Read the fine print to avoid work-at-home scams.

Sometimes in our eagerness — or desperation — to try a new business opportunity, we get careless and make mistakes. Often those mistakes can be costly.

Not every work-at-home opportunity is a scam, but one way to end up losing instead of making money is by not reading the fine print before you give your credit card information or provide personal details.

In this story about a work-at-home ripoff, Joe Ducey at an ABC affiliate in Arizona, tells the story of would-be entrepreneur Jerry Landers. Jerry paid $1.97 to get more information about a home-business opportunity from Income Easy Street. Not long afterwards, Landers learned that his credit card was charged another $129 because he didn’t cancel his membership within three days.

Income Easy Street claimed that customers were given a notice about the three-day cancellation policy. We’ll never know if they were telling the truth. If they were, the notice was likely not very prominent. In that case, it is up to the consumer to look carefully for any fine print, asterisks, or other indications that there is some legalese that they need to read.

Is it fair that we have to be so careful and hunt for disclosures? Clearly, it is not fair, and in many cases state consumer agencies have forced Internet marketers to make their disclosures easier to find and understand.

In the meantime, you have a choice: get ripped-off and wait to get justice from a slow-moving bureaucracy, or take the time up-front to make sure what you are buying and what it really will cost you.