FC almost got me. A man approached me during a cookout in HT-land that I walked over to see one day out of curiosity. He offered to show me what FC was about and took down my number and I agreed to visit one afternoon. The entire time I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up because it seemed like I was being sold a bill of goods that I barely understood wrapped in over two hours of military small talk to make it seem friendly. It seemed like I was a big juicy steak on a golden O-1 platter. I declined.
Only afterwards did superiors talk about "the company that shall not be named" and its shady business practices which seemed odd that the command couldn't openly out a company that preys on young JOs.
It's funny. I was my squadron's CFS and wrote a scathing command wide email about First Command, but never named them. I had my (outgoing) CO's permission to do it as he hated them too. I just went on about how a) it's totally unprofessional for instructors to take briefing time or aircraft time to "sell" their students anything; b) how, when you invest, you need to look at investment costs and where your money is being put: being charged a 5% front end load + a 1% expense ratio on the money that actually ends up in the account when half your money is going to a checking account is terrible; and c) a whole life insurance policy is not a great investment for a whole host of listed reasons, but not the least of which, unlike many people are promised, their distributions are not "tax free."
The next morning I woke up and saw in my email an alert from LinkedIn, something like "FirstCommand must be interested in you; 7 people from that company looked at your profile today!" I knew someone had leaked my email to their FC "financial specialist." The next day my PXO told me "from now on, I want to review your CFS emails." I found out during my check out a year+ later that my CO, XO, PXO all stuck up for me against the Commodore at the time who was a big fan of FirstCommand and got a few nasty phone calls that night from reps screaming at him about some rogue CFS giving bad gouge about their company. Apparently a JAG even reviewed what I wrote and apparently she stated something to the effect of "he never named a company, it just seems like everyone is getting defensive because everyone seems to know that's how this company operates, no?" CO was a huge fan of my email. XO and PXO were just like "this isn't how I wanted to start," but to this day I respect the hell out of them for going to bat for me when it would have been easier to just "fire" me as soon as they became the new CO/XO in order to gain favor with the CDRE.
What bothers me isn't that someone sent the email outside - it could have been as innocent as "hey Brad, this sounds a lot like what you're doing to me, care to explain?" - but that those who had FirstCommand, including the CDRE were just so infatuated that they couldn't have been duped like that and stuck to their guns that it was a fantastic investment company.
Sorrynotsorry for the threadjack.
OP's post is awesome - seriously.