective enforcement of this law.
Mutual of Omaha is writing mortgages? I might be hanging up at that point.
I’m thinking they need to stay in their lane.
Mutual of Ohama is likely licensing their name to a (slimy?) third party who is underwriting the mortgages.
Tangent time! (Related to slimy third party licensing).
Connecticut “deregulated” its electric market some time ago, I think within the past 20 years. It used to be a regulated natural monopoly, where the electric company bought the power from the power plants, and delivered it to the customer. The state set/approved the rates the electric company could charge for both.
With “deregulation”, you can now buy your electricity from third parties, and have the electric company “deliver” it to you. You pay the third party for the power, and the electric company for delivery on its network. The electric company itself offers a default plan, where it provides both the power and delivery.
The idea is that you are creating a marketplace, with free choice. The customer could choose a provider that is potentially cheaper than the default plan. Some customers might opt to pay more for or an exclusively wind or solar provider.
(Of course, once electricrity hits the grid, it’s all the same. The way this all works based on accounting the input and output of the electric meters of the providers and customers).
Soon after this deregulation regime took effect, we got a solicitation from Gulf Oil, advertising a really good deal on electricity as a third-party provider. My family decided to use them, trusting the reputation of Gulf.
After a few months, Gulf announced it would no longer participate in the electric market, and the our account would transition to a provider of a different name.
My guess is that Gulf actually cared about its good will and reputation.
The third party market became full of bottom feeders that charged great introductory rates, then jacked it up higher than the default rate, hoping customers wouldn’t notice. Gulf decided to stop licensing its name, wanting no association with the naives.
There’s a persistent pattern where fools who are nominally pro-capitalism reveals themselves to be the equivalent of a cargo cult. They understand nothing, and push things that maybe look kind of like a market if you squint real hard, but underlying everything is a heavily state regulated system.
Frankly, I wonder sometimes if they aren’t being manipulated by actual communists to try to make free markets look bad. For example, many people will decry free market healthcare while pointing at all the things the US system does badly, despite it being extremely government heavy in how it operates.