Secret Shopping Scam

If you receive an e-mail that looks like this.. IT IS A SCAM!!!!!

“Hello,

We are happy to hear back from you and we congratulate you on this mystery
shopper’s Assignment. Below is your Shopper’s Guide Instruction.

Shopper’s Guide wants you to run a survey on two prominent companies in
your area.

1st is a Western Union Location
2nd is a MoneyGram  Location

There have been reports about laps in the services of their Management and
some of their staffs,the complaints are based on reports which their
customers forwarded anonymously and Phone calls which were also made to
the head office.

These reports Include:

I)   Unqualified Staff

II)  Slow services

III) Loss of Money

IV)  Rude Waiters/ Waitresses

V)   Excess charge

VI)  Late opening hours and closing before time

Your Secret Evaluation would be:

1) To make a transfer of funds from this western union location to our
Mystery shopper,and the funds would be picked up by another mystery
shopper at another location where a customer reported her funds missing.

2) You would have to record the time at which you go to the location and
how many minutes it took you to get service.

3) You would be sent a payment (check/money order/cash) which would cover
your payment of $200 and also for the duty. As soon as you receive the
payment, you should cash in at your bank and deduct your $200,use the rest
of the money for the services.

4) Upon receiving the funds, the locations address would be forwarded to
you,also the name and address of whom the Mystery shoppers transfer would
be made to. You would have to keep a comprehensive report on every
activity you carry out.

Please send me a reply acknowledging this email so that the payment would
be sent out to you ASAP.

Yours Sincerely,
Taye Jefferson
Secret Shopper®
“

iDictate/Quicktate Scam e-mails

I decided to create this post because lately I have been getting scam e-mails that on the subject line or on the e-mail it appears to have the word  iDictate or Quicktate on them.

I would like to point out that Quicktate and iDictate are real companies who do hire people to work from home as transcribers. (you can take a look at the other post with all the details) But it seems like scammers are trying to take advantage of the company’s name to confuse people. Should you receive an e-mail with weird links in it that have nothing to do with iDictate or asking you to wire or send money via Western Union or Money Gram its a scam. iDictate will not e-mail you unless you have applied to work for them already so please be careful.

The real iDictate/Quicktate link to apply for a job is this one:

https://typists.quicktate.com/transcribers/signup

If you have any comments or any e-mails that you would like for us to take a look at .. feel free to post your comments and I will gladly do some research for you and tell you the e-mail you’re looking at is legit or not..

Again be careful and happy Work at Home Job Hunting.

ListitonRealtor.com Review

So you want to sell your house By Owner? I am still in the process but have now hired a realtor. However before I hired a realtor I was trying to sell my house “For Sale By Owner”. So, I posted and ad on Craigslist for my home, a few hours later I get an e-mail from ListItOnRealtor.com. Other people had mentioned to me that I could list my property on Realtor.com as FSBO (for sale by owner) but that I had to look for a company to do it. I did my research and found that most of these companies charge from $300 – $600, so when I saw that ListItonRealtor.com was only charging $99 I got really excited.

I have been scammed before and I went to look for reviews on this company and did not find any.. So after about a week of thinking it over because I did get this lead from an Ad I placed on Craigslist I was unsure due to the tons of spammers on CL. I took the plunge and went for it. Here are my findings:

Company is legit, I asked for owner to call me on the phone before I paid my money via paypal. He called me right away and answered all of my questions.  I placed the order to list my property.  Within days I found my property listed on Realtor.com.. I was ecstatic.

Here is the downside. I listed the property on July 2 and removed the listing on Sept 2. Total of two months , 600 hits but no contacts or inquiries at all. Within the two months I asked if there were any inquiries on the property and I was told that there were none. I wanted my phone number to be placed on the ad so that I wouldnt miss any calls and would be able to speak to the people who may be intersted. They told me that Realtor.com did not allow that. Basically if there was an inquiry it would be sent to the guy from Listitonrealtor.com and he would forward the messages to me. I did do a test inquiry and it took 2 days for me to receive it.. and I did a second one by leaving a voice message at the 800 number listed on the ad and I never got it. So, I pulled the plug and decided to hire a Realtor.

