Mystery Shopping Scam Revealed â€" The Truth about Mystery Shopping Jobs

Whether it’s the crammed cubicle, aggravating boss, annoying
co-workers or maybe just your desire for more freedom, both
financially and hourly, you’ve come across a mystery
shopping job and thought to yourself wouldn’t it be nice to
get paid to shop, eat, go to the movies, or even play golf.
I mean those things are fun, and we know work isn’t fun, so
does that mean it’s time to quit work and search the
internet for mystery shopping jobs? Is it even possible to
make money from mystery shopping, let alone a living doing
it?
The answer is yes. It is possible to make a living doing
mystery shopping. You would need to sell your home and your
vehicle, because you will need to spend all your time
driving in a car covered with advertisements, and spend
every waking minute reviewing products and places. Yes it is
quite possible to make a living with mystery shopping.
However if you like your home, car, and current life style,
I would not expect mystery shopping to primary source of
income.
I don’t know how much you already know about mystery
shopping, but basically it works like this; a company pays
you to go into their store or business and act like a normal
customer and then write a detailed report about you’re
experience. Ok, so it sounds easy enough, but there are some
things that you might not know and you probably should know
before signing up.
What you might not know is that you need to write many
sample reviews before a company will even consider hiring
you. If a company hires you, you will generally have one job
to do, so no matter how well they are paying or what you get
to keep you’re only going to be doing it once. This is why
it’s important that you sign up to an agency that will help
you build your profile and can also tell you where the
mystery shopping jobs are.
However, these agencies are where the “mystery shopping
scam” is revealed. Sure, there are reputable agencies out
there, but there are way more fraudulent companies so you
need to be carefully when you see those fancy advertisements
or read those fun-sounding emails.
You don’t get paid a great deal, and you also don’t get
reimbursed for everything, so how much you get paid is based
on how you choose to manage the money. Basically you can’t
go crazy and buy whatever you want and think you’re not
going to have to pay for it. Generally a company will agree
to giving you a certain amount and it’s really your choice
whether to spend it all there or stand to profit most of it.
Sometimes you will have specific instructions on what to get
so you have to take that into account too. A few companies
will even pay you only after you turn in a detailed report
and receipt, so that’s your money you’re spending first.
Now that we have all the negatives out of the way, we can
talk about some positives. It is truly a lot of fun to go
out and shop the hottest stores and review the latest
products. My wife and I just don’t consider it a source of
payment, but more like a big discount or rebate on the
things we like to buy anyway! We also go out to some
extremely nice restaurants at least once a month, and pay
nothing in the end! Even if we would have only used the
database for one dinner out it would have paid for it’s self
the first time, not to mention every single time we go out
to shop, eat dinner, watch a movie, or several other sources
of entertainment.
So there are many perks to mystery shopping jobs if you have
the right mindset. We use mystery shopping jobs as a source
of fun and entertainment and not as a source of livelihood
like the advertisements would have you believe.