In a moment of weakness and desperation, I filled out a form online for information about dental insurance plans, and I put in my real phone number. As a rule, I usually don’t use my real number because I hate getting phone calls.

But I was so tired of searching different plans, and I thought it was for a certain plan I was really interested in, but it was a trap! A trap that I’m still stuck in and dealing with on a daily basis.

Insurance Salespeople Descended Like Vultures

I knew I made a terrible mistake when seconds after pressing send, my phone began to blow up. I was getting phone calls, one after another and sending them to voice mail.

And text after text, all asking me to get health insurance, when what I actually needed was dental!

Messages letting me know you can get quotes on 250,000 term insurance plan and everything else.

We are a retired military family, so we have Tricare. I don’t need health insurance, and we already have a primary care physician.

But the crummy thing about retiring is that it drops dental for dependents. I was scrambling to get dental insurance before my son had a big expensive appointment coming up that was going to be a $2k out of pocket.

I thought I had finally found one I liked and filled out the form on a website with several plan options. Apparently, it’s just a front for a million health insurance salespeople. I wish I could remember what site it was, but I didn’t save the website.

I thought maybe it would stop after a day or two, but no, it kept going on. At least 20 text messages a day from annoying salespeople and 5-10 phone calls. That was weeks ago, and I’m finally down to only a few calls and texts a day. And that’s after blocking every single number that’s contacted me.

The text message above is an example of the messages that will probably never stop. And I keep getting caught on the phone with these people, because I’ll be expecting a call about something important, and it will be an insurance salesman instead.

So let my cautionary tale be a lesson. Don’t fill out any forms online for insurance unless you are applying directly on the insurance company’s website or can absolutely verify it isn’t some kind of information gathering site that’s going to blast your number to every salesperson in the US.

And if you do make the same mistake I did, get ready to be very popular!