There has been a lot of talk lately in the mystery shopping world about boycotting the assignments under $5. Pizza phone assignments quite simply require you to call up a pizza restaurant and inquire about specials. In other cases, you may be required to actually place an order and then call back and cancel it. The bottom line about these assignments is they are not worth the time and effort required to complete them. Here’s what you need to know:
What Can You Buy For $1.75? Yes, you can seriously expect to get paid anywhere from $1.50 to $3 for your time and effort. Some mystery shoppers may be tempted to think this may be acceptable since there is no time and expense involved in travel, and the phone call may only take about five minutes.
Once you take into account the time of both of the required phone calls, as well as the waiting period between the two calls and the time it will take you to complete the report, your total time commitment has crept up to about an hour. Is an hour of your time worth $1.50 to $3? Probably not!
Cancel My Order. Pizza phone assignments may be worth the time and effort if you at least got a free pizza out of the deal. But these assignments off you no freebies, not even cheese sticks or a soda! You will literally get a check for just a few bucks in the mail, and that is it.
Sometimes It Pays To Travel. Often on lower paying assignments, you can rationalize that with the extra perk of writing off your travel expenses, your time and effort may be worth a $5-$10 assignment. For instance, driving 20 miles for an assignment will give you a tax deduction of $11 ($0.55 per mile). So on a $5-$10 assignment, you usually can expect to pay zero taxes on it, and possibly even claim a tax write-off if you travel far enough. When you do a phone assignment from your living room, you can’t write off mileage, so this hidden perk is gone.
Do You Want To Play ‘Twenty Questions’? You may wonder how many questions can possibly be on a report for an assignment over the phone. The answer isn’t twenty questions, but rather closer to forty or fifty. The report will ask you very specific questions about the times you called, how long you were put on hold, how long the calls lasted, and so on. You will need to keep track of the names of the people you spoke with, specials they offered to, and a number of other details. With your calls lasting maybe a total of five minutes, there is a lot of information to keep track of and remember in just a short period of time. The only saving grace of this assignment is that since you are in the privacy of your own home, you can quickly scribble down notes as you are talking or after the conversation is over.
The bottom line is that there is just no real advantage to spending your valuable time and energy on such a low-paying assignment with no perks. It’s best to avoid these assignments and spend your time on an assignment where you will receive a decent paycheck and extra perks.
I absolutely agree with this article. I did one pizza phone assignment about a year ago. It paid $2.00 and really did require only a few minutes on the phone. Initially I was told I would only need to answer 7 questions on my report, but it turned out to be much more involved. Needless to say, that’s the last time I did a pizza phone shop.
You’re absolutely right on target here. I’m glad you wrote this article, so that maybe some of the other shoppers will see the truth of these shops before they waste their time as Jean and I did. Keep up the good work. God Bless.
That’s ridiculous. I spend ten minutes total on my $2.00 pizza phone call assignments, which equals $12.00/hour. Also, people have to understand that training is cumulative pay. I’f you only do one phone assignment ever, and have to spend 15 minutes understanding the instructions, then it’s not worth the effort. But if you do a shop long enough, you won’t have to read the instructions for 15 minutes each time. You glance over it to make sure there are no changes. The questions on my pizza shops are straight forward yes/no or multiple choice. Think people, math is not brain science!
You are absolutely correct. Hopefully some of the more desperate shoppers will stop taking these shops. The problem is that new ones keep entering and do not put a value on their time. It does not matter whether you are doing this part-time or full time YOUR time has value.
I know that’s right! I realized this after signing on to one of these shops, but I was in the field and figured I could work with it. As it turned out, the person answering the phone was new, failing in all areas of the evaluation. Knowing this would be a monster in reporting, I passed on filing an evaluation. I had 2 fast food shops for the same scheduler that day, and although those evaluations were filed on time, and without questions, the company banned me for Life(!!) for not issuing an evaluation of the tele~fiasco!! That was a major loss for me, but you’re right, those shops are definitely not worth it, in any arena. I don’t mind being removed from the list of pizza slice shoppers, but the merchandising offers, along with the occasional quickie food shops, were a major loss for my shopping portfolio. This happened over a year ago, yet I still can do nothing more than dial into the web~site and weep!! Good article, thank you.
Time value is a concept that comes with experience.(As someone who has just gotten back into the mystery shopping arena.) This is a lesson I am learning slowly, but surely.
I didn’t have major problems with the pizza phone shops, but you are correct that they are just not worth the time. I didn’t live in the delivery area, and the website even gave us a list of approved addresses to use for that scenario, but it took a long time to look it up, and I had to keep track of that while I spoke to the pizza place. How many times could I call a place and then change my mind and cancel the order? Not worth the trouble.
I am not sure if I would want to place a pizza order and cancel more than once. A phone-pizza shop is not one that I’ve done. Adding to all of the above comments, is the fact that pizza takeouts, keep track of their customers and their phone numbers. I would not want the reputation of someone who renegs on my orders.
Although I have not personally completed a pizza “phone assignment”, I am in full agreement that time is a precious gift we can never get back and is therefore extremely valuable. Also, while I agree that certain assignments do not pay as well as they should (i.e. pizza “phone assignments”), they are useful in getting a foot in the door in the mystery shopping world, especially if someone is new to the business and is trying to establish him/herself as a dependable mystery shopper. If an assignment is deemed unworthy of one’s time due to the inappropiately low shopper fee that is being offered, a mystery shopper is not obligated to accept a similiar offer in the future. This is the beauty of being a mystery shopper. Yes, we can pick and choose which assignments that appeal to us and reject the ones that don’t. However, as soon as a commitment is made to an assignment, the assignment should be completed and submitted by the deadline, no matter how we feel about it. By doing this, we are assured of receiving higher paying assignments in the future. More importantly, we will obtain the highest respect from the companies we work for.
In short, assignments such as the pizza “phone assignment” would not be my first choice if I had other more agreeable assignments available. But, if it were being used as a stepping stone to more profitable assignments in the near future, I would accept a pizza “phone assignment” in a heartbeat!
NOTE: I have been a mystery shopper for three years now, and initially, I accepted assignments with very low pay just to get my foot in the door. Once I got myself established as a dependable mystery shopper, all kinds of opportunities became available and I have no complaints whatsoever about the fees I am currently being offered.
I used to do these, but it’s so awkward going through the process of asking about specials, deciding on an order, then saying, “Oh, nevermind!” Also, I once had the person on the phone not actually cancel the order – the delivery person called me to tell me she was driving back and forth outside the fake address, and that no lights were on in the house! I felt terrible.