Mystery shoppers are always looking for ways to make more money. Some choose to pick up more assignments, and others hand-pick the higher-paying assignments whenever possible. The other side of mystery shopping is the ability to get new experiences, making this a great job without the doldrums many other types of jobs have. While many mystery shoppers enjoy trying a variety of assignments, they often shy away from audit assignments. If you haven’t tried an audit assignment, you may want to pick one up in the near future. Here’s what you need to know about this type of mystery shopping assignment.
Two Types. Audit assignments can either be concealed or revealed. With a concealed audit assignment, your tasks in the store will remain cloaked, just as with most other types of mystery shopping assignments. With a revealed audit assignment, your provider will give you a letter which you will present to the store manager. This letter tells the manager what you are doing in the store, and you go about your business with the store staff aware of your presence and function.
The Tasks. With an auditing assignment, you are usually checking to make sure the store complies with various laws or possibly company policies. You may check for everything for fire code compliance and safety compliance, to even auditing prices to make sure the price tag shown to customers matches the actual price that is rung up. Read through the assignment guidelines carefully and ensure that you accurately understand the requirements and that you are comfortable performing the job function.
Time Required. Audit assignments can take anywhere from under an hour to several days to complete. The tricky thing about audit assignments is that some of them do not give an estimated time to complete. As you are reading through the assignment requirements, look for the time to complete if it is shown. If it’s not shown, try to estimate for yourself how long it will take you to complete the assignment. Make sure the pay properly compensates you for your time. The last thing you want to do is to commit to a full day of work for what you normally can get paid for just an hour’s worth of work.
The Proper Equipment. Many audit assignments will require you to take photos during your site visit. There is often a requirement for a certain type of camera as well, such as the use of a high quality digital camera over a cell phone camera. Make sure you have the proper equipment on hand to complete the assignment before you request it.
Audit assignments can be a great change of pace from your typical mystery shopping assignments. Both the concealed and revealed assignments offer you some variety to the typical restaurants, retail stores, and so on that you normally visit for mystery shopping assignments. If you haven’t tried an audit assignment or if you haven’t done one recently, you may want to consider signing up for one soon to make more money and add some variety to your mystery shopping job!
Great article…who has these jobs?
I am interested in doing these audits. Where can I get registered for this type of assignment.
John Tabor
601 Wild Cherry Lane
Breaux Bridge, LA 70517
70, Retired, Male
I am interested in doing audits. Where can I get additional information regarding this type of assignment?.
I have seen some of these pop up in my mailbox, both revealed and covert but I was not familiar with them so I never responded. Thanks you for more information concerning them.
audit shops pay r soo high that I can afford Wimax $365 per year clearwire.com wireless interent
I do more revealed audits than I do mystery shops anymore. You will need a digital camera and the format usually is one that will adjust to a very low mega pixel. Look for one that will adjust down to TV or VGA setting. That will give you a 640×480 size format. The service station ones reimburse a certain amount of gas which gets me from one station to the next. Try one!
I don’t mind doing audits. It does make it easier when you get to announce yourself to make certain that you don’t forget that one unusual question. Pay is a bit higher and most I have done have very little narrative as you use pictures to support your answers.
I did do a price audit once. It became an absolute nightmare. It was supposed to take about 2 hours to complete the shop and 30 minutes put in computer. A little over an hour in a horrible storm hit the area. The power went down briefly, but the computers didn’t come back up. I finished writing down the numbers for the items and prices and waited. After waiting around for a total of 3.5 hours in which the computers never came up, I finally got in touch with someone from the MS company who said I could leave and finish the next day. I was leaving for a long weekend out of town at noon and when I mentioned this, they said I either had to finish it the next day or I would be paid nothing. But since there was so much trouble she did offer me a $10 bonus to finish. Since I already had 3.5 hours in, I returned to the store and while the computer was working, the hand held device to check price still weren’t. Now I needed to find every item I had written down, take it to the cash register, have him scan it and take it back. This was for 50 items in the store which was one of the larger anchor stores at a mall.
In total I spent over 5 hours and they refused to give me the 10 bonus as it was an event out of their control that caused the difficulty.
Dawn
I am interested in Auditing but those opportunities hardly ever come this way, and by the time I apply it is already taken.
I have done several audits and find them a welcome change of pace from mystery shopping. A lot of the audits I have done were for Certified Field Associates, which is affiliated with Market Force. They are very quick to pay you and I have never had any problems with them. Good Luck Auditing!
I am more familiar with doing audits for a company other than a MS company, however I too, am on the look out for more of these jobs. I am curious. Why the low mega pixels for the images? My camera is 10 mega pi
Sorry! The script submitted accidentally…..
I am more familiar with doing audits for a company other than a MS company, however I too, am on the look out for more of these jobs. I am curious. Why the low mega pixels for the images? My camera is 10 mega pixels, but I have a resizer to compress the pictures. Would this work for the required size?