Even though I am currently happily working away at my own home-based businesses, I know that there are many people out there who are at a different point in their journey to becoming a home-based professional. I can identify with those of you that are looking for the right home-based work opportunity because I was in your shoes just about a year ago. Looking back on it, I can say that I am extremely lucky that I did not fall victim to one of the many home-based business scams that are out there. Not only was I desperate to begin earning income, I am also quite gullible and always have been.
Today, I found out about a type of work-at-home scam that I had never heard of before. These scams involve “home-based business opportunities” involving coupon clipping and coupon certificate booklets. Most of us know that the only legitimate way to use a coupon is to cut it out of the newspaper yourself and bring it to the store. Selling coupons or transferring them to other people voids the coupon, according to most manufacturers’ coupon redemption policies. Somehow, though, the scammers behind these coupon schemes are able to circumvent our sense of logic and convince people to buy into these fraudulent programs.
These scams appear in a couple of different formats. In one form, the investor (you) buy coupon certificate booklets from a promoter (the scammer). You are then supposed to sell the booklets to other people who can supposedly redeem the certificates in the booklet for actual coupons by filling out paperwork and sending in a “processing fee”. Everyone except for the promoter loses here. The investors cannot usually find too many willing buyers for their coupon certificate books – the booklets are not even actual coupons, they are certificates that you redeem for coupons. The people who do buy the booklets have to pay large processing fees to get coupons that they themselves could have clipped out of the newspaper for free. Some of the coupons they receive may even be counterfeit or expired.
Another way this type of scam appears is basically the other end of the above mentioned, er, enterprise. The scammer needs coupons with which to fill the orders of the people that are redeeming their certificates from the booklets that they have purchased. They solicit people to clip coupons and send them in, promising major pay in return. If the coupon clipper gets paid at all, they usually are not paid anywhere close to what they were promised. The take-home message here is that coupon clipping is something that you can do for yourself only, to save money on things that you buy for your family. If you come across a so-called business opportunity that claims you can make money clipping coupons or selling coupon certificate booklets, run the other way.