As a mystery shopper, you may not think about trust too much in the day to day operations of your job. You hop on the job boards and select a few assignments to work on, head out the door to work on your assignments for that day, and come back home to complete your reports online. Most of the time you likely feel like you are flying solo in this job, but the fact is that mystery shoppers are very dependent on their providers on so many levels and a large part of this dependency involves trust. In fact, here are just a few of the things you depend on your providers for:
Keeping You Busy. You absolutely depend on your providers to keep their job boards filled up with good assignments. You certainly can always hop on over to a new provider, but it takes time to find providers to work with and even more time to establish yourself as a great mystery shopper with a new company. Life is far easy when the providers you work with have great paying jobs that you want to work on.
Paying You On-Time. It’s one thing to work consistently as a mystery shopper, but it’s another thing to get paid consistently. In the best case, ideal world scenario, you would get paid on an assignment shortly after you have completed the work. With most providers paying via PayPal right now, the payment process for most providers has gotten a bit faster. Yet during those times when you are owed a large amount of money, it’s pretty easy to start feeling jaded about continuing to work with that provider. In fact, you may even think about going on a hiatus with them until they are current with their payments. Of course, this does affect your income, too. When you stop working today, after all, that means the paychecks will stop coming in a few weeks from now.
Maintaining Your Reports. Some providers are known for changing your reports after you send them in, and if you catch your provider doing this, you likely have some pretty big red flags going up in your head. The fact is that once you’ve caught on that a company is unethical in one area, it’s hard to trust them in other areas. This is not to mention the fact that they are falsifying your work, which can be irritating to say the least.
Now no company is absolutely perfect, and to expect such things from providers likely will mean you will have nobody to work with. However, you do need to make sure that you can largely trust the companies you work with in these key areas. If you have a few providers you are working with who you cannot trust, you know how toxic such business relationships can be first-hand. You will want to consider the possibly of casting such companies aside and locating ethical, honest, and dependable companies that you can work with happily and securely.
Hello Maven:
Thanks for this good article. It is really helpful to me – and I am sure to others – that such vital information is given to us. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Hi,
I had an interesting situation. I was supposed to do a shop at a comic book store. When I got to the address it was a private home. I thought about it, but decided I wouldn’t go to the door.
When I called the shopping company they were very understanding. They asked if I got a picture of the house. I hadn’t but was going that way the next day, so I took a picture. The shopping company thanked me and paid me the full compensation.
They were great, but you should always be sure where you are going and if it is located in an isolated area.
I appreciated what you said about companies paying on time. Most companies have their own schedule for making payments and if you read all the fine print when you sign up with them you pretty much know when you can expect to be paid. While some companies pay fairly soon after a job is completed and pay on a regular schedule, other companies take as long as three months to pay. But since you know this before hand it is easy to decide if you want to work for a company that is going to hold your money for up to three months.
On the other hand, if you are working for a company that has always paid by the date they stated they would you feel secure in working for them. However, if they start paying later and later and show payment made on one day when it doesn’t reach your paypal account until several days later you have to wonder if they are having cash flow problems.
This is the situation I find myself in with a company that I have worked for for years doing grocery shops. So far I have not been able to get a satisfying answer from the company since they buffer themselves with their schedulers.