Home-Based Business Scams: 11 Ways to Protect Yourself
Are you tired of choosing a home business to invest in because you really don’t know what to look for when it comes to spotting a scam? Maybe you just get a feeling. In this article I have presented some points to search that will make your search much easier.
(1) Do a quick search using some of the major search engines, like Goggle or Yahoo, and type in the name of the business or person followed by the word “scam.” Investigate all clues. check if there are any complaints online.
(2) Check with the State Attorney General’s Office. They maintain a list of complaints made to companies
(3) Go to: fraudulent.org to see if the company or person is listed. They provide a lot of information about scams over the phone, mail, and online.
(4) Always look for a phone number, a physical address and check if this information is correct.
(5) Make sure the company offers a money-back guarantee. Find out what steps you need to take to have this request granted.
(6) If a company requests your personal bank account information, this may be cause for concern.
(7) Whenever you purchase a product or service, always leave a paper trail using a credit or debit card. Never pay cash. You may want to dispute the charges and paying cash will prevent this from taking place if you feel you have been ripped off.
(8) Never do business with anyone in the country of Nigeria. The Nigerian government is involved in most of the scams in that country. This is too big a deal for Nigeria to crack down on. I once received a cashier’s check in the mail from a supposed lottery company for five thousand dollars and was instructed to deposit it in my bank and when the check clears, transfer the money to an agent for processing and then wait for my big lottery. check. I called the bank the cashier’s check was drawn from and found out that they had just had a bunch of cashier’s checks stolen from them. I was also told that this was set up by a Nigerian fraud ring. There have been numerous reports of high-level officials in the Nigerian government and the Central Bank of Nigeria personally participating in some scams. So be careful.
(9) Do not reply to spammers. This is often a desperate attempt to get your money through other means than ethical business practices.
(10) Always be sure to get a receipt or confirmation number and print it on a hard copy for your records. The burden of proof falls on you.
(11) If it sounds too good to be true, guess what, it is and it smells like a SCAM!
I sincerely hope this article has been of some help to those of you who are really worried and don’t have a lot of money to throw around. Being the scram free business advocate that I am, I am always looking for businesses with a good track record and have invested in a few myself. It wasn’t always like this before and there were times when I wished I had someone who could guide me on how to find a good deal. Don’t actually point me to one, but rather someone to teach me the nuts and bolts of how to look myself.