This year, for the first time ever, my mom asked me to review her employee benefits and provide her with recommendations. Just like many people, looking through the information that her employer provided to her has always been overwhelming. When she sent me the email that she received from the employee benefits provider so that I could review her options for her, it provided a list of available products and services with links to each one. The links take you to a general overview of what each benefit provides, but there is no specific information.
How Are You Supposed To Make A Decision Without The Details?
How much coverage do the benefits provide? How much do the benefits cost? What are the specific terms? Nothing. None of this information was there.
I mentioned this to my mom and we signed into the account which shows (part of) her employee benefits information. There still was no way to see the benefits that she could choose from or how much they would cost. This website only allows you to see the benefits that she currently has.
I asked her if there was another way to see all of the benefits available to her, the specifics of each, and how much they cost. Often, companies provide employees with a PDF or online portal where they can see all of this information. Most often, I find that employees are able to choose which benefits that they want and submit their choices online.
Nope.
Meet With The Representative, Get The Specifics, & Make A Decision On The Spot
My mom, and everyone else who she works with, has to sign up for a meeting with a representative from the employee benefits company, see what is available to her while she’s meeting with the representative, and make her decisions right then and there.
There’s no option to go home, review the information provided on each benefit, and then make a decision. She’s forced to make her decision right there with the salesperson.
Apparently this has been going on for years.
Consider The Incentives
Why would this company not allow the employees to review the specific details of each benefit available to them ahead of time? Why would someone be forced to make a potentially life-changing decision on the spot without time to think about it and take all factors into consideration?
The general public has no clue whether or not they should select certain employee benefits and why or why not. Unfortunately, it’s just the truth. That sort of education has never been provided and these products can be very complicated when you read into the details. When education on a product is provided, it’s often by the person who is selling the product.
Consider the incentives. I’m guessing I know how the salesperson is paid: a commission for selling products.
(I don’t know for sure that this is how the employee benefits representative is paid, but it seems to me as if the motive is there.)
Beware Scare Tactics & Jargon
My mom was concerned that she was wasting money on some of the benefits that she had in place. She felt like they may not have been really providing the value to her that she was originally told that they would. She was right.
Based on what she told me, she was sold these products years ago because the salesperson used scare tactics to convince her to pay for them. If this weren’t the case, if she were able to go home and think about it first, she probably wouldn’t have signed up for those benefits otherwise and would have been able to save that money over the past 8 years.
She was sold “benefits” that are costly, highly unlikely to be used, and that her money was probably better suited to be used on something else.
If you can’t tell, these things get my blood boiling.
A salesperson will tell you all of the reasons that you need the product that they’re selling. They will tell you all of the things that could potentially go wrong without it. You’ll probably have a bunch of numbers and jargon at you thrown at you. If you’re anything like me, then you probably don’t think fast enough to immediately realize all of the fallacies of those arguments and why you may not need what they’re selling at all.
You need time to process so that you can make the right decision for your personal situation.
Create A Plan For Success
Unfortunately, these types of hard sell and scare tactics are used all of the time in financial product sales. A potentially life-changing decision shouldn’t have to be made on the spot. I just wish that I knew that my mom was being put in this type of situation sooner.
With the little information that I had, I pulled together recommendations for my mom. This allowed her to go into the meeting with the representative with confidence in knowing exactly which benefits to choose and which to waive.
If you want to learn more about employee benefits, then you can check out my series titled Guide to Employee Benefits Open Enrollment 2020. In this series, I provided education on health insurance, disability insurance, group term life insurance, dependent care FSA, and other ancillary benefits including dental insurance, vision insurance, spouse/domestic partner life insurance, child life insurance, accidental death and dismemberment insurance, critical illness and accident insurance, and legal coverage.
I hope that the information in this series helps to make a confusing and intimidating situation easier to get through.
If you have financial questions that you need help with or you’ve been pitched a product that you’re not sure whether you should buy, then you should find a fee-only financial planner to help you.
