People trying to find low-cost health insurance said they were tricked by aggressive sales agents into buying into a discount healthcare card program.
When the paperwork arrived, and they found out they bought discounts on medical services and products at participating locations but not insurance, some demanded refunds.
After their requests were denied, two customers filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau at Fort Worth.
This month, the BBB announced an F rating for the National Benefit Advisory Association in the 4700 block of S. U.S. 377 in Fort Worth.
"Consumers think they are buying health insurance when they aren�t," BBB head John Riggins says.
Unfair, says Robert Merrill, president of a management company that operates the advisory association. The company has resolved most of its complaints, he says, and the BBB Web site isn�t accurate.
Aside from the discount cards, the company also sells a limited-benefit health insurance policy, and that causes confusion among agents and customers, Merrill says.
His sales agents are trained to keep the products separate. At the end of each discount card sale, customers are asked to verify that they understand that it�s not an insurance program they are buying and that the processing fee � $60 in Texas � is not refundable.
"We encourage customers to buy both of them to get the most savings," he says of the two plans.
As required by law, the company Web site states: "This plan is NOT a health insurance policy."
The 9-year-old company, which says it has 12,000 customers in 35 states, was founded in 2000 by Trinity High School graduate Ronny Schweyher, a former world-class bodybuilder known as the "Cowboy Bodybuilder" on YouTube. Schweyher, of Cedar Hill, is its president.
Starting last year, Texas required the 38 discount medical card programs operating in the state to get licensed by the Department of Licensing and Regulation. That will change in April, when these companies must register with the Texas Department of Insurance instead � even though discount card programs are not insurance.
The Texas attorney general�s office says there are 18 complaints against the benefit advisory association.
The BBB reports 89 in the past year, with most resolved.
Other states, including Texas, don�t require that distinction in marketing, Merrill says.
That may be the reason behind the confusion described by two consumers who complained to the BBB, Ernest Owens Sr. and Michelle Bankhead.
Owens says he wanted actual health insurance, and he asked the sales agent, "Are you like Cigna and the rest of them?" The agent replied, "Oh, yeah."
When he learned otherwise, Owens complained to the BBB. He received $170 back, but not the $60 processing fee.
Bankhead, of Saginaw, searched diligently for a health insurance plan for her parents. She specifically didn�t want a discount-card program.
Believing that the program was for insurance, her parents agreed to sign on. When the paperwork arrived, Bankhead launched a three-week campaign with a dozen phone calls and half as many e-mails before her parents finally got a full $230 refund.
After Bankhead wrote to the company that "you are ripping people off," a company employee replied in an e-mail, "The company would like to caution you against any actions on your part that could be considered liable and slanderous."
When I asked Merrill about that, he answered, "I don�t see anything wrong with that."
Bankhead got a full refund for her parents, he says, because "we try to be fair and do what we can to make things right, even if we don�t agree with it."
Bankhead says it was because she complained to the BBB.
Some employees have lost their jobs when they "steered off that script" and made inaccurate statements to customers, Merrill says.
"It�s very rare because we have everything recorded, and everything is supervised. We do not tolerate misrepresentation, period. Everybody has been trained, and they better be ethical."
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