MyFlexJob: Work-at-Home Opportunity or Scam?

You may have encountered Sandy Sauve if you’ve clicked on various work-at-home opportunity ads, including this one:

When you click on the ad, you are taken to the following screen and embedded video. Here, you meet Sandy Sauve, who tells you that she earns a full-time income working from home. This opportunity “does not cost anything to get started with, there’s no up-rate costs later, you don’t have buy things, and you don’t have to sell anything.”

Welcome to My Flex Job

When you input your name and email, you are taken to a second video page, where Sandy describes the work-from-home opportunity as requiring no person-to-person selling, out-of-pocket costs, cross-sells, up-sells, etc.

What exactly are you doing? According to Sandy, there are big companies like Netflix, ProActiv, etc. that have people sign up for their sales and trial offers. These sign-ups must later be email and age-verified. Your job will be to validate ages and emails and enter this information into a worksheet. You’ll be doing this for a company called MyFlexJob.

On a YouTube video published by MyFlexJob, your job title is ‘Trial Offer Processor.’

So far, so good.

Red flag #1: Fake company photo

Sandy highly encourages you to go to the My Flex Job website and sign up. When I did that, I encountered the following page:

I was a bit disheartened to see that My Flex Job had inserted a stock photo for its company’s physical site and just pasted the My Flex Job logo on this photo. When any work-at-home company does something like this, it’s an immediate red flag for me that not everything is as it seems.

After I filled out the online job application, I was taken to a second video to complete my certification. And that’s also where I encountered another red flag.

Red Flag #2: You pay for software

The certification video on the MyFlexJob website explains that, as part of your certification, you’ll be required to purchase MyPCBackUp, a software program that will store the sensitive information you acquire while entering customer data into those aforementioned worksheets. MyPCBackUp costs $25 for a 3-month subscription.

But wait a minute- Sandy Sauve said that there would be no out-of-pocket costs to sign up with this company.

MyFlexJob goes on to say that you’ll be credited $25 in your account once you complete the certification.

That all sounds great…until you complete your certification and verify that you’ve purchased the software.

Red Flag #3: You must earn your $25 ‘credit.’

Once you are in the MyFlexJob website, you learn that, in order to cash out your $25 software credit, you must have an account value of $50 or more.

Furthermore, all your earnings are paid in ‘points,’ not actual money, with 100 points being equivalent to $1. You must first convert your points to dollars, and only then can you cash out.

It could be argued that the company does this to not only save money, but to ensure that its workers and not just signing up for free software. So, playing devil’s advocate, let’s look at what kind of work is required to earn enough money/points for a $50 payment.

Red Flag #4: You’re the one filling out trial offers!

When you first go to the MyFlexJob assignments area, you encounter the following instructions about how you get paid and what you actually do to earn that money:

From the language used, it sounds like you will be the person/customer who is completing company trial offers. Not other customers.

As you scroll down the assignments area, you encounter trial offers where the ‘data entry worksheets’ are none other than short forms where you need to fill in your own personal information like your full name, email, phone number, etc. These trial offers are with companies like Netflix, Groupon, Disney, etc.

You might be thinking, what’s the harm in signing up for a free trial offer of product X or service Y? Granted, the trial might be free, but if you forget to cancel your subscription by a given date, you’ll be charged. In fact, the FTC has a few things to say about ‘free’ trial offers and their inherent risks.

Also, many free trial offers require that you pay for shipping and/or product returns.

For each offer you successfully complete, you are credited with a given amount of points from MyFlexJob. In fact (and to avoid legal issues), the company even explains this condition on its terms page:

So, your actual data entry involves inputting your own personal data into forms provided by the marketing automation software of third party businesses. No doubt about it, MyFlexJob is probably making a handsome commission from your signing up for these trial offers.

Red Flag #5: Paid affiliates and actors

On its terms page, MyFlexJob lists the following disclosure:

FTC DISCLOSURE:

Some testimonials for MyFlexJob.com may be provided by paid affiliates or professional actors.

Why would a company that offers work-at-home jobs not have any of its actual workers provide testimonials?

Red Flag #6: Unnecessary software

Remember how you were instructed to purchase MyPCBackUp software as your condition of ‘certification?’ Well, you have absolutely no need of this software in order to complete free trial offers with MyFlexJob. So, why would this company have you purchase useless software? Well, they are paid up to $120 per lead (read: YOU) they get to install the MyPCBackup software.

Hopefully, if you’ve already purchased this software, you can write the company and get a refund.

The Bottom Line

While My Flex Job is not an outright scam, it has too many red flags and elusive terminology for me to wholeheartedly recommend it as a legitimate work-at-home opportunity.

At best, you’ll complete trial offers on this site that will allow you to reach your $50 threshold and cash out your earnings. At worst, you’ll sign up for offers that will either cost money up-front or result in you forgetting about them, at which point you’ll end up paying even more money for products/services you never wanted in the first place.

There are simpler and easier methods for making a few extra bucks that don’t involve paying for software you don’t need and products/services you never wanted.