By Scott Nyerges on May 21, 2010 in
Along with envelope stuffing, assembly jobs are a common work-at-home scheme, promising big bucks for jobs that require no experience. The Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau both caution that the majority of these offers are scams designed to take your cash, usually in the form of a "small fee" for a list of companies allegedly hiring for piecemeal assembly work, without any promise of obtaining (much less being paid for) legitimate work.
The promise: Do a quick search online for "home assembly jobs" and you'll find two things: websites advertising jobs and sites offering cautionary tales about them. We decided to take a closer look at a few companies advertising work-at-home assembly. One site that ranks highly in search listings is Assembly-Jobs.com, which is full of bold, colorful type promising fast cash with no experience necessary, testimonials from allegedly satisfied clients, and promises of "free" information on getting started.
The reality: That free download amounts to little more than a pages-long PDF file that resembles the Assembly-Jobs.com website, with more testimonials and ads. It also includes pages of vaguely-worded job descriptions like this:
"Type of Work: Assemble Circuit Boards. Income Potential: $4.09 per device. Assemble circuit boards at home for this company. They pay $4.09 for each board assembled. It takes less than 20 minutes to assemble one board. Contact the company to get started."
It also comes with a caveat. In order to get the actual lead on this job (and all the others described), you'll have to send Assembly-Jobs.com $39.95 for its "Crafts & Assembly Jobs Package." If you don't have a credit card, that's okay, because checks, money orders and PayPal accounts are accepted, too.
The Better Business Bureau gives Assembly-Jobs.com a grade of C-minus, largely because the consumer watchdog "does not have sufficient background information on this business," including a lack of consumer complaints. The BBB also notes on its website that "mail sent to the business on 03/30/2010 was returned by the U.S. Postal Service as Attempted - Not Known."
What you get for your money
We decided to take a closer look at three of these websites (Assembly-Jobs.com, AssembleAndEarn.com and EasyWork-GreatPay.com) and order their jobs packages to see what we'd get. Fees ranged from $7.99 to $39.95. We downloaded the PDF files of information on work-at-home jobs from Assembly-Jobs.com and AssembleAndEarn.com, both of which accept PayPal in addition to credit cards, checks and money orders, and sent a money order to EasyWork-GreatPay.com, which does not accept PayPal (we're still waiting for this to show up in the mail).
The file downloads for the first two arrived as promised, although to place an order with Assembly-Jobs.com, we first had to scroll through an endless page that repeatedly attempted to have us upgrade to a $59.95 "premium package." Upon opening the PDF, we found a 102-page file listing hundreds of vague jobs leads like this one:
"CRAFTCO, 1106 N. GILBERT RD, #2131, MESA. AZ 95203. Workers needed to assemble toys. You can earn up to $300 a week. Send a Self Addressed Stamped Envelope for more information." Other listings promised work crafting jewelry, baby bibs, stuffed animals and fishing lures, all of them promising "no experience necessary."
Other listings we found include phone numbers and/or websites -- some of them for multiple companies sharing the same address. For example, Valerie's Hattery, Capital Crafts, The Gift Wrap Company and Wine-Keepers all occupy the same Austin, Tex., address (Capital Crafts and Wine-Keepers also show up in the info packet we purchased from AssembleAndEarn.com). Capital Crafts is listed with the Better Business Bureau, and it receives a grade of F, primarily for a handful of unresolved consumer complaints and the BBB's general concern about work-at-home operations.
All of the sites we looked at require you to buy a starter kit, then send in samples before any promise of receiving payment for your work.
But there's a catch. At the bottom of the list is this disclaimer:
"This list is provided as information ONLY! All companies are believed to be reliable. We are NOT responsible for any dealings you have with any of the listed companies, Nor are we responsible for any address changes or firms that may go out of business. We do our best to update our listing regularly!"
AssembleAndEarn.com attaches a similar disclaimer to its list. In other words, these companies absolve themselves of any promise of your actually making any money whatsoever.
The bottom line: We're extremely skeptical of any operation that requires you to pay for the privilege of working. As the Better Business Bureau puts it, "Consider it a warning sign if a worker must buy something in order to start the program."
In this day and age, we're equally skeptical of any company that doesn't provide an address, phone number and website (at the very minimum) for contact info, or multiple companies being operated out of the same address. While we cannot say that every single home assembly job is illegitimate, the convoluted process that these websites require you to go through, along with the BBB ratings and governmental warnings, make us wary of these schemes.