Sound’s like a song. . . . “The Hotline’s not a Helpline and my job’s left out to dry”! As Maryland’s unemployment rate continues to rise, job seekers look to both traditional and nontraditional job search resources. We’re using head hunters, online social networking tools, and yes, even the newspapers. We know to get good references for head hunters and not pay upfront fees and we’ve learned how to spot spoofing and phishing scams while Twittering and tweeting. But when an ad runs in The Washington Post classifieds, we expect the job offer to be legit because hey, it’s The Washington Post.
One Marylander sent a letter to our BBB sharing her experience as she replied to such an ad. The job service, CareerHotline guaranteed employment for jobs ranging in $30,000 to $40,000 annual salary range. If the salary wasn’t enticement enough, the representative stated there were medical, vacation, holiday, and 401K benefits. Sounds great but is this one of those “sounds too good to be true” kind of deals?
In this case, yes. The job seeker was instructed to go to a specified “big” bank, deposit $195 into a specified account number, and then call back with transaction and confirmation numbers. The Hotline personnel were reassuring, stating the transaction could be cancelled within five days. In the mean time, the job seeker also had to wait the five days to get expected work assignments because of course, we have to wait for the check to clear! So – day number four rolls around and our job seeker had second thoughts and tried to cancel the transaction. You guessed it! The check had cleared and was now in the handles of our Hotline personnel and the hot line became a cold one when no one would answer.
What were some of the warning signs our job seeker could have spotted?
- Go to bbb.org and review Career Hotline Inc. F Rating!
- Asking for up front fee and the website clearly states the fee is non-refundable. They are asking for a fee before they have ever done anything and you have no contract in your hand!
- By using whois.net, we discovered www.careerhotline.org was created on January 22, 2009 and registered by private proxy. This prevents us from knowing who is behind the “company”.
- There is no contact information on the website. No email, address, or phone. You can give them YOUR contact information and send them money, but they give you no way to reach them.
I’ll lament the passing of the trust we had in newspaper ads and names like The Post. The bright light I held for free website services such as CraigsList has dimmed as scams, fraud, and even criminal activity is now the norm and makes it impossible to trust anyone selling Michael Jackson memorabilia (I just thought I would throw that in there as warning since we’re sure this will be the “scam of the week” next week). And I’ll just say again, if it looks too good to be true, hey guys, it probably is! Talk soon - Angie
