Work at Home

The following is part of a series of articles researched and written by Joe Amort, President of the Better Business Bureau of Windsor & Southwestern Ontario. They first appeared in the Windsor Star and the Chatham Daily News.

"Earn money at home" schemes all have two things in common; They require you to send money, or buy something before you begin work. Basically there are three types of "work at home" schemes: where you provide a service, where you provide a product or where you buy a directory of companies that hire "at-home" workers.

The first type of scheme catches your attention in the want ads you can earn as much as $500.00 per week stuffing envelopes in the comfort of your own home. When you respond to the ad, always a box or suite number, you are requested to send $19.95 for more information on this "amazing" money making program. Upon receipt of your package, you are told to simply do what they have done - take out an ad in the local paper telling people they can earn money by stuffing envelopes and charging them $19.95 when they respond to your ad. To the best of our knowledge, there are no legitimate companies that offer employment by stuffing envelopes. Manual envelope stuffing is too costly and is done in great volume by high speed machines.

The second type of work at home scheme also uses the want ads and entices you to earn money assembling products in your own home. Once you have contacted these companies, they will sell you the materials with a promise to buy the assembled product back. The more product you purchase the greater the amount of earnings. There is, however, one catch - the company never buys the assembled product back. The usual excuse is that the assembly does not meet their quality standards.

The third type of scheme offers you a directory of companies that will hire you to do overflow computer work at home. These directories are usually from the United States and sell for $60.00 U.S. In our investigation, we have learned that the directory is no more than a computer database of Windsor companies and there is no way of knowing if any of the listed companies need you to do any work. In other words, you would be able to go through the yellow pages and make contacts yourself.

Finally, some enterprising individual has created a directory of "work at home" opportunities by simply recording all the want ads. He then sells this directory for $49.95, through, you guessed it, the want ads.