Christine Asks:
I have contacted a few companies offering data entry work and they all without exception have asked for initial deposits from between £15-£20 is this legal and how can I tell which are legitimate?
There are many companies that claim to offer work such as data entry work but then ask for some type of payment. The deposits of between £15 to £20 are typical from the sort of sites that offer this work. There are many claims made as to the reason that they ask for money up front, some of the more believable ones are that they need to make sure that the applicant is serious about working online and so an initial fee weeds out the ones who are not committed.
You should not expect to pay out money in order to do a job such as data entry. Although the sites you read about these jobs may have what seem like legitimate reasons for charging you there is no real valid reason for doing this. If you think about it logically, if you apply for a job locally would you expect your potential employer to ask you for money before you start work? Of course not, so why would you act any differently when applying for work online.
The real reason that there are companies on the internet that ask for up front fees is because they haven't really got any work for you. They need to get money from you as soon as possible before you realise that you have been had. So let's take a look at some specific scenarios that you may come across where you are asked for a payment.
So you are searching the internet for a data entry job and you happen across a site that appears to be offering home typing jobs. On closer inspection you realise that they ask for a fee that you have to pay before you get access to this work. The site appears to be legitimate so you hand over the cash and you get access to what you thought was an offer of work. In actual fact you have just paid £20 to get access to a list of companies that you could write to ask if they have any work for you. There are no job offers and you go on to find that this list of companies is no more than just a random list of companies that have absolutely no interest in offering you a job in the first place.
There are no shortcuts or quick fixes for finding work online. Legitimate jobs will usually require you to apply just like any other job of work. Online work is more flexible in that there are many other options that you can pursue. If you want to start off earning money right now you could try doing paid surveys from companies such as ePanel and Toluna. It is a great no cost way to get started and will give you time to start looking for other types of legitimate internet based work. Your next step should be to read the work from home guide, sure it's a long read but it will give you an excellent overview of how to find a legitimate job.
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