It's very likely that you have seen the little Google ads which promise you can "Get Rich at Home", they are plastered everywhere.

When you go to getrichathome.co.uk you are promised a package which reveals the secrets of an "Award Winning Entrepreneur" who is making an average of "£14,576.92 every week".

This entrepreneur will reveal the four methods he uses to make this vast sum of money each week, all you have to do is pay him £34.99 for the information.

I ordered the package on Monday 13th September 2006 via the getrichathome.co.uk website and received, within around 45 minutes, an email with 6 documents attached. No download link, just a manually typed email with 6 documents attached.

We're now in the 21st Century and it is very easy to automate the dispatch of digital items - this is the first time I have seen someone sending eBooks in this way in a few years.

OK, the package contained 3 Word documents, 2 Excel spreadsheets and a PDF file. Luckily, I was in front of a PC and not an Apple Mac. If I had been on my Mac, I wouldn't have been able to open these "manuals".

The four methods which this person seriously thought I should use to earn £14k a week were:

(1) A very unremarkable betting idea - make 3% a day. That's it... Increase your bank 3% a day and you can turn £10 into £400k+ in a year.

(2) Sell eBooks on eBay... No, seriously! Follow these poor instructions and you can make £1,000 a week doing it...

(3) A very poorly explained football betting system, risky too.

(4) Make £100 per hour by taking online surveys.

I knew I shouldn't have bought this package in the first place, but a lot of people had been asking about it via the newsletter and this site.

There were a lot of warning signs on the getrichathome.co.uk site. I'll go through a few of them:

There's no guarantee... it's a very poorly designed website... NoChex is the only payment method... there are zero contact details and no name mentioned (you can't tell who's behind it)... the site is littered with spelling mistakes... ridiculous earnings claims with ZERO proof...

I could go on. Whoever wrote this sales letter mentioned that:

Award Winning Entrepreneur Reveals His Proven Secrets of How He Makes a Combined Average of £14,576.92 EVERY WEEK - Guaranteed!!!

What awards has this entrepreneur won? It says "guaranteed" but where is the guarantee?

Betting on football and taking paid surveys online does not make you an entrepreneur. While I'm on the subject, taking paid surveys is not a viable method of making money from home.

As you can tell, I wasn't happy to lose my £34.99 without a fight so I emailed the man behind this "Get Rich at Home" package and asked him a few questions about this poor scheme and the lack of guarantee.

My email read as follows:

"Hi,

I bought this system but it really isn't very good to be honest. It looks like it was written in one afternoon.

There doesn't seem to be a guarantee, or is there?

Near the top of the sales letter is says:

"By following the steps in the guide you will easily make an extra £5,000 per week within 60 days and you won't risk a thing! Full Money back guarantee!!!"

But then there is no further mention of any money-back guarantee whatsoever. Plus, you only take payment by NoChex when it offers next to no protection for the buyer.

The problems with these methods include:

(1) The method of creating and selling eBooks is poor - it doesn't go into any real detail and will certainly take a lot more that the 4 hours claimed on the site
(2) Paid surveys are a fallacy. £100 an hour? That's a joke, sorry but it is.
(3) Betting systems are not a good idea for a home-based business. Fair enough, you could make 3% a day by placing bets but would you seriously risk £100,000 to win £3,000?

You could make more money by (a) turning the Word docs into PDFs (b) reducing the cost - £34.99 is not value for money and (c) accepting PayPal, including automatic delivery and a SOLID guarantee.

I would welcome your comments about this system and about the guarantee.

Thanks,

Ben"

The reply came an hour or so later:

"our money back guarantee policy is for people who try the system and are unsuccessful due to the nature of the product.If we did not employ this policy people would buy, say they do not want it, get a refund then use the systems for free, hope this helps"

Due to the lack of a real guarantee and the poor quality of the products, I would not recommend the Get Rich at Home scheme at getrichathome.co.uk.

For £34.99 (around $70-80) you can get so much more than 4 very poorly put together "business plans".

In fact, I will put together a list of products and methods which will do as the sales letter promised. Stay tuned for more...

Update 12th February 2008:

Over the Christmas period I received an email from Donna Burch (email address: d@keeptalking.[removed].co.uk) who wrote to inform me that:

"...at no time has earncashathome or getrichathome websites been registered to a david burch..."

She is correct that the earncashathome.co.uk site has never been registered to David Burch.

However, when I bought the Get Rich at Home product on the 13th September 2006, the WHOIS for getrichathome.co.uk was as shown in Figure 1 below:

According to WHOIS records taken from DomainTools.com, the registration of getrichathome.co.uk was changed on or around the 2nd October 2006 and not before.

It was changed to make Donna Burch the registrant of the domain. Donna Burch listed her address as the same address as that of Mr D Burch. This can be seen in Figure 2 here:

Note the part where it says "Last Updated: 02-Oct-2006".

In Figure 1, the screenshot from 21/09/06, it clearly says "Last Updated: 05-May-2006".

On the date that I ordered the package, the registration details or "WHOIS" for this domain must have been the same as those taken on the 21st of September 2006.

I am always happy to correct information posted on BizOppsUK.com if it is found to be incorrect but in this case I believe that Donna Burch is mistaken.

I was correct to say that on the day that I bought the Get Rich at Home package, 13th September 2006, the site was under the name of Mr D Burch who I believe is actually David Burch (source: Land Registry records for the address listed in the WHOIS in Figure 1 and Figure 2).

Archived records of the getrichathome.co.uk site from around that time and my own records show that payment was taken via NoChex to an email address of david@keeptalking.[removed].co.uk.

The "[removed]" part of this email address was exactly the same as in the address Donna Burch used to send me an email.

Please Note: I have removed this portion in order to try and protect their email addresses from receiving spam email.

UPDATE 29/04/09: I have been reliably informed that Donna Burch no longer runs either getrichathome.co.uk or earncashathome.co.uk. In her own words; "...these sites are no longer owned by me or anyone associated with me..."

I checked and it is true, the earncashathome.co.uk domain is now owed by somebody with an address in Hong Kong and the domain is parked. The getrichathome.co.uk domain had been dropped from the registry (the previous owner had let it expire) and so I took the opportunity to register it myself. There is no website on the getrichathome.co.uk domain at present.