Update News for November 2023

Here is a quick run-down on what you will find in this bulletin:

• • Term4Sale BUMP WEEK – November 5, 2023

  • Zip Code List FROZEN Until
    January 8, 2024

  • Zip Code Renewals Must Be Paid By
    January 5, 2024

  • Term4Sale – Zip Code Listing Warranty

  • Delay in CQS.EXE Development

  • Our Current Programming Plans for 2022 and 2023

These topics will be dealt with in more detail throughout this bulletin.

Term4Sale BUMP WEEK – November 6, 2023Term4Sale BUMP WEEK is next week beginning Monday, November 6, 2023 at 12 noon Eastern Time.

Here’s a quick summary:

Bump week allows subscribers to improve their LOCAL Term4Sale zip code listings. “LOCAL” means an area within a 20 mile radius of where you are physically located. You can use your LOCAL zip codes (4 maximum for personal use PC subscribers, and 8 maximum for standard license subscribers) to force out (BUMP) subscribers in a zip code where that subscriber has purchased that zip code as one of their additional listings.

Bump week comes ONLY once a year, during the first full week of November.

This year we have increased your maximum number of local zip codes from 3 to 4 (6 to 8 for standard license) and so everyone has the opportunity to use at least one more local zip code for bumping. As we have warned in previous bulletin, those local zip codes MUST be requested.

If you don’t have any Term4Sale zip codes, this is the best time to purchase local zip codes.

Once again, bumping starts on November 6, 2023 at 12 noon Eastern Time. Give us a call anytime after that, or up to the end of business on Friday, November 10th, to review your zip codes and see if we can improve the local zip codes that you currently have.

Zip Code List FROZEN Until
January 8, 2024Immediately following bump week, the zip code list will be FROZEN meaning there will be no opportunity to add, remove or exchange zip codes until January 9, 2024. This will prepare us for the invoices that will be sent out to renew additional zip codes for 2024.

There is a price increase for additional zip codes this year. For complete details please read this bulletin:

Once you receive your additional zip code invoice for 2024, you can pay in 2023 if you want to expense the advertising in that year, or you have up until January 5, 2024 to make your payment which allows you to expense the advertising in 2024.

Zip Code Renewals Must Be Paid By
January 5, 2024Nothing compels you to renew your additional zip code listings and you will continue to be listed in those zip codes until January 5, 2024 in the event that you elect not to pay those renewals.

IMPORTANT:   If your payment has not been received by the end of business on January 5, 2024, the additional listings that you have will LAPSE and be made available to other subscribers at noon on January 8, 2024.

If you believe that you did not get sufficient email contacts (as per the warranty) and that we will need to make a warranty adjustment to your invoice, do not pay your invoice until the last week of December. We would encourage you to contact us on December 27th or 28th (mark that in your calendar) and we will review your total number of email contacts and weigh that against the number of zip codes that you have, and the number of contacts that you are entitled to. If you are short, we will determine the credit that we need to make against your invoice for 2024.

Term4Sale – Zip Code Listing WarrantyThe warranty that Compulife provides is that for every 3 zip code listings that you have, you can expect ONE legitimate email contact through the system per year (we don’t count tests and duplicates; spouses and partners are NOT considered duplicates). If you didn’t receive that one for three contact then those 3 zip codes will be free listings for the following year and the warranty will carry over to that following year as if you had paid the full normal fee.

IMPORTANT:   For those who have ONLY the 3 local zip codes, we would encourage you to add a 4th local zip code this year. For the purposes of the warranty calculation, we round up (in your favor). So, if you have a 4th local zip code, and you get 1 contact the following year, our calculation would be that you should get 2 contacts (4/3 = 1.33 which rounds up to 2). In that situation you would get a credit of $36 against your $48 invoice.

NOTE:  Term4Sale Zip Code invoices for “additional zip codes” (zip codes in excess of your local zip codes) will be sent on or about November 15, 2023; you have until January 5, 2024 to pay that invoice.

If you buy additional zip codes, and you think you did not get the number of contacts you should have this year, do NOT pay your Term4Sale invoice until the last week of December.

In that last week of December (between Christmas and New Year) call us and we will review your email contacts with you, and compare that to the number of zip codes that you had in 2023. If you came up short, we will issue the appropriate credit and reduce your invoice. If you pay that reduced amount you will keep ALL the zip codes you were invoiced for in mid-November.

How is the credit calculated (if you qualify)?

