During my summer job hunt, I’ve seen ads for wanted secret shoppers. With claims like “earn up to $80 per hour!”, they sound bogus. I’m pretty certain they are. I feel like they probably post sites that they want shopped, which may be few and far between, and the most senior employees get first crack at 'em. What’s the deal here? Anyone have any experience?
Some of the ads you see (especially on the Internet) are for:
(a) Scams where they will charge you to sign up to be a member of their “secret shopper’s club” or sell you a vague book on how to get these jobs (which exist but are nowhere near as numerous as the ads lead you to believe). In either event, the important thing to realize is that the outfit hawking the “secret shopper” gig most certainly does not have any jobs to offer you itself, though they will make it sound as they do. Instead, at most, they will point you to jobs that might be provided by third parties.
(b) Scams where “secret shopper” morphs into “shop with your free $500 gift card” morphs into “you only get the gift card after signing up for six of our advertisers’ expensive services costing well over $500.”
Since Harrah’s took over Ballys Park Place, they have instituted a program of “Secret Shoppers”…planted individuals hired to see if the employee correctly greets the customer, smiles, gives customer info they need, etc.
The employee “spotlighted” in this manner is entitled to a $50 bonus, if he passes the spotlight.
My ex bf occasionaly does secret shopping. He is a reporter as his regular gig. I forget how he got into it. Yes you could make $80 an hour. It is in no way likely or consistant. He gets one or two requests to do a ‘job’ a week
Typical jobs were he would be asked to go to a store and shop within a week of the request. He’d go shop there for a few minutes and buy something. He would often buy something he needed but if there wasn’t anything he needed he’d just return it after the purchase. After that he filled out a short survey much like the ones people volenteer for. Total time invovled for him was 15-20 minutes and it would pay 25 bucks.
Other jobs could be more involved like going to several differnent stores and asking specific questions to the sales people about a paticular product. Like a stereo company looking to find out how informed salespeople are on their products. In the end he’d issue a report on his overall impressions. That might pay like 150 bucks.
In the end nothing about the pay is consistent. If he had a stroke up luck involving several survey type jobs at the same location like a mall. He could rack up the cash pretty quickly and make over $80 an hour.
I had a friend of mine who did secret shopping for a while in his spare time. He found it through the want ads, but in practise he basically went to this company’s website and chose which places he wanted to sign up for to do a secret shop. Most paid money, but some paid in vouchers for free stuff. (This was common with gas stations, for example) If you had enough free time and worked at it sunup to sundown I don’t doubt you could make a great deal of cash doing it. That’s a theoretical maximum of course and I doubt many have ever really gone to that length.
You had to front the money for the shopping though, for which you were reimbursed on (in my friend’s case) a monthly basis in addition to whatever they paid. (They usually had a specific item or list thereof that you were to purchase) He usually made an extra $100-200 a week picking out one or two places to secret shop every week. He mainly stuck to the places he actually wanted to shop though, and those weren’t always available to him.
I’ve done some “mystery shopping.” The best ones are when you get to go to TGIF (for example) and test their alcohol compliance. You know, make sure the bartender cards you. Your drinks and an appetizer are comped. Free snack, whoo-hoo!
Other companies are more like the “secret shoppers” mentioned above. Go to the watch store in the mall. Buy a watch, noting the selling techniques and attitude of the employee. Take watch back 15 minutes later for refund. Write up report, send it in.
Others still hire people to set up merchandise displays, count seats in theaters for movie openings, etc etc etc. The wife and I almost signed up for one that was basically a free ski weekend. Unfortunately we had other plans.
I think all these companies use people as contractors, not ‘employees’ per se. And $80 an hour IS very optimistic, but it could be done. Don’t bet on it. Most of them are probably $8-16 an hour.
My wife did a secret shopping thing a while back. She found out about it from friends, and was going to debunk it for them because she figured it was a swindle. She did a search on the web, and after looking over a lot of ads chose the one most likely to be legit. She had to sign up (free), and then go to a store assigned to her and buy an item for between 3-5 dollars and then fill out a survey on-line about the store. Then she was to fax them a copy of the reciept. They promised to send her $15.00 plus the amount of the receipt up to $5.00 . She later got an assignment to check out a store near us. She did, and believe it or not she got a check in the mail for the indicated amount. Six months later they emailed her to check out the same store again, she did, and was paid. She never heard from the place again.
