View this article online: https://www.insurancejournal.com/news/national/2000/08/25/11316.htm
“LearnNothing.com, CEScam.com, and CECertificateMill.com Create Partnership For Online Continuing Education Courses to Insurance Industry.”
That was the bogus headline that made its way across the country Thursday as part of Tennessee P/C agent Bill Wilson’s mastermind spoof of online continuing education companies.
Wilson, who did not wish to disclose the name of his employer, sent the email touting his website parody to dozens of members of the insurance press, including the Insurance Journal. The format was professional and deceiving – it looked just like the real thing. “I did it just as a lark,” Wilson said. “I’m on several mailing lists and I receive these press releases all the time – it seems like half of them are about online CE courses and all of them are leaders in the industry.”
Complete with a bogus spokesman (Justin Thyme) and CEOs (Les Ismore and Noah Goode), the press release at first fooled a friend of Wilson’s. “He said he read the first paragraph three times before he realized it was bogus,” Wilson said. Even with “Fort Worthless, Tex.” as the dateline. (By the way, Wilson picked Fort Worth arbitrarily – he wasn’t messin’ with Texas.)
The true beauty of Wilson’s high jinks is the website he created during his vacation earlier this week. In a matter of three days, he developed a website complete with screaming monkeys, great links, a FREE continuing education course (developed by typing monkeys, which he explains were out of work due to their previous CE provider employers going out of business) and more rib-tickling humor than any other insurance website around (who says insurance agents don’t know how to have fun?).
So why did he do it? Frustration and time. Wilson said he was disgusted by the course offerings he’d seen that run up company costs and fill required CE hours, but do nothing in the way of providing information or education to agents. “I was just thinking “I’ve got a week of vacation coming up and I don’t have anything planned,'” he said.
He based the website on a real company’s where he took a personal auto course in just 10 minutes using a multiple screen format that allowed him to answer test questions while viewing the course materials right beside it.
“In 10 minutes I’d passed the exam and, if I’d been willing to give them my credit card, I could have had 12 hours CE credit.” That’s how he came up with LearnNothing.com’s “blank page” technology, which saves agents time because they don’t have to read anything.
Get a personal view of Wilson’s work at www.LearnNothing.com, and take a gander at his press release published in its entirety below. It’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
Under the alliance, LearnNothing will provide online courses that will be supplemented by optional cartoonlike hardcopy text materials provided by CEScam. CECertificateMill will provide the regulatory course filings, along with CE testing and certification, guaranteeing a 100% passing ratio or your $10 back…according to CECertificateMill spokesman, Justin Thyme, no one has ever failed a CECertificateMill examination. “We made this strategic commitment to CEScam and CECertificateMill because we can deliver low-cost drivel that, through effective PR, hyperbole and laughably easy exams, can generate substantial income for all of us,” said Les Ismore, CEO of LearnNothing.
“Without question, our courses give independent agents unique ways to improve their productivity. Most of our course materials consist of blank pages that do not waste the time of busy agents by incorporating difficult concepts such as ‘the peril of fire’ and ‘deductibles.’ If our patented ‘Blank Page’ Technology (BPT™) courses aren’t recognized by certain regulators, we have dozens of highly trained monkeys sitting at word processors that can pump out reams of course content, assuring our position as the leading provider of innocuous CE programs,” said Ismore.
“LearnNothing gives our insurance agent customers the power to take web-based CE courses anytime and anywhere that is convenient to them, and they have our mutual assurance that their minds will not be cluttered with complicated insurance stuff,” said CEScam CEO Noah Goode.
“With LearnNothing, our customers can harness the full power of the internet to establish and maintain their CE requirements, or they can continue to receive instruction through CEScam’s traditional books, now supplemented with purty pictures and coverage interpretations pumped out by LearnNothing’s remarkable stable of chimpanzees and Peruvian marmosets. This is a big win for LearnNothing and CEScam customers nationwide.”
“Our alliance with LearnNothing and CEScam significantly opens up our markets to even more gullible agents and industry slackers,” said CECertificateMill CEO Justin Thyme. “In return, we provide both organizations with a proven track record of timely approvals of mindless drivel that we all jokingly call ‘continuing education.’ Now, with the voluminous content enabled by LearnNothing’s stable of typing monkeys and state-of-the-art ‘blank page’ technology, we can continue to successfully con legions of bean-counting insurance department bureaucrats into approving increasing numbers of worthless CE courses.”
About LearnNothing.com
Based in Fort Worthless, Texas, LearnNothing is the leading nationwide supplier of state-of-the-art continuing education courses to over fourteen licensed insurance agents and adjusters. LearnNothing provides an integrated family of continuing education courses, which are delivered electronically over the internet.
More information is available on the company’s website, www.LearnNothing.com, or at (800) 0-Learning.
About CEScam.com
CEScam, based in Fort Worthless, Texas, is a regional CE and prelicensing “education” firm that has trained over TEN MILLION (rounded to the nearest 10 million) agents. CEScam, who’s motto is “A minute of work for an hour of CE,” is dedicated to providing low-cost, minimal-content programs that barely meet the continuing education requirements of insurance professionals by offering a variety of “continuing education” (no pun intended) courses, and specializing in inexpensive, efficient solutions to Draconian continuing education requirements.
More information is available at www.LearnNothing.com, or at (800) Jok-esOnU. About CECertificateMill.com CECertificateMill, based in Fort Worthless, Texas, is an international administrator of CE courses for the insurance industry.
Formerly known as LaughingAllTheWayToTheBank.com, CECertificateMill’s philosophy is to use proven techniques to persuade insurance regulators to approve programs of “learning” that, at their best, constitute little more than glossaries of industry terminology.
More information is available at www.LearnNothing.com, or at (800) DOI-Scam.