More on Scams
I wrote earlier about an on-line scam masquerading as a legitimate business selling tiles. The business actually does exist, but I am very sure they had nothing to do with the business proposal being offered. It turned to be a way to launder money and would have put any respondent in a difficult legal position.
I thought it might be a good idea to write about other common scams as some of the visitors who frequent this web site might be vulnerable to them.
Here they are in no particular order:
Recruitment Schemes
These schemes have been going on for a long time. In its simplest form it is something like this:
“Buy my book which tells you how to make a million bucks”. You send off some money and you get in return a document that tells you to recruit people to “buy my book which tells you how to make a million bucks”.
There are many variations on this theme. The actual product may be a physical book or an e-book. The methods of marketing may be through email, newspaper advertisements, stickers on lamp posts… anything.
Probably the easiest way to spot this one is by the extravagant claims of easy money. Also it is usually fairly apparent when you read their literature carefully that they don’t have an actual product to sell. Just scammy advice.
Directories or Lists
Another fairly common scam is paying for a list of opportunities.
The people running these kind of schemes ask you to pay for a list of companies which offer work to home workers. After sending the fee you receive their famous List. Often this is just a poorly cobbled together collection of names from the Yellow Pages or the Internet. Sometimes the companies don’t even exist, or if they once did, are now no longer in business. The ones that are real usually have no interest in employing home workers.
I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, but I was taken in by something similar once. It wasn’t a money making venture. I’d just taken a new job in a new town, accommodation was tight and hotels were expensive. I was anxious to find an apartment quickly, but it seemed just about impossible. In the newspaper I saw an advertisement for a list which, it was promised, would be full of apartments available for either short or long term rent. I raced over to the agent and bought the list. Every lead on it was a dud, I was furious, but what was my recourse? The publisher of the list just shrugged and said most people are able to find a vacant apartment out of the list. It wasn’t his fault that it was a particularly busy holiday season. The other thing that it had in common with the scams you see these days was a long list of testimonials. Very convincing ones too, from happy shiny smiling people gushing about how good the list was and how much time and effort it saved them in finding an apartment.
Cottage Industry Kits
I actually have some personal experience of one of these. Quite some years ago a friend responded to an advertisement offering to teach how to make artificial silk flowers. She bought an expensive kit from the manufacturer who also promised to buy the flowers once they had been made. I saw some of the first bouquets that she made and to me they looked exquisite.
I never did find out what went wrong, but soon after the start of this venture, it was over. I suspect that the flowers which she sent to the company were classified as “inferior” or the price given was a pittance. This is a typical strategy: You are asked to pay for expensive raw materials, you put in loads of your own time, but when it comes time to collect your reward, nothing is forthcoming.
There are many variations on this theme. Sometimes the tasks are described as being very simple, such as cutting out shapes repetitively which will be used in some industrial process. The story is usually the same, however. You pay a lot for very cheap materials and don’t get the kind of money you were promised.
Agencies
Watch out for companies who ask for an upfront “Area License” fee to allow you to sell their products in an exclusive area. This is a reasonably common strategy and shares a few similarities with franchising. Typically the company you have paid to represent has little interest in how well you sell their products. It is the upfront fee that they are really after. In fact if you give up quickly it is even better for them as then they can sell the area license to someone else. Even if you don’t give up so easily you may find that the geographical boundaries are poorly defined or even that yours and neighbouring areas have huge overlaps. Another common problem is that the area you have bought is too small to support you. Of course your Licensor has a solution… buy another area license.
Taking legal action against the organiser of the scam would probably consume too much energy, or money, or both and anyway no doubt there is something in the fine print which will get them of the hook.
Auctions and Other On-line Purchases
You purchase goods at what appear to be bargain prices but they are never delivered. Or they are shoddy and worth a fraction of what you paid.
The best defence against this kind of scam is to only buy from reputable sites. Many sites have “buyer’s feedback” on the sellers and this adds quite a bit of a safety factor.
Well this post is getting quite long and I think I had better split it up. More scams next post!
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