That said she sorted threw hundreds of what she saw as obvious scams to find this one. The thing that made this one stick out was no sign up fee, No claims of riches, I believe “$15.00- $20.00 for a half hour work” was their claim, and an investment of 3-5 dollars to find out if they were ripping us off. We both believe most are scams, and would stay away. She did make $30.00, in just over six months, and that was with an honest one, which I think are rare.
It is an “inside” job. Carefully selected from applicants for other jobs who can fill the bill as a ‘secret’ shopper.
I had a friend who was an office employee who was called upon from time to time to ride the rails in the days before air travel was common place. She spend a lot of time in the observation cars and some in the dining car checking on employee performance, and honesty.
I’m curious could you tell me where you signed up for the TGI fridays ones from?
My wife was a secret shopper for a pizza chain. Once a month we orderered a pizza at a time they wanted and rated the pie and the delivery. For this we got i free pizza a month. After a year they moved on to someone else. We had to fill out a 2 page questionaire.
There was a story on tv on a major network evening newsmagazine about a woman who quit her high paying job as an investment banker type in NYC to become a mystery shopper because it paid more???! I’m remembering a figure of over $80,000.
I researched this occupation after I saw the story, but could find no way anyone could make that kind of money: mostly little jobs here and there as others have related. I was really astonished at the story, could the network have been duped?
She didn’t get hired to be one, she started a career as one, who specialized in extremely expensive stores(If you want someone to evaluate a shopping experience at a Ferrarri dealer, you would hire her, not the usual suspect who made 15 bucks an hour checking out the local Chevy store)
That sounds iffy (as does the figure of $80k for an investment banker – junior analysts in big N.Y. I-banks probably get to $80k with bonus (WAG)).
There are different types of secret shopper. Some are untrained, hired quickly, and asked to simply answer some questions about their experience.
But then there are those who are highly trained, generally in the employ of the company itself or a 3rd party firm, and do detailed analysis about the company’s business practices, staff, etc.
A company I worked for had a whole cadre of secret shoppers who were almost like private investigators. They would even do things like come to the counter with a $5 item, drop the cash, say," I’m in a hurry" and go out the door. They would then file a report with the auditors saying they bought item X for $5 at exactly time XX:XX, and the auditors would go through the receipts and verify that the employee wrote it up and didn’t just pocket the cash.
They also looked for dress code violations, graded employees on friendliness, attentiveness, product knowledge, etc. As I recall, those reports became a part of the employee’s evaluation. They did it often enough that it kept employees on their toes - you HAD to be nice to everyone, and to be prompt in serving everyone, because at the back of your mind was the thought that maybe this one was a ‘shopper’. I can also remember having regular debates over whether the most recent customer was a ‘shopper’ or not. So some companies expend serious effort in this regard.
I had a friend who worked as a secret shopper at restaurants. One perk was that the company reimbursed the check for her and a guest, so we got a lot of excellent meals out of it, although the actual pay wasn’t stellar.
N.B.: Nearly all of that was at places like Fondue Hut and Steak and Ale – chain restaurants a cut above IHOP or Denny’s. My WAG, it’s because that kind of thing comes with the corporate culture. I can’t see a stand-alone restaurant, even a famous/prosperous one, using a secret shopper. OTOH, for HQ to send a secret shopper to IHOP or cheaper wouldn’t be worth the expense.
I have been on the “other end” of the secret shopper.
About 15 years ago, while working for Pearle Vision Center, I was secret shopped. We knew the possibility existed. I never found out the name of the “patient”, but in any case, he/she must have at least liked me a little bit. I got 98/100 on the survey, which qualified me for a $400 bonus at that time (which was about the same as my 2 week paycheck!).
What the company told us after the fact was that the customer came to us with a Pearle-issued credit card, good for use only at Pearle (though it was a Visa or MC logo). They critiqued me based on how well I followed the rules. For example, did I offer every damned option under the sun. The survey also dealt with prompt service, personal treatment, etc etc. The patient was paid a small fee, and kept the glasses they puchased. I’m hoping that the patient who shopped me got some really great eyewear, because Pearle didn’t pay us worth a damn.
I was a secret shopper for 2 fast food restaurants. One, Wendy’s, was offered to me because I filled in one of those “How are we doing?” postcards. I can’t remember how I got chosen for the other; maybe it was because a regional manager noticed I was always there.
The pay was only reimbursement of the food cost. Each lasted a year.