U.S. Update News November 2001
The Internet monthly update will be posted to our four monthly update websites on Thursday, November 29th.
Unless you have made arrangements to purchase your diskettes, please return your “October disks” ONLY AFTER you have successfully installed the November 2001 Update. October disks are your backup in case you should have problems installing the November edition.
While we do not yet have everything we plan to have at the website, all the things a trial user needs to get started are now there.
For those who have been asking for a manual, the first three chapters of our Internet Manual are now completed and available at the website. Go to www.compulife.com and click on the last menu item.
Additional zip codes can still be purchased for $1 per month. During the middle of November Compulife will be invoicing for zip code listings renewals. Only if you have purchased more than one zip code will you receive a renewal invoice. The price on the invoice will be for the total number of zip codes that you have purchased minus your free home zip code.
It is your responsibility to ensure that we have you are listed accurately. If you are not listed accurately, you need to let us know.
While that is important, the number of visitors clicking a “Get Agent” button is far more important. Keeping in mind that a number of the “Get Agent” clicks are from other agents checking listings for various reasons, the total count is increasing. In May there were 475 clicks, June was 498, and July was 596. However, August took a big jump to 1,154 and September jumped again to 2,045. To date, in October, we have had 1,592. If the pattern holds October should end with just over 2,200 “Get Agent” requests.
We believe a great deal of the increased traffic is due to the recent press coverage. This was caused by the Consumer Federation of America’s study of Internet term quote sites. www.term4sale.com was viewed very positively and a number of newspapers picked up the story. If you visit www.compulife and click on www.term4sale.com – In The News, you will see we have given you some links to those articles.
Needless to say, we are encouraged by the results and hope that term4sale is catching on. We hope that those of you who are listed at the site are doing some business as a result of it. Please let us know how you are doing with it; good or bad.
Compulife does not provide web programming or websites for agents. Compulife has an Internet version of our comparison software that allows a website to do real-time comparisons. Those who have Compulife’s Internet comparison software (we call it the Internet engine) have permission to use the engine to set up websites for other agents providing that agent is a Compulife subscriber. There is NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE from Compulife for that privilege.
Compulife currently has 4 “authorized web providers”. An authorized web provider is someone who does not sell or distribute insurance which means they don’t compete with our subscribers.
One of these web providers has just dramatically cut the price of their service to agents and agencies to $99 per year.
Note: First time subscribers to that service start by purchasing a 6 month subscription for $99. The initial $99 represents a setup fee of $49.50 plus $49.50 for the first 6 months. Annual renewals are then $99 per year.
Compulife Lite subscribers do not qualify for this special offer. Lite subscribers can upgrade to the full Compulife system for the price difference.
Please call Bob Barney at (800) 798-3488 for the name of this Compulife web provider in addition to the names of other authorized web providers. You will want to consider competing offers.
As we have explained before, the existing Compulife database can require two or three separate product entries to include all the numerous “rate categories” which some products require. The existing Compulife rate entry system allows one product entry to contain up to four rate categories; a maximum of two non-smoking and two smoking categories. If a product has more categories we end up making additional product entries to accommodate those categories.
The “product family” enhancement allows us to group multiple product entries into one product family, effectively giving us an unlimited number of categories per product. For those who try it, you will find single product (F2) menus much, much simpler. Also, comparisons use the main name of the product without all the (P+ Super Pfd/R+ Select) type notations which are used to distinguish individual product entries in the system.
Work has also wrapped up on expanding Pick 5/11 to Pick 12. The existing “pick5.dat” file, which now contains your selected products, had some limitations attached to it. These prevented us from easily expanding the maximum number of products to 12. The “pick5.dat” file format has been overhauled and it will now permit up to 12 products in the spreadsheet. More important, it will accommodate further changes and enhancements we are planning to make.
Note: The limit will remain at 11 in DOS due to the printing limitations of fixed pitch fonts in landscape mode.