I was looking to save all that commision money that I would have to pay a realtor although I was still offering 3% when I listed FSBO. I couldnt sit here anymore without any traffic in the house or any inquiries.

So, basically this is a legit company, but the service as far as the inquiries go, I did not have a good experience. I welcome anyone else who has used their services to post their experience here. Maybe the other companies that charge more offer better service when it comes to the inquiries being forwarded to the seller.

Odesk

oDesk is an online staffing marketplace and management platform that provides a convenient way to hire, manage, and pay individuals no matter where they are located. Hiring managers can post jobs and hire from thousands of ranked and certified service providers for time-based work or fixed-price projects. oDesk tools empower users to manage providers as if they were in the same office, and verify and pay only for actual work performed.

Jobs vary from customer service, transcribing, web development. You are considered an independent contractor and can set the rate that you are willing to accept for the specific job. This is open to all countries not just the US. Most jobs are temporary but some companies do hire you on a permanent basis.

Click here if you wish to set up your provider profile and start working with Odesk.

Quicktate; iDictate

I applied with Quicktate about 6 months ago and I finally got my invitation to start transcribing.

Basically, you get voicemail messages and u you type in what you hear on your screen and press send and it goes to the person it was intended to. Its pretty fun.

Quicktate Compensation:
We will be paying the quicktate typists based on the number of words they type, at the rate of 1/4
(one-fourth) US cent per word. So if you typed 50 words per minute (assuming
there were enough jobs to keep you typing for the entire hour), then you would
earn about $5.00-$7.00 per hour.

Note that quicktate compensation is not the same as idictate. Quicktate is a
quarter cent per word, while iDictate is a half cent per word.  Accuracy is
critical: regarding names, do your best. 

Again, iDictate Compensation is one-half cent per word. ($0.005/ word)
Quicktate Compensation is one-quarter cent per word. ($0.0025/ word)

Typists are paid by Paypal. The pay periods are: 1st-15th and 16th-end of the
month.  Typists are paid within a week of the end of each pay period.

If you wish to apply:

http://typists.quicktate.com/transcribers/signup

Texting From Home Companies

*Here is a list of companies that you can work for as Text operators. I will write reviews for them as soon as I have some time. However you can look around and see if one of them Interests you.

http://www.chacha.com
http://www.text121chat.com
http://www.teleworkcentral.com
http://www.lipservice.net/start.html
http://www.tptp.us/index.html pls type HOMEMOMMA on the referral field on the application

ChaCha.com

*I have been with ChaCha since May 2008. Its a pretty fun job.

What do you do? Someone sends a text message asking a question and obviously someone has to reply. On occassions that someone has been me. Its pretty cool actually, cause I have gotten asked some really funny questions.

How it all works. You log in to the employee gateway on your computer then you wait to get a message. Depending on the  question, it determines how much research you have to do. If you dont know the answer it doesn’t matter as you will use the internet to find the answer to people’s questions. So if you’re internet savvy then you won’t have a problem. Not all questions need to be researched, so if you know the answer you can send it right along.

What will you be asked? You will be asked all sorts of things, here is a sample of some of the questions that I have gotten.

What is the weather like in Utah?

Does my boyfriend love me?

What time is Batman playing and the closest movie theater to zip code 31206?

Not that hard right? It isn’t. There is one thing that sucks and thats the pay. They used to pay 0.20 cents per text message sent. They have now lowered that rate to .10 cents. If you answer the question within a minute thats not too bad, but I had a question take me about 10 minutes one time. But I wanted to get it answered so I did not give up. You get paid via direct deposit through First Internet Bank at any time that you choose or you can get paid once a month to your personal bank account.. There is a $2 fee to get paid via direct deposit through FIB, there is no fee to your own bank account.  So just let the money accumulate to a good amount and then request the payment.

Training is simple as you train on your own and at your pace. You get to pick keywords of subjects that you know so that questions pertaining to those subjects get routed to you. 

Apply at www.ChaCha.com

If you have any questions, please post your comments and I will try to answer them as best I can.

West at Home aka Workathomeagent

*I am no longer with West At Home. I was unable to pick up shifts and was not able to maintain the amount of minutes to remain active with them.

