There are a handful of mystery shoppers who are working in this field to help create a better consumer experience for others, but for the most part, mystery shoppers are working in this job to enjoy the convenience of a flexible work schedule and extra money in our pockets, too. But what happens when you have done the work on an assignment and your provider won’t pay you? Here are a few steps you can take to get that paycheck in your pocket where it belongs:
Are You the Early Bird? Before you contact your mystery shopping provider demanding immediate payment, you should double check the date the assignment was approved as well as the payment time frame that the provider promises. Keep in mind that the approval date is not necessarily the date you submitted the report, and sometimes this date may be several days or even a week after you submitted the report. If you check the fine print on the provider’s payment guidelines, you may find that the payment is promised with so many weeks of that approval date. Usually you can check the approval date online through a provider’s account portal.
Did Your Report Get Approved? Everyone misses an email from time to time, and most providers will notify you of changes or revisions that need to be made on a report via email. If you missed that important email, there may be a chance that your report has been sitting in limbo for all of these days or weeks while you thought it was approved and pending payment. Such an event does not happen often, but it can happen. You can prevent this from happening by ensuring that each of your reports gets approved with a quick follow-up check on each report after submission.
A Simple Follow-Up. In most cases, a simple follow up email to your provider will resolve the payment situation you now find yourself in. After you have double-checked to ensure that payment is in fact overdue on a report that was approved, your next step is to send a brief, professional, and tactful follow-up email to the provider. You will want to state the date the assignment was completed, the date it was showing as approved, and the date when payment should have been sent to you based on their payment time frame. Chances are, this was a simple oversight, and a quick email to the provider will often provide you with the remedy that you are looking for.
There are times, however, when that simple follow-up email is not enough. In such cases, you may want to send a follow-up email after a few days have passed to another person in the provider’s office, and to leave a few tactful phone calls. If you are working with legitimate providers, you will find that most providers will indeed pay you within the time frame they state, but that a follow up for payment may be required from time to time to ensure your payment didn’t fall through the cracks along the way.
I have stopped doing a few assignments for some mystery shopping companies because they took 3 months to pay me. I had to put out money upfront to cover the cost of the hotel that I was evaluating. I think this is a long time to get paid especially when they give you a very short time frame to get the report done. They want the results immediately but do not want to pay in a timely manner. It took two emails before I got paid.
I am in a situation right now trying to get paid for a job completed and approved in April 2011. Anyone know anything about Channelwatch? I have sent three e-mails to various elements of this company and have yet to receive any response.
I have noticed that no matter what they say it takes 3 months to get paid by any of these companies. I have been shopping stores and banks with good reputations and it seems that the agencies all take close to three months to pay. I wonder if the clients know this about the agencies they hire. I am considering giving up mystery shopping because of the payment problems.
Most take about2 months. The last problem I had on getting paid wasn’t because they wouldn’t pay me but it showed up on the shop log as being paid by PayPal back in November 2010. The company is Mystique. I’ve done a few shops with them before with no problem. I sent them several emails then made about 3 phone calls but it went straight to a voicemail and I did not get a return phone call. Finally I sent a letter explaining in great detail and it still took another 2 months to get the pay. Total time 9 months. Some,very few,will pay in one month.
found this link
http://www.mysteryshopforum.com/read/6/43254
I performed a Bathfitters job for Franchise Compliance. Now I am not sure if this was an eror or intentional, but they placed in my account that they had paid me for the shop on 09/15/2011. This was done on June 2011. I have sent over five emails trying to get this corrected and get paid with no response. So, I will definitely not perform another shop for this company. The shop was performed in May. It took well over an hour to complete the shop, over 20 minutes to enter the report. Now for them to not pay me is really adding insult to injury. I thought they were a reputable company. However, so far, I must say this is the only MS company that has not paid me, has had shoddy practices and has not responded to emails.
If you haven’t done so, post your concerns on the MysteryShopForum.com. I have seen some companies read them and respond.
Franchise Compliance does pay slow. They also post the future dates of payment showing when you should expect payment from them. So the 9/15/2011 date is when you should expect payment. At least this is the explanation I received from them. Although I still have not received the payment dated 7/31/11.
I have had 4 Poppa Johns Pizza shop not reimbrused by Bestmark. I did the first shop and it was okay. I did the next 4 shops identically and they refused to pay. The scheduler went on vacation and the next scheduler was horrific.
I also did 6 gas/convience store shops with Market FOrce Blue and they won’t pay either. BEWARE
Please remember that we are not to disclose the MSP and the client together. Franchise Compliance is terrible in paying. I had to contact the BBB before I got paid.
I jus t started mystery shopping in may 2012. I have to say I have done ok with the amount of jobs that I have done.Now I still have not gotten paid for any of them yet.Reading these posts got me to put my atennas up and to watch out for those companies who do not like to pay .I pray that does not happen to me.