legitimate work-at-home call-center agents

companies which claim that you can make money working from home by signing up for their system or getting their work from home directory. Unfortunately, almost all of these ‘opportunities’ are either rip-offs or scams.

Many big companies such as Hilton and AT&T are cutting costs by hiring home workers. Cable/phone and hotel companies usually hire home workers for customer service. Also, the TV shopping shows hire homeworkers to take calls. I have worked from home for more than 10 years. You just know how to find these jobs. Stay-Home-Income.com has a FREE list of hundreds of LEGITIMATE work at home jobs offered by well known companies. These jobs do NOT cost you money.

This makes it very difficult for stay-at-home moms and other individuals who would like to find a legitimate means to make some supplementary income from their home. Fortunately, there are some legitimate opportunities to fill positions where the location of the worker does not matter for people who would like to be able to work from home .

These at-home workers handle hotel and airline reservations, roadside assistance, tech support and sales calls. Retirees and near-retirees watching their retirement accounts shrink may find these legitimate work-at-home opportunities a way to earn extra cash.
AlpineAccess.com – This is a virtual call center in which you will be taking customer service calls from your home.
Alpine Access hires its agents as employees, both full- and part-time. The company provides subsidized health-care insurance for full-time workers, and part-timers can buy into the company's group health plan but at full price. There's a 401(k) plan available to full- and part-time workers. Applicants are paid for the hours they spend training, and the sole cost -- other than setting up your home office -- is $45 for a background check once you've been hired.



IntelliCare – This is a company that provides phone services for the health industry. They take customer service calls for services such as health plans, healthcare providers, and care managers. If you have any sort of background in medicine, you would that the opportunity to provide clinical customer service calls which could potentially mean a much higher rate of pay.


Hilton Hotels employs about 900 work-at-home reservation agents, while outsourcing companies such as Alpine Access, Arise Virtual Solutions and LiveOps, among others, hire agents to handle various types of call-center work for their clients.

And Alpine Access will hire another 250 agents this year, plus 1,200 in the first quarter of 2009, said Chris Carrington, chief executive of the Denver-based firm.

Carrington said that growth is driven largely by companies moving call-center operations back to the U.S. from overseas -- in part because wages and other costs are rising in other countries, but also because communication difficulties can result in customer backlash.

These jobs aren't for everyone. They often require some experience. For example, Carrington said Alpine hired just 2% of applicants this year.

And, while the flexibility is a perk -- in general, agents set their schedule about a week in advance -- many are part-time, with pay ranging from about $8 to $14 an hour, often without benefits.

You'll need to have a quiet space to work -- a barking dog or noisy children will present problems (the calls are recorded, so agents can't pretend it's not happening). These jobs often require equipment: A relatively new computer, high-speed Internet access, and a dedicated phone line.


Once they pass the test, Arise agents must undergo training for the specific firm for whom they'll handle calls -- that training costs another $25 to $200, depending on the complexity the training.

For Mary Ann Lawrence, an Arise agent for eight years from her home in Pembroke Pines, Fla., the initial hurdles were worth it. "It was a bit of an investment, but not huge," Lawrence said. "It was enough to make it where I was serious about it but not enough that if I changed my mind I'd be like, 'Oh my God, what have I done?'"

The 58-year-old, a retiree of BellSouth, said she works about 30 to 35 hours a week handling roadside-assistance calls for AAA. She said she "finds it rewarding to be able to help people."

And some companies require a fair amount of upfront investment. Miramar, Fla.-based Arise Virtual Solutions, for instance, requires its agents to be stand-alone incorporated businesses. That means paying an incorporation fee -- most states charge about $100 but it can run higher -- plus Arise requires applicants to pay $99 for an 18-hour online training course. While 98% of applicants pass the course, those who don't forfeit that fee, said Mary Bartlett, a vice president at Arise.