For more details of the changes, read the new manual chapters which are available at www.compulife.com. The new chapters were written with the new features documented in advance. You can download the newest GOWIN.EXE file by going to the mid-month website and downloading the UPDATE3.CMP file. Call us at (800) 798-3488 if you need help.
a) Enhanced Internet Updating – Compulife will be upgrading our Windows software to permit it to automatically search the Internet for both monthly and mid-month updates at our numerous websites. The system will divide our users among our various websites and servers to ensure a moderate traffic level for each server. It will also automatically check for alternate servers when connections fail or where download performance is deemed unacceptable. This will make the process of Internet updating much simpler.
Note: The existing system of updating will continue to work just as it does now. The new approach will simply automate the steps.
b) Pick 12 will eventually allow the filing of multiple life quotes reflecting discounts for companies which offer multi-life options. You will be able to print pages showing total premiums for all lives and then subsequent pages for each individual life. Discounts, where available, will be noted. As the Pick 12 features become available, they will be posted to our mid-month update site.
c) Pick 12 will allow the quotation of modal premiums together with waiver of premium. Currently, when you click on waiver of premium, the spreadsheet defaults to annual premium. If you switch to another premium mode, the waiver of premium is dropped.
Now that our monthly updates though the Internet are working quite well, we prefer that our subscribers use that method of obtaining updates. Once again, prices for Internet subscriptions are not changing and we do not expect them to change in the near future. The new prices will be as follows:
| Agency Use | Updates by Disk | Updates by Internet |
| One Year Subscription | $379 ($349 prior to 2002) | $299 |
| Two Year Subscription | $659 ($599 prior to 2002) | $499 |
| Personal Use | Updates by Disk | Updates by Internet |
| One Year Subscription | $279 ($249 prior to 2002) | $199 |
| Two Year Subscription | $459 ($399 prior to 2002) | $299 |
| Compulife Lite ** | Updates by Disk | Updates by Internet |
| One Year Subscription | $139 (was $99) | $99 |
** NOTE re: Lite subscriptions
Lite monthly updates are now available through the Internet. As a result, the price for Lite updates by disk have increased to the above mentioned $139 per year. The $40 additional fee, versus the $90 additional fee for the regular and personal use system, reflects the fact that Lite software is shipped by regular mail as opposed to Priority Post.
Those with a current Lite subscription are continuing to receive disks at the old prices. There will be no change in service or price until the Lite subscription renews.
Having said that, we suggest you act now, before the deadline as it is our experience that most people forget there is a deadline and then want Compulife to extend it. In this case, that will not be done.
Here is an example of the top-up opportunity:
If your personal use subscription is paid to May 31, 2002, and you act now you can add one more year for $249 or two more years for $399. If you didn’t act by December 15th then you will receive your normal invoice in April 2002 for the new price of $279. You could elect at that time to pay a total of two years for $459.
If you receive that new invoice, at the higher price, don’t forget that you can still elect at that time to switch over to Internet monthly updates and save $80 per year. The price for a personal use Internet subscription remains only $199.
Regardless of how you are obtaining your monthly updates, you need to carefully monitor our mid-month update service at www.compulife.com. This is a free service.
Check in at least once a week to see if there have been important changes. Each change made to the database during the month is itemized, documented and dated in the Mid-month update news.
For those doing monthly updates by Internet, we have a third website standing at ready with the monthly updates ready. If you cannot obtain your monthly update from either compulife.com or compulife.cc, call our office at (800) 567-8376 and we’ll tell you where the third site is.
1. Switch to obtaining monthly updates by Internet.
Not only will you eliminate the expense and hassle of returning disks, you will save $50 per year in subscription fees (that will be an $80 per year savings starting January 1, 2002).
To switch to Internet monthly updates, call us at (800) 798-3488. We will send you an agreement called the “Internet Update Endorsement” (go ahead and print the version at this link, then fax it to us at 859-885-3988). Read it carefully, especially the part where you agree that you have successfully downloaded and processed our “mid-month updates“. If you haven’t done that before, call us and we’ll be happy to take you through the procedure. It’s easy.
2. Disk Purchase Program
The other way to avoid returning the disks and the disk box each month is to pre-purchase them for $21 per year ($1.75 per month). Once you do that you can keep them for future reference, throw them away or return them for a credit (once each year) when you are invoiced for the following year. $21 costs you less than mailing back disks each month.
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