photo credit: Porcelaingirl° {josie-grossie}
With the down turn in the economy and being retired, I needed something to do to bring in a little extra income. I normally don’t go through SPAM email, but this one that said Mystery Shoppers Needed caught my eye. I really didn’t know what a Mystery Shopper was, but I had my suspicions.
A Mystery Shopper is an independent contractor who is hired by companies to go out and evaluate stores, usually chain stores, to determine the implementation of corporate directives, the customer service provided, maintenance of the building, etc. The Mystery Shopper than fills out the evaluation form, provided by the hiring company, and does a critique of the shop. (Shop is the term used in the business to identify one particular evaluation of one business). The company that hired the Mystery Shopper then takes the report, checks it for accuracy and grammar before sending to the corporation that hired them.
Well I opened the email and read through it, seemed interesting, but I didn’t want to pay a fee for a whole year to do something I might not enjoy. But this one had a reduced price where you could subscribe for one month. Hey, it was cheap and I might just see what it is all about.
So I signed up on January 1, 2009 and started going threw the material to at least understand what I was supposed to do. Took me about two days to get to where I fully understood the task at hand and qualify at the silver level. There is a gold level which I may tackle next.
By the time of the first work day, of the New Year arrived, I was ready. I had five jobs lined up by the time morning was over. Two were for grocery shopping, one was to mail a package, another was to have breakfast at a fast food restaurant and another was to get an oil change.
The grocery shopping paid 9 dollars plus I was paid 9 dollars. So for 18 dollars I went grocery shopping, for items the house needed. The only stipulation is I had to buy a large item, such as a case of water and put it on the bottom rack of the cart. And then forget about it and see if the cashier catches it. At the two shops I did, one cashier caught it and one didn’t.
I was paid 10 dollars to go to a local shipping place and mail a bunch of papers to an address I was given. I was to evaluate the store for certain promotions, leave some items off the shipping form and see if they caught it. Pretty easy work.
When I went to the fast food restaurant for breakfast, I had to go by myself, but I had to order two meals. One meal was ordered inside, and I had to stay and evaluate the accommodations for 20 minutes while I ate the breakfast. After that I was to go through the drive through and order a different meal and evaluate it. I ate my meal inside and then order the wife’s meal on the drive through, again they paid me 10 dollars plus breakfast
On the oil change, I was paid nothing, but I got a free oil change which was over 50 dollars in value. My car did need it, so I look at it as saving over 50 dollars. Again I evaluated the building and the service.
If this interests you, I have a blog where I go through in more detail each shop I have done on about a weekly bases. I am going to start with the grocery shop. I also have lined up three lunches at a fast food place, mailing packages, evaluating four gas stations where I get paid and get five dollars of gas free at each gas station.
http://mysteryshopperonline.blogspot.com/
