It’s hard to get a group of mystery shoppers in a room together, but if you visit online forums, you can often catch some interesting and often very useful chatter. When mystery shoppers get together, even in a virtual environment like a forum, the topics of conversation inevitably focus on their recent assignments and their providers. Some have wonderful things to say about their time on the job, and others have some shockingly negative comments about their experiences. You may read such comments as stories, but you should also be reading them as lessons to learn from, too. Here are a few of the things you can learn about mystery shopping providers that you will want to take notes on:
Compensation. Compensation is a hot topic for mystery shoppers. Everyone loves to gripe about how little they get paid, and they love to brag about those ridiculously cushy assignments that fall into from time to time, too. As you read through the posts and comments on mystery shopping forums, keep a little notebook handy and jot down notes. When you are ready to make a change with the providers you work with, as you will want to do from time to time, your notes on the highest and lowest paying providers will definitely come in handy
Easy to Work With. You will also certainly hear some horror stories about providers and their thoughtless and sometimes even unethical treatment of providers. Now, you will want to take some of these stories with a grain of salt. After all, you are only hearing one side of the story. However, if the responses from other mystery shoppers indicate that this experience has been one that has been repeated over and over, this may be a good thing to jot down notes on. Such providers are likely those who you will want to stay away from in the future.
Speed of Payment. How much you get paid is one thing, but how quickly you paid is just as important. What good is a $50 assignment after all if it takes you weeks and weeks, not to mention hours of your time asking the provider where the payment is at, before you can get it sent to you. As you read through the various comments made by other mystery shoppers online, jot down some notes when you run across comments about how slowly or how quickly a provider pays.
There really is quite a bit of very valuable information that is passed between mystery shoppers on the online forums. This information is there not just for your entertainment but also for you to learn from. You may not need the information now, but you will find that by jotting down a few notes about providers here and there, you will accumulate some incredibly valuable information that eventually can be used to make you a more profitable mystery shopper. So take some time today to get out a notebook and pen, and hop onto the online forums today to see what information you can learn about your trade. Check out MysteryShopForum.com
You are so right Maven. There are sopme providers who really have deceptive payment practices and no matter ho wmuch beggin, they refuse to listen or pay until they get ready. I have one who I performed the assignment, it took at least 30 minutes to somplete the report in addition to almost two hours to listen to a salemans try to sell me thie product plus continuous calls. This assignment was performed in May. When they entered the information in the system regarding payment, they entered it as my being paid on 09/15/2011. I still have not gotten paid, nor have I received any responses to at least ten emails. The assignment was for “Bathfitters” So anyone expecting immediate payment when perfoming this shop should ‘BEWARE.”
What company gave you the shop? I had a shop last November 2010 at a bank. The usual pay and it was a teller shop. I entered the report the same day as I always do and waited a couple months for payment. Then sent a msg through the website about payment status. Then another msg a monht later. FnallyI tried calling and automatically got voice mail. I finally mailed a leter because I had seen on my shop log that I had been paid by PayPal at the normal time I repeatedly checked PayPal and it wasn’t there. I finally received my PayPal payment back in July 2011 and a very brief msg stating that “your payment was sent to PayPal. Sorry”. I am very leary of accepting a shop from them anymore.
i think the mystery shopper is more interesting infact you gain more experience and hardwork specially you learn how to evaluate the companies and other people.you development your attitude in other ways.
I found the forum a little difficult to understand. Yet I would like more info on how some of these companies pay and which ones pay in a timely manner.
I completed (7) (seven) overnight motel shops. You have to pay up front and be paid plus reimbursement. Shops completed in March and April 2011. This is now August 2011. I had to email every email in their postings to finally get an answer as to my reimbursements and pay. They have scattered my pays over time until I finally had to again go through the above steps to get a final payment. All payments were close to $100 each and that was my mistake for trusting the company to get paid in a timely manner. I told them that I should get interest with the reimbursement amounts they owed me. That was never addressed from them. Of course. This was totally ridiculous.
After working hours on an extremely long detailed summary type report on line, there was no place at the end of the report to save or submit report. I was hysterical that I would miss my 12 hour turn around bonus. I tried to save it and it would save with out my answers, tried to copy and email where all of the hidden answers were not visible to save. I printed out the 19 page report, still the long summary portions did not print. I had to highlight each section and print each one separately. As well as the shop proof articles. All in all I faxed over thirty pages to the company. Still they do not know what I mean that I could not get my report to submit. It is up in the air if they will accept the faxed report or not. Or if I will get my bonus. Just the copying of this report was very expensive plus the faxing. What are we to do?
Wait until you do a large retail shop, every department, every name and description of each co-worker. Hours of detailed reporting, AND, you did not get one co-worker name but totally described the person even disability (why the ID could not be retrieved) the shop was totally denied. That is a lot of work for a $55 shop to start with.
I will not work for them again.
Word of advice, when things are to the point where you have to go up the line of command, you might just as well plan on finding another company to shop for. But continue with them until you get your pay if owed.
Some of the newer people that review our reports have never done a mystery shop and are really nasty and quick to take points and money from our hard work.
I am always looking for better companies to work for.
Any suggestions. These days we need our pay as soon as we can get it to be able to continue to drive the distance to shop the shops.
Sometimes I have also experienced not being able to find a ‘save’ or ‘submit’ button. You might try reducing the page magnification. It might also be on an unusual spot on the page, making it necessary to search every extremity.