Consumerreports-online.org is Not What it Appears to Be
Our e-mailbox continues to overflow with questions about work-at-home sites, and here’s another we’d like to share. Recently, a reader wrote asking us if the site Consumer Rated Home Based Businesses is associated with Consumer Reports, and whether it’s legitimate.
As we told him, “Consumer Rated Home Based Businesses” is not affiliated in any way with Consumer Reports. In fact, our legal department has contacted them several times, since Consumers Union, the non-profit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine and ConsumerReports.org, owns the trademark, “Consumer Reports Online,” which they display at the bottom of their homepage.
Although the site does carry a disclaimer midway down the homepage in the left-hand column (“We are not affiliated with Consumer Reports a consumers union company”), it’s indistinct and not anywhere near their misappropriated Consumer Reports trademark. And as the e-mail from our reader demonstrates, it fails to serve its purpose.
Apart from trying to fool unsuspecting consumers, there are all sorts of clues—some obvious, some less so—that should help you recognize this site for what it is: yet another questionable work-at-home site.
As we’ve pointed out before, the first thing that should set alarm bells ringing is the look and feel of the site. Like so many other shady sites, this one features stretched and blurry images, a kaleidoscope of incongruous fonts, and badly misaligned graphics—a real "Web site from a box" feel.
Secondly, we couldn’t help notice that in addition to borrowing the Consumer Reports name, they’ve also copied WebWatch’s guidelines for credible sites, which they pasted into the right-hand column underneath this headline: “Five Things Websites you do business with should have!”
Problem is, this site violates our first guideline (although they list it second), i.e., the need to disclose a physical address. The only contact information they offer is an e-mail address.
Thirdly, the site bills itself as “Your Trusted Source for Online Ratings,” and states its mission thusly: “We Research & Rate Online Internet Home Business Companies to help Protect the consumer! We want to Help Consumers to protect themselves from online scams.”
We decided to see just what kind of sites “Consumer Rated Home Based Businesses” rates and recommends by exploring the navigation bar at the top of the homepage, which offers several categories, including: Data Entry Jobs, Internet Home Business, Typing Jobs, Work from Home, Free Paid Surveys.
Each of these pages, (expect for the Free Paid Survey page, which displays nothing but flashing banner ads—another red flag) displays the following ratings key: Consumer Ratings Scale: Scores of 100% - 97.5% are highly recommended. Scores of 97.5% - 95% are recommended. Scores of 94.9% - 92% are average. Scores of 91.9% - below are not recommended. Consumer Reports Online (CRO) Ratings Scale: Each site that satisfies the following categories earns a gold star: Quality of Program, Support of Program, Return Policy, Privacy Policy/Contact Information and Value of Program.
With such a lofty bar (anything scoring below 92% fails), combined with quasi-WebWatch attributes, one might assume sites featured on these pages must be top-notch, right? Wrong. Although every recommended work-at-home site on each page gets a “CRO 5 Star Rating” and almost all boasted scores of 100% (two sites scored only 98.9%), the sites themselves hardly inspire confidence, and all look suspiciously similar.
In fact, one of the top rated data-entry sites is Laura Kauth’s Online-Data-Entry Jobs, a site we recently warned readers to avoid. While it’s unclear how these ratings are assigned, we can guarantee you Online-Data-Entry Jobs doesn’t deserve a gold star for contact information, since there is none beyond an e-mail address.
We could also go on about the fact this site inexplicably includes ratings of music and movie download sites; that the link to the “Overview page” is non-existent; that there’s no explanation of the ratings methodology; and the fact the site uses a .org domain. But by now, you should get the point. If you come across this “Consumer Reports Online” while surfing the Web, take their own advice about “Five Things Websites you do business with should have!” and keep scrolling.