What you do as West is basically answer the phone to place orders for people watching the infomercials on TV. Pretty neat if you ask me.

Training here is 30 hrs and you do it at your own pace by yourself. I completed my training in 10 hrs but they give you 30 so that you can take your time and it is paid training.

The pay here is also for talk time minutes and they also start at 0.15 cents per minute. If you are bilingual you get 0.17 cents per minute. Later hours as well like AM hr between 12am-5am qualify for higher rates as well.

Shifts can also be picked up a couple of minutes before they are due to start. Pretty flexible and you can work around your schedule.

The only thing I did not enjoy about working for West was the upselling. When the customers called to place their orders you do have to try to upsell them whatever offer pops up in your screen. Sometimes you can loose orders as customers sometimes do not want to hear all the upsells or don’t have time.

When I applied they got back to me the quickest out of all the companies that I applied for.

Apply at: www.westathome.com or www.workathomeagent.com

Should you have any questions pls post them in the comments section and I will be glad to answer them as to the confidentiality terms permit me to.

Coast 2 Coast Chat

 

What can I say I love this place. I have been with Coast since April 2008.

If you are not comfortable with adult content this may not be the job for you.

This job is basically chatting. If you love to chat on yahoo then you can work for Coast. Keep in mind that these are adult conversations and they can get somewhat graphic. I once did the phone actress thing and I defenitely prefer chatting 100 times more than actually speaking to someone on the phone.

The pay here is by commission. You get $20 per sale which are very easy to do. I average about $200 a week. I could defenitely do way more but again, I have a little munchkin that wants my attention all the time.

We have a great support system in place so that on your 1st day you will be making money. This is not a get rich scheme not is it advertising for google or any nonsense like that. This is actual chatting with guys who you sell to.

The owner of the company is an awesome individual and she is always there to lend a helping hand. Should she not be available she will assign you to a Team Leader to be your mentor and to help you every step of the way. I am glad to say that I am a mentor and my team is doing awesome right now.

If you’re interested go ahead and fill out and application at www.coast2coastchat.org  and PUT MY NAME ON YOUR APPLICATION (Fany)so that the owner knows I sent you and of course assign me as your mentor.

Should you have any questions pls post them in the comments section and I will be glad to answer them as to the confidentiality terms permit me to.

I’ve decided to ad this part to the post and we have been getting people applying who believe that this takes no work or commitment. The only way you can make money is by working, nothing will be just handed to you. You need apply yourself and have some discipline. So if you feel that making blogs or webpages or creating e-mail accounts is too much work for you. Please do not apply. This is for serious people looking to make money and work hard at the same time

Support Forums: www.houseofhustlers.com & www.themoolahlounge.com

Networking with: www.cashcowchaching.com

ACD Direct

*Currently I am working for ACD Direct. I finished my training with them on June 2, 2008. This is a great company.

This company handles taking pledge calls for Television Broadcasts as well as radio station broadcasts. As we have mentioned in the past any company asking you for money is not usually a good choice and this is where many people may walk away from ACD. Yes, they do require a $30 background fee that you must pay via paypal. The fee is 100% legit. You will entering the callers information into their system so they need to make sure you will not be commiting any fraud.

Training normally lasts about 3days for 3 hrs each day.

The scheduling flexibility here is wonderful, because if you’re like me and have small kids you can pick up your shifts one minute before they are due to begin, so you can work when the munchkins are napping or basically when you have some time. And even if you are not scheduled to work you can always sign in to work, although the call flow may not be much as you are considered back up help.

The pay structure is per minute of talk time. The rates start at 0.15 cents per talk time minute and they increase as your talk time does. If you’re bilingual you also get a higher rate.

Once you complete your training you are assigned to a team. You team leader assists you in getting trained for more gates to receive more calls and when you’re working they have a wonderful system in place so that you always have access to someone right away should you encounter any issues.

You must have a reliable computer, a corded land line phone with noise reducing headset. You must be able to be online and talk at the same time so DSL or Cable are a must.

They did take some time to get back to me after I applied but It was worth the wait.

Apply at : www.acddirect.com

Should you have any questions pls post them in the comments section and I will be glad to answer them as to the confidentiality terms permit me to.