The AFLAC/Insurance job scam

This has been around a while, but appears to still be very real, and very active, and was wondering if anyone else has gone down this rabbit hole.
Been circulating resumes lately, put them up on a couple of job boards, and have gotten several e-mails and calls from insurance companies. They call you to set up an "interview" for a job that you have to ask them what it is, and sometimes have to drag the company out of them. In reality, it's a cattle call. Twenty or thirty people got the same call. You show up, they do a 30- to 40-minute presentation about the company, call you in for a one-on-one interview (apparently to separate the truly horrible felons from those who only commit misdemeanors), then call you back later to say you've got the job.
And that's where the fun starts.

Half of their business model is based on selling insurance. The other half is on hiring as many people as possible, doing everything they can to get them to quit, and then the local and regional managers swoop in to pick up their accounts and steal the commissions.
They also hire dozens of people at a time and send them into the same territory, after the same clients, which makes it extremely difficult to land any accounts.
Best of all, you're classified as an independent contractor and not an employee, so they don't have to pay you anything. All the salary is commission-based. They promise you the moon -- and a huge income is, theoretically, possible if you're among the 2 percent of new agents that doesn't wash out -- but it's damn near impossible in reality.
You also pay for your own training and license exam, have to pay for a cubicle in the office, aren't paid for mileage and have to use your own laptop, among other things.
There's a lot of nuances to it, and there's a really good breakdown here (article is about a year old, but it sums up most of what I've read on these things in two dozen different places):

http://sourceblogger.com/is-aflac-a-scam-or-a-good-company-to-work-for

I bring this up because I got a call last week and actually went to one of these meetings this morning. It was for a company called American Insurance Life, and the model they use seems to mirror AFLAC's pretty closely. I'm sure there's others.
Fortunately, I'd done my homework over the weekend and bailed when the presentation followed the script I'd read about to the letter. Knowing what I know, it was like watching a hustler scam 30 tourists an hour at a Three-card Monty game.
Even if I had some odd, burning desire to sell insurance, I ain't heading down that route. Given that a lot of our board members are in various stages of career distress, however, I wanted to throw this out as a warning and see if anyone has fallen for it.

 

That's all Monster sends me.
I got several emails and two phone calls.

 

Another fun moment I forgot to mention. I told the person checking off names for the one-on-one interviews that I wasn't interested and left. I got home an hour later and, literally, within 10 minutes I got a call from the same agency asking if I'd come in for an interview.
Uhhh ... no. I was just there. Go away.

 

What does this have to do with steak knives and college kids?

 

I've been to both the steak knife one and the insurance one. Both of them were jokes.

The funny one is the timeshare ones that offer you a free gift. My wife wanted to go to one once, against my objections. So there we are sitting through the presentation, the guy is pressuring us, I keep saying no, my wife feels pressure, then I end it by saying we're just there for the free gift. Guy gives us a dirty look.

So while we're waiting for the gift, I see this other customer getting screamed at before joining us. When they brought the free gifts, the other customer gave his to us (I don't remember what it was, some piece of junk), and explained that he was doing a documentary on these time-share schemes.

 

Being unemployed from full time work, I went in for one of those AFLAC group sessions, went back for the one-on-one interview. Expressed my reluctance at the no salary, pure commission aspect, and the additional classroom training required after you pass the licensing exams (which they expect you to do within a month or so of accepting the job offer). Was assured I could start earning commissions while in training. So I accepted the offer. I went online, paid the $85 for the training materials to help me study for and pass the exam.
A week later I was offered and accepted a 1-2 month day time temp job as an office manager at the synagogue where my wife works as they needed someone reliable they could trust to bridge the gap between the time the previous office manager left and the new one could start.
Needless to say I didn't do anything else for the licensing exam and haven't heard back from AFLAC wondering why I haven't done anything. This was in July-August 2012.

 

That sounds worse than working for Demand Studios. Close call, though.