I wrote a post sometime back about an experience that a now client of mine had with Selectquote. In a nutshell they gave him a quote and then after he had taken his exam they changed the quote, not based on the exam but on information they already had.

They then told him that the new quote was as good as he would be able to do. He called me and ran his health history by me and I gave him a quote from Prudential that, given what I and Selectquote knew at the time, was better than what they said was as good as he could do.

So Selectquote switched companies to Pru and he applied through them again. But then they found out that on his labs his cholesterol was high which raised the Pru price. Again they told him it was the best he would be able to do given the cholesterol issue. He called me again and again, given everything Selectquote knew I was able to show him another company where we could again get the price back down due to their more lenient stance on cholesterol.

He shared with me and I copied in that post an email exchange between him and the Selectquote agent where the agent told him that it was simply unethical for him (the agent) to keep reapplying when there was no chance of improvement. All of this is simply to preface today’s post by driving home the point that not all agents and not all agencies are really willing to work hard and long to do the right thing for the client.

I had a psychologist call me about getting a term life insurance policy about three years ago. She was very open and honest and admitted that she had been a prescription drug abuser, but had been through treatment about a year before. She had done a lot of the right things. She completed an outpatient program. In order to keep her license she submitted to random drug tests. She saw a prescription abuse specialist on a very regular basis and attended NA.

All of that said we were not able to find a company that would take her until she was five years out from treatment. Period. So, we shopped it again the next year and got the same answer. We were now four years out from her treatment. So, why shop when we’ve already been told five years? Life insurance underwriting and underwriters change. What I’m told today may not get the same answer 6 months from now. We didn’t succeed in this case but if we had we would have been able to get her need covered a year sooner.

We just shopped it again, just past the five year mark and we now have 3 standard offers on the table to work with. We’ll have her life insurance in force within the next two months. No one would have ever called her back from any of the big on line agencies. Too hard a case. Too much time involved. To them easy is profitable, hard isn’t.

Bottom line. If you’re young and healthy and don’t have any history or issues, anyone can get you life insurance just as quick and easy as any of the big on line agencies. But if you’ve got issues or history or health problems, pick an agent that is going to fight all the battles it takes to win the war.