EXAMPLE:  You have 14 zip codes, three local and 11 that you purchased. For 14 zip codes we expect: 14/3 = 5 contacts (4.67 rounded up). Let’s assume that you had only 3 email contacts (note: we do not count duplicate or BOGUS contacts) On November 15th, we would have invoiced you $231 (11 X $21) for 2024 renewal. However, you really only got the activity we would have expected for 9 total zip codes, which would have been 3 local zip codes, and 6 additionally purchased zip codes. Therefore, we will credit your invoice DOWN to $126 (6 X $21) and give you the same 14 zip codes for 2024. In other words, you will have 5 of those 11 paid zip codes for free.

IMPORTANT:  There are NO REFUNDS. What we do is reduce the renewal cost for the SAME zip codes for the following year. After January 8th you can add zip codes (and pay for those) or you can swap your zip codes for other zip codes.

This guarantee is designed to act as a way to retroactively balance out the cost of zip codes listings that have not produced. Sometimes, particularly for those with smaller numbers of zip codes, or with zip codes in poorly populated areas, the results are not as good. We understand that and our warranty is designed to moderate the cost when results are disappointing.

Delay in CQS.EXE DevelopmentDevelopment work on the new CQS.EXE has been stalled for the past 6 to 8 weeks as we found it necessary to make some important changes to our new data entry software. While we have NOT converted our existing main rate files to our new data storage system, we have in fact placed many of the renewal rate files into that new data structure and have been running with those new files for a couple of years.

At this point ALL renewal tables are contained in a single text file, in the new format.

NOTE:   That text file is NOT the file that we provide to our customers.

The file that customers receive is a compiled and compressed version of the text file making it secure. No one can use that file apart from using our program. That is our new system of security to protect our work from theft. The old data files are also encrypted but are much more difficult for us to manipulate when changes are needed.

Over time the renewal file has been growing in size, particularly in Canada. More than one Canadian life insurance company has now begun using YRT renewal tables. This makes Canadian term products more and more like American term products. The problem is that the Canadian versions of these products have unique YRT renewal tables that are gigantic. Each table is unique for each band, sex, smoking and health class and (this is the killer) unique for each renewal year. Even though we have only 25 percent of the number of U.S. companies in the Canadian software, the renewal file for Canada is now 9 times the size of the U.S. file.

The last changes we needed to make for Canadian renewals was slow and tedious. We decided it is now time to implement a break down in the file structure, something that we were planning to do anyway for the main rate files when we got to that point in the conversion process.

Once again, as the renewal file has gotten bigger, software performance to make changes had diminished. To solve this we are breaking the file into pieces (by product). We then will assemble those pieces duing the compile process. We had the same problem with our forms library as it grew in size, and we used the same strategy to fix that.

NOTE:   The forms library is a single file assembled from multiple smaller files, but that single file is an uncompiled file. We do NOT have the same concern about security with that data.

Aa result of this work, we put a hold on CQS.EXE development and began introducing the change to the existing renewal files. It turns out that it was good that we did because our program libraries have changed so much as we have worked on the new CQS.EXE. Libaries, which are common components to ALL our software, connect to all software. Because the libraries had changed, our data entry software needed a large number of changes to accommodate those library changes. This emphasizes just how enormous an impact converting the GOWIN.EXE to CQS.EXE software has been, and how radically it has been changed by removing the old Delphi libraries.

All that to say that we have been busy resulting in no advance to CQS.EXE to report. Once the work on the data entry software is completed we will get back to CQS.EXE and continue the work of getting that ready for release. The good news is that the data conversion will go quicker with the foundation changes that we are making to the new data format, changes that we were going to need to make later but which are now being made sooner.

In the meantime, our existing products work well with our existing data structure, and we will continue to ensure our software is up-to-date as always.

Our Current Programming Plans for 2023 and 2024The following is the current order for new work that we will be doing in 2023/2024:

• • Introduction of New PC Version: CQS.EXE

• • Overhaul Of Current Product Data Files

• Introduction of Compulife Basic Plus (with Pick 12)

Anyone with questions about any of these upcoming projects can call Bob Barney to discuss:

Please don’t email me essay questions, just call. If I’m not in, email me your phone number, I’ll call you.

These planned objectives will easily consume our programming time during the balance of this year and throughout 2024. The good news is that once the product data files have been converted, and we have introduced the new CQS.EXE, and upgraded our internet engine to use the new data files, Compulife will be turning it’s full attention to our web based, Compulife Basic software. The long term goal is to have a web based product that does everything our PC based software does.