Building things at home sounds like a dream job come true but it’s more likely to be a scam designed to build the wealth of a crafty con artist.
What could be more perfect, and fun, than making money doing crafts at home? Some of the home assembly offers promise as much as $30 an hour for this kind of work. The job described would require that you make baby clothes, jewelry, Christmas ornaments, small toys, plastic signs or any other product you can think of. As you can imagine, a lot of people jump at this opportunity only to discover that the whole thing is a scam.
What ends up happening is that whoever falls for this ends up paying for a lot of tools and materials to produce the goods for a company that has promised to buy them. One of the ways they get you is by insisting that only certain materials and tools are used so that even if you already have something comparable you will need to purchase theirs. They will also insist that you use only the supplies they offer in order to insure product quality and uniformity. Once you have sent in your money, the supplies and directions you receive will be of far poorer quality than anything you could have found on your own.
You Can’t Meet Their Standards
After you have assembled the product with the materials provided and using only the tools you purchased from them you will find it tricky to impossible to obtain any kind of payment for your hard work and investment. What you will be told is that the work you’ve done doesn’t measure up to their quality standards.
No matter what you try they will have some way of refusing your work because it isn’t to their standards which is almost certainly mentioned somewhere in your business agreement. Don’t be tempted by 100% satisfaction guarantees. If you’re not happy with the situation, good luck in getting even your initial investment back, let alone the money paid for tools and supplies. Scammers are great at working all the angles so that they don’t have to part with the money you gave them.
The biggest difference between legitimate work at home opportunities and scams is that real jobs don’t ask you to pay any of your own money up front. Ignore any entities that ask for fees or purchases first.
Product assembly and home crafting scam warning signs:
- You are promised a high income – This is almost always number one on any scam warning sign list and it comes down to if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is a scam. Don’t let your greed get in the way of common sense.
- Your employer uses a post office box – Using a post office box doesn’t necessarily indicate that a business is fraudulent but home business scam operations rely on them to easily bilk people out of money. They are easy to set up and it’s not a big deal if the PO Box needs to be abandoned when it’s time for the scammer to move on to new hunting grounds.
- You need to purchase a starter “kit” – These kits are almost always garbage and the very fact that it’s called a “kit” should make you wary.
- You are required to pay a deposit – Few if any real employers ask for their employees to make deposits. If you are asked to make a deposit you should immediately start asking questions. These deposits are where the con artists make their money. Once you send in your “deposit” you are a scam victim and you can kiss your money goodbye.
