by Nach Maravilla
Publisher

The Ad: Earn $500.00 a week Typing At Home.   

I read further on. Everything in that flyer made it sound soooo eeeeaasy. My typing speed is over 50 words per minute and with that, I thought I could probably earn a lot. I crossed my fingers, picked the pen and fill the blanks on the form. I can’t wait for morning to get to the post office first thing to mail the form together with my $65.00 check, which was broken down to $59.95 and shipping $5.00. In my mind, I wanted to push the mailman to do a special delivery for me so the company can immediately accept my application and I can start receiving more than $500 a week! With my typing speed, I can probably ask the company for a bonus if I typed more than what they assign to me.

(article continued below ...)

Well, after a couple of weeks, an impressive-looking big brown envelope came. I was so excited to open it up. Inside, I found one gray folder with 35 sheets of almost blank pages. The contents were printed only on one side of the paper, and triple spaced (not double spaced, but triple!). A motivational line saying “Years of Success and Profits for Joshua Moses” was printed on the cover as well as in the footer of every page. Flattering and motivating, isn’t it? It sounded sincere, too.

The whole “booklet” was a listing of companies, with addresses and telephone numbers, operating in the whole state (triple spaced between company names to increase the number of pages). Thirty-five sheets of photocopied addresses and phone numbers, which I can easily find in the phone book and yellow page directories. If the lay-out was more compressed, the whole booklet would be no more than 10 pages.

The introduction page described the hard work done by their research staff compiling the list; but quick to say that the research company is not in any way connected or related to the companies listed on the supposed ‘hot list.’ Another page showed a copyright protection and an ISDN number for “The Broughton Hall 1998”. It sounded like the job was done by encyclopedia research students.

There were some instructions on how to use the list -- basically you have to contact each company and directly offer your typing services. This is so different from my initial expectations about the work opportunity offered by the advertisement. I thought that the company will give me typing jobs directly, and that I will get paid after job completion.  But instead, I would have to solicit for the typing jobs myself! There are no guarantees that the contacted company would in fact need typing services from an outside contractor like you. If you interpret it deeper, it sounds like, “we got your money, s….r, now, you’re on your own. Good luck -- you really need it!”

There was a note of thanks from the publisher, but we cannot find the name. No name, no address, no phone, nothing. But why bother to put the company name, after all -- why should they invite more attention or give you the benefit of reverting to them to complain about your dissatisfaction and ask for reimbursement.

Meanwhile, still curious, we tried contacting some companies on the list on the remote possibility that they might indeed be looking for a extra typing hand. True to our expectations, not one of these companies know the existence of this list; and they are not hiring and do not need additional typists.  Instead of spending your hard-earned money on scams like these, just go get the yellow pages.