Slashdot Mirror
Personal Experiences with HomeCS?
whoami-ky asks: "If you believe the info on their homepage, HomeCS is 'the Internet's Premier work from home career portal which unites thousands of job seekers and employers everyday.' But, when you try to apply for a job through them, you're immediately asked to pony up $29.95 for a 'lifetime' membership. Has anyone used this company to successfully find a telecommuting job? They have a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Anybody gotten a refund? A quick Google search on the term HomeCS didn't seem to show any positive or negative feedback (I only went through the first 3 or 4 pages of results)."
RUN AWAY!
Let me get this straight -- this outfit wants to charge you money up front for
the valuable opportunity to do business with them and possibly get a job, and
you're sufficiently unsure whether this is a good idea that you have to ask on
slashdot?
Dude, nobody legitimate has to charge you for the chance to work. A temp
agency might charge your employer more than they pay you and so skip off the
top, but they don't get a *dime* until you get a paycheck. Similarly, a more
traditional employer might place expectations on you (dresscode or whatnot)
that might result in your spending money before your first day on the job,
but you don't pay *them* anything.
Work-from-home is notoriously fertile ground for scammers of all kinds, but
if they're wanting to charge you up front for a lifetime membership for the
opportunity to work, that should set off loud alarms and flashing red lights
in your brain even if the job in question were more traditional (e.g. factory).
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
So the website is not even registered in the US. So good luck if you get scammed. And then when I do a whois of nssrv, I get that it's registered to 127.0.0.1.
Seriously, these guys are pushing one of the oldest scams in the world. Send us money for work at home opportunities has been one of the FTC's main scam warnings for years and is a common theme in spam messages.
Here are some references:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/ftc_work_at
http://www.keytlaw.com/FTC/Actions/ftc020730.ht
http://boston.internet.com/news/article.php/217
The FTC should be informed of these guys so they can shut them down.
I am surprised that Slashdot's editors would let an article like this get through. Rather that posting this as a question, it should be posted as a warning. For all we know the person asking the question could be trying to attract traffic to this site.
This story should be pulled ASAP.
Haven't pursued it yet - it was a couple of months ago, and I've had other priorities. But I'm considering taking legal action if they don't respond when I get around to sending a paper letter.
I write code.