International Law

Fake business opportunities plague Arizona consumers

Arizona has a problem. Apparently, fake business opportunities plague Arizona consumers

The state Attorney General's office said Tuesday it received more than 46,000 complaint calls last year, 23,000 of which resulted in the Attorney General's office filing formal complaints.

If a solicited job opportunity, or one found by a student, promises large sums of money for a small amount of work, it is most likely a scam, said Tracy Clark, Associate Director of the JPMorgan Chase Economic Outlook Center at the W. P. Carey School of Business.

"If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is," Clark said. "The amount of training that you need for a job has to be fairly well-coordinated with how much money you are going to get out of it."

Well, reader of this blog can spot the well known fallacy "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is".

The fallacy is quite simple: it would be too good to be true, if things that were too good to be true weren't.

There is no simple "sound" test for things being a fraud.

But, discounting the too good to be true test, Clark makes a good point: training is likely correlated with the chances of making so real money.

How can you take advantage of this as a prospective franchisee?

Well, all franchisors in the US and in many provinces in Canada have to disclose to you, prior to your purchase of the franchise, an outline of their training schedule.

You should review it and be able to dope out whether the training is worth the franchise fee, or whether it is "too good to be true" training.

If you have any questions about this disclosure, feel free to drop me a line.

Full post as published by Misleading Advertising Law on March 06, 2008 (boomark / email).