Pros and Cons

[Tikitoi]

Of doing "work at home" jobs such as; stuffing envelopes, mystery/undercover shopper, assembling packages of info and even mystery restaurant testers. Anyone ever done any of these? Are they legit? Worth it? Do they pay good? Pay cash? My working outside the home already and taking care of my daughter, who has medical issues, sometimes just isn't enough for me. But any info would be good to know.

 

[mizliz]

Be careful with stuff like this, do your homework and make sure the company is legit. I work at a bank, and just today we got an email from our fraud dept. alerting us to a counterfiet check a customer had deposited. It was payment for work as a mystery shopper, and it was totally bogus. Fortunately we had put a hold on the check so the customer wasn't able to withdraw and spend the money before finding out her "employer" was a scam and she would have had to pay the money back.

 

[SarahKate]

Most of the types of jobs you mentioned in your post are not going to be legitimate - there will be some type of catch involved.

 

[Acklander]

I do mystery shopping on the side. If you go to the www.volition.com website they have a list of companies (that you don't have to pay for) as well as forums where other shoppers will list which companies are good to work with.
You don't make much money at it. I usually do the restaurant ones, and usually that's just reimbursement for your expenses and will occasionally take my son bowling (I get reimbursement plus a few dollars) as well as a few others.

 

[Disney Ella]

Take a look at the Work at Home Mom website. There are forums and job listings. http://www.wahm.com/

Envelopes can be stuffed by machine for mass mailings, so those types of jobs are never legitimate. From what I've read, they ask you to send a certain amount for "supplies" and the supplies consist of information about how to scam someone else.

 

[Tree]

No run the other way no one is going make money by stuffing envelopes they will charge you a fee or you will be simply stuffing an envelope to scam someone else.

I have been working at home for over 5 years doing various call center work-both inbound and outbound work at home phone jobs has a listing of the good companies

 

[Avonlady1001]

Remember, also, that any company that asks you to pay to work there is a scam.

My girlfriend has been doing some mystery shopping through marketforceshopper.com. I found out about it here on the Dis & gave her the site. She's gotten paid several times now & they are legit. I haven't done it myself cause I'm too darn lazy. LOL

I do chacha (another one I can thank the Dis for). Even though the pay isn't what it used to be, it's real. You can't live on it, but in my house, every little bit helps.

 

[Shmily1]

I do mystery shopping on the side. If you go to the www.volition.com website they have a list of companies (that you don't have to pay for) as well as forums where other shoppers will list which companies are good to work with.
You don't make much money at it. I usually do the restaurant ones, and usually that's just reimbursement for your expenses and will occasionally take my son bowling (I get reimbursement plus a few dollars) as well as a few others.

I second the mystery shopping and checking on Volition. There is a list of legit mystery shopping companies on there. You can't really make much by signing up with only one company but you can sign up with as many companies as you want to and do work for several of them in one day. I'm signed up with about 55 of them, some of which I haven't done anything with and some that I've done many shops for. Even if you don't make a fortune, you can use it to buy gas, groceries, and go out to eat when you normally wouldn't be able to.

 

[NeverlandClub23]

I used to do mystery shopping for shopnchek (which I believe now is called Market Force). It was ok. I did a bunch of McDonald's (as that and a cell phone company were about they only shops ever available) and would have to go through the drive-thru and get a combo and then come inside (after driving away, tasting the food, answering questions) and order a combo and eat inside. It usually took about an hour and they reimbursed my food and paid $7-8. They are very specific about what they want (timing from the time you get to the drive thru until someone answers, timing from how long it takes you after you place your order to get to the first window, timing how long until you get to the second window, etc. with a stopwatch, getting the name of each person that helps you, if you got a receipt, if there's napkins in the bag, etc.). You're also not allowed to have anyone with you.

I got tired of eating all of that crappy food (I'm not a big fan of McDonald's anyways) so I stopped.

I now ChaCha (I did kgb for awhile but I think ChaCha is set up better). I don't make a ton of money and don't really have set time I do it (usually when I'm bored or watching TV) and make about $150 a month (without taxes being taken out, you have to do that yourself). A lot of people don't feel it's worth the hassle but I'm an Expeditor (make $.03 a question) and it's mindless work to me (I like getting paid at mindless tasks ). I don't know if they're hiring but I keep getting emails that they really need current people to be logging on between 7-8 a.m. and 4-10 p.m. or they're going to have to hire more people (I usually ChaCha between 10 p.m. and 1 a.m.). One month I made over $300 but with my full time job and ChaChaing so much I got burned out.

There was a website I checked out not too long ago that someone mentioned on here. I believe it was a site you go to and pick a project (typing/research) and it tells you what you'd have to do and how much you'd get paid (usually $1-2) for it before you picked it. I can't for the life of me remember the website but it looked pretty cool.

 

[Tikitoi]

Thanks everyone. And especially thank you for the site references, I have gone on some of them but will keep digging. I just hope if I do sign up that it doesn't necessarily obligate me. I certainly will not send money to anyone that is supposed to be paying me. But I will certainly check the sites and see if anything looks interesting. I haven't eating Mcd's in a long while but yesterday I got a fish sandwich with fries and soda (I actually did it because I wanted the colorful coke glass ) but I ended up with a belly ache. So not sure if that will be my cup of tea.