Friday, November 12, 2010

Top 3 Tips - How To Avoid Mystery Shopping Scam

 
If you like shopping, browsing through stores, dining at new restaurants or trying out new services - you will love mystery shopping.  This is a great way to make some extra money.

Businesses this days need to know what average consumers think about their products and services. And they need to know what’s going on when management isn’t looking over their employee’s shoulders. They accomplish this by bringing in mystery shoppers.

As a mystery shopper, you will visit stores and pretend to be an ordinary customer. You task is to secretly evaluate customer service, store cleanliness and product quality. When done, you are to fill in a small questionnaire describing your shopping experience. You then submit your report and get paid for your opinions. However, the most difficult parts of mystery shopping is staying away from mystery shopping scams. How to find legitimate mystery shopping companies to work for?

Trick No.1 - Getting paid before even performing the actual mystery shopping assignment
Remember, a legitimate mystery shopping company will never send you a check before your shopping is completed. You shop with your own money, after reporting your shop, you get reimbursed for what you spend, and then will be paid your reward.


Trick No.2 - Charging a fee for registration
A real and legitimate mystery shopping company never charges you a fee for registration, not even a cent. If you are asking a so called one-time-registration-fee from a company or website claiming to be a real mystery shopping company in order to assign you mystery shopping jobs, (probably with 30-days money back guarantee), turn around and never look back.

Trick No.3 - If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!
In most cases if it sounds too good to be true it probably is! Let's say, a company promising you that you get to keep things like a diamond ring for a 20 minuet shopping assignment, don't you think that's a bit too much? Mystery shopping agencies do what they do to make money. Logically, they are not making any money if they were to give out such big payouts. So, stay away from companies with such promises.

4 comments:

  1. I thought about mystery shopping a few years ago but I chickened out because I just didn't have a good feeling about it. Great tips for people who are interested, though. So many money-making things seem too good to be true and we need to trust our instincts. :)

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  2. This is really great advice. Like Kandi, I too chickened out on pursuing mystery shopping because it just didn't feel right.

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  3. Great tips-- had a friend who fell for a scam one-- had some funny money in her wallet as a result- yikes!

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  4. Very cool - never thought about being a mystery shopper but would definitely love to give my feedback on some places :)!

    Following from Blog Frog

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