That's not love man, that's just the dick being... erm... a dick!
girls don't have dicks
Ugh. ULIPs. Have a ULIP maturing today. I don't even want to think about the money lost due to it.
@gauravH : you might've made a profit. Every such scam makes you think you've made a profit. But a small one.
If your NAVs were losing value then why did you hold on to it for so long? It was your choice to keep investing in the sinking ship.
Anyways, I was not scammed as I bought the ULIPs on my own. No agent forced them down on me. I followed the NAVs closely and after the initial investing period of 3 years, I stopped paying premium for 2 years. And when the market stabilized, I revived it and moved my ULIP to a high-risk band - which gave me 17% more returns than my earlier plan.
Using this logic nothing would be a scam, if one does research and due diligence. Agents masked details and suppressed components which were discovered post sales. That is why ULIP was de-linked as an investment vehicle.
Yes, with this logic it's not a scam.
Scam is when someone plays with your emotions to let you part with your money. They gain your confidence and make decisions on your behalf.
One can get easily conned/scammed by that
stranded-family-in-an-unfamiliar-place, because of our innate desire to help others. When we give money to such people, we are not expecting it back... it's sort of charity and it makes us feel happy/proud (or whatever). But when it comes to investments, we expect our money back with some profits. Now who is supposed to do the due diligence here? Buyer/investor or the agent? And they even read out the disclosure text for you one the TV. So, you had been warned!
Relatives take advantage of our 'emotions' and try to sell us "stuff we don't need." That's a scam as we are not made aware of the company's real business model. But when it comes to investments/ULIPs etc we have all the necessary documents with us to make a wise decision. And if anything goes wrong, we can always quit midway by paying some penalty or booking some loss. None of the other scam businesses offer such options (Tupperware, Amway, Stranded family, bogus NGOs etc)