When I worked for a fancy coffee shop chain, our performance reviews often centred around reports from ‘mystery shoppers’ - people who came to your stoer as regular shoppers and made notes on things like whether you were wearing your name tag, if the condiment stand was clean, etc. Careers were made and broken by these anonymous people ! … not that I’m bitter …
So I wondered then, who are these anonymous people? Seems like a pretty good gig - getting paid to go shopping, really, all you have to do is fill out a two or three page form when you’re done.
So last week I saw an ad in the Help Wanted section - “Be a mystery shopper!” I sent a stamped, self-addressed envelope to the address indicated, and yesterday I got the reply. It was three pages of ‘This is why mystery shopping is the right job for you’ (which made me a bit suspicious), and a fourth page was the form you used to get your ‘orientation package’ - all you had to do was send them your name and address and a cheque for forty-five bucks.
There was the rub. I don’t much like sending money to make money. And especially since the letter was all about how mystery shoppers are IN DEMAND by MANY LARGE CORPORATIONS.
Surely there must be a way to get this kind of job without sending a cheque to a faceless organization. Any ideas?
I used to be a mystery shopper. Actually, it was like a tiny sideline for the company, which usually did inventory for grocery stores or whatnot. I didn’t get to shop anything interesting like a restaurant, though. I usually went to local office supply type stores.
The ad you answered definitely sounds like a scam, though. I answered a similar ad a long time ago, “Make Money Reading Books!” and got basically the same crap you did.
Do not send money. My bet is that all you will get for your check is a list of who to contact. Instead, I would contact some of the temporary agencies (many of them have a secret shopper program) or call some of the local department stores and ask how it is handled. (I just googled for “secret shopper” and found quite a few hits, “Myster shopper” resulted in quite a few as well)
I was approached at my convenience store job when I was 16 by a woman who asked if I’d be interested in being a Secret Shopper.
I didn’t do it. I should have, but I didn’t.
A couple of years ago I was a Mystery Shopper. I did a few stores and a resturaunt and was reimbursed my meal (for the resturaunt) and was paid a flat fee for the stores. (I’m thinking it was something in the area of $15.) Notice that I said they paid me. I don’t recall which company it was who hired me, but I do recall I signed up online, and they asked me to choose areas in which I’d be willing to “shop”. Needless to say, the bigger your area, the more business you’ll get.
I stopped doing it because the pay wasn’t very good, the work was infrequent and usually they wanted it done during a certain time (such as Tuesday, 1-4 pm) which didn’t always fit my schedule.
If you’re looking for an easy way to pick up extra spending money, it’s not a bad deal.
One of my flatmates used to do this for extra cash, but the relevant companies paid him (as well as expenses), so I wouldn’t spend money on it. Its a fairly frequent topic in the articles on the motley fool , so you might be able to find more information in their archives.
If you’re seriously interested, email me and I’ll see if I can get any details out of him.
First, I just want to reiterate that you should never pay money to mystery shop - there are tons of places online where you can register in various companies databases, and you should never have to pay for it. Ever.
I mystery shop, but not as much now as I used to. It’s a great way to make a few extra bucks - for a while it was my manicure money. One a week, 15 bucks a pop, it paid for my manicure and a nice lunch afterwards. Sometimes I got lucky, and could actually schedule the lunch afterwards to be a mystery shop that I had been assigned. They’re usually easy, and the most important requirements they seem to look for is attention to detail, discretion (let the cat out of the bag that you’re a mystery shopper, and you don’t get paid) and good writing skills. Oh, and the ability to meet a deadline is crucial.
I’ve done restaurants, grocery stores, department stores, one free manicure (that was great!) a really nice chocolate shop where I got reimbursed for my 10 dollar purchase on top of the fee, various fast food assignments, and movie theater shops, and a car wash shop that I loved and sign up for whenever I can.
I’ve done it for about 3 years now, and I would say I’ve probably made about… 1000 dollars in fees, for what has probably amounted to… 20 hours worth of work. Not too shabby!
Argh. Forgot the link that I wanted to add in - here’s where I found a list of links to the actual companies themselves - sign directly up to their databases etc. Again DO NOT PAY MONEY.
My friend is one, she’s a SAHM with a toddler (well as of two days ago, a toddler and an infant) but she started doing this about a year ago. She did spend a great deal of time on the internet looking for places who want mystery shoppers. She didn’t have to send any of them cash (though many of them wanted her to have a camera, but that’s understandable). She’d have to take a test to say she cuold read/write/etc. Then for each store they’d have her take another test to show she knew what they were looking for, and then go out, do the store, come back, keep documents, fill in forms, and enter her evaluation.
The more she did, the better gigs she got, and she likes doing it. But she’s never paid for work.