You know the one in the back of pulp magazines and most daily newspaper classifieds.
And the gimmick is that you’re supposed to place an identical ad and then “stuff envelopes” with the instructions for “all” the suckers who write in.
I answered one and of course felt screwed.
I had a friend who actually ran one ad. No one answered.
The eventual end of all chain letters.
My brother and I did when we were kids. I remember there was much conspiring to make sure our parents didn’t find out…once we found out what was up we were totally crushed. An important learning experience though, for sure.
I have always wondered about these scams. What actually happens? Did you all make any money at all from it?
In Australia:
I’m sure a lot of us thought this was dead and buried (along with the “filling toner cartridges at home” one), but last night on our local variation of the tabloid magazine style show after the 6pm news, there was a story about this scam. It’s still going on, with as much barefaced arrogance as the Nigerian “transfer of funds” scam, and countless others.
I did have a friend, however, who made reasonably good money filling bottles of amyl nitrate. It was stupid and probably illegal, and he promptly quit after realising he couldn’t put up with the fumes and the headaches.
I did, but only to confirm that it was a scam. I was only 75% sure beforehand, while holding out the possibility that there were companies that would pay to to fill junk-mail envelopes for them.
Oddly enough, though, there is at least one reputable concern that I know of that involves piece-work, working at home, stuffing envelopes. It also involves hand-addressing the envelopes, though. The firm is unable to run classified ads for help, however, since most newspapers refuse to take ads that say “envelopes” and “work at home”.
There are lots of variations on the “Work-At-Home” scam. Here’s a good article on the subject: Common Work At Home Scams.
A former co-worker of mine was convinced he could retire early by painting ceramic figurines at home in his spare time. You purchase the raw materials from the company at inflated prices, paint them, and then offer them for sale back to the company for distribution. The catch is, they never buy the completed figurines.
Recently, I have seen a string of these “Work At Home” signs pop up in my neighborhood on telephone poles and such. I some places it is illegal and local DAs will fight the sleezebags who perpetuate these scams. There is a very good site out there with all the details on fighting these scams in your neighborhood, but I can;'t seem to find it at the moment.
For the past few years, walls and telephone poles have been littered with flyers proclaiming, “We Pay You to Lose Weight!” or “29 People Wanted to Lose 30 lbs.”
I think these are Herbalife ads.
I’ve seen some of these ads that really go crazy and say they’ll pay you $2 or $3 for every envelope you stuff. But really, this would make no sense for a legitimate business, to pay someone hundreds of dollars per hour for unskilled work. It takes 34 cents to mail a one ounce letter first class, or a little more for each additional ounce–why would a business choose to multiply their shipping expenses by 1000% or more?