Anyone ever been a secret shopper?

I did it about 12 years ago. It was quite a good job actually. I just went round to different chains all over Scotland, bought something then wrote up a report on the train home. Not bad money too, for the amount of work involved.

The legit ones don't pay well in America. You get a free meal, basically, or it works out to $10-12 an hour to shop retail (and you pay for your own gas and everything).

Pay

Pay is highly variable, depending on the company facilitating the mystery shop, the experience level of the mystery shopper, availability of mystery shoppers in the area, and shop being tested. Novice mystery shoppers can earn less than minimum wage after accounting for time and cost involved to perform the scenario. Mystery shoppers must read and understand the requirements of the client. Gas mileage to and from the store is not usually reimbursed. Many scenarios involving the purchase and return of an item require the mystery shopper to wait for an uncompensated period of minutes or hours before they can return the item purchased.
In the case of nonreturnable services, such as a meal at a restaurant or an evening's stay at a hotel, mystery shoppers sometimes receive the nonreturnable service as their sole compensation. Reports on restaurant and hotel assignments can be much more detailed than other shopping reports, and can take hours to complete.

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A friend of mine is a secret diner for B.R. Guest in New York. She gets dinner for two every six weeks including wine, dessert and an aperatif, and all she has to do is spend about 45 minutes afterwards writing up a report.

Wow. How did they get that gig?

I guess it otherwise it doesn't sound so great, huh?

I did it for a couple of years as a second job but gave it up because I only ever semed to get dull assignments such as checking the customer service in Burger King, plus the pay was rubbish.

What's the purpose of this? To review the shop/restaurant?

I used to work at a market research company where they ran mystery shops on Barclays and other banks; I was part of a group going through the service questionnaires and OMG stupidity of most of the secret shoppers. Shoppers got something like £5 per bank in the mid-'90s.

Best mystery shopping is going out with my friend the restaurant critic.

I thought this was going to be a thread about ILxors' visits to PRIVATE SHOPS

I have been in one of those.

At the Brighton FAP the summer before last we were in a pub directly across the road from a PRIVATE SHOP and kept looking to see who furtively went in there. I can't remember anyone actually doing so, however.

There's one in Wandsworth, under new management! But I've never ever seen anyone go in.

What did you purchase, Ceej?

Oh, I forget now.

i am a mystery shopper!

it's quite good - but i wouldn't rely on it as a full time job. i'm all for going to get dinners paid for and also to help monitor people's services.

most of the time people are good at their jobs anyway.

i got a free gym membership for month and a half as one mission and that was really nice - and the people were so good i recommended one of them to get a bonus!

We had one in our shop years ago. We found out when a client told us. (The secret shopper worked for a company which tests different retail services/shops/machines/...)

I do it occasionally. I tend to get lots of free bets in Ladbrokes, so possibility of making more money out of it is high (or would be if I wasn't so rubbish at predicting football results, see Scottish Football Predictions thread for details). I get the odd free burger or cinema ticket and some bits and pieces of groceries. The pay's crap, but it doesn't take much effort and the odd £20 here and there for v little effort is usually appreciated.

The company I work for gets you to fill in a wee profile thingie so that you get things that you'd be doing anyway, i.e. I'm not going to stand out like a sore thumb in the bookies because they know I use them anyway. Sadly they haven't sent me to any pubs :-(

I've had a couple phone me at work as well, and it's been so obvious because they ask questions no potential client would ever think to ask unless they were being told to ask them.

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-- milo z, Thursday, May 24, 2007 10:15 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link