Longtime readers may expect this not to involve my ex-wife, but fret not; it does.

She has been working in insurance for six years at this point and works for a brokerage because apparently in that industry, brokerages pay for your ongoing certifications instead of that being out of pocket.

She makes a decent hourly wage (I’d not call $23/hour luxurious), but as with any sales job, the commission is the main event. They signed contracts that set commission rates.

And then came the end-of-year sprint for Medicare open enrollment, a six-week period from October to December where you work seven 16-hour days a week and make no small fraction of your annual income.

It’s grueling.

That commission check is arriving in her account overnight. The issue is, it’s $3,000 instead of $12,000. So, the planned car purchase and move to be closer to her grandson are off the table.

There was understandable consternation among the rank and file at an all-hands announcing this sudden change yesterday. Some are losing everything.

So, there’s a breach of contract in play just itching for a class-action attorney, but with more information, this is a much larger problem.

As a brokerage, they sell plans through many different providers. This would turn out to be the issue at hand.

Before October’s sprint, both Humana and United Health decided to do their own underwriting, severing her employer’s ability to do sales. But did they tell the agents?

Of course not.

Jan. 1, everything resets. Both firms take control of their policies and everything sold by her team (which was 80% Humana and United Health), meaning that the people at her brokerage lost credit for the policies they’d sold.

In raw numbers, this is bad enough, but as anyone familiar with sales knows, there are compensation tiers. Losing 80% of her sales kicked her compensation from a $220/sale tier to $55.

And they fucking knew and still pushed agents hard. This is fraud.

ETA: They only paid half the reduced commission this month, promising the other half will be provided in four pay cycles. She now cannot pay her rent.