How To Earn Extra Money

Sent to me by CPI:

Does a taco sound yummy? COMING SOON - Taco John's shops. Not only will you be able to treat yourself to a free meal, you will be able to help our client make your experience more enjoyable by telling us what they can improve on. These shops require you to purchase a combo meal and evaluate either the inside or the drive-thru during lunch or dinner times. You would observe areas such as: exterior store presentation, interior store presentation, customer service, and quality. You will be required to make a purchase for this shop. You will be required to purchase certain combo meals. You will need to submit a copy of your receipt. You will be reimbursed UP TO $5 for your purchase. If you are interested in these shops, please look for them towards the end of February.

Web site: http://www.mysteryshops.com/Shoppers

Chase Bank has mystery shops available through a particular mystery shopping firm.

In order to conduct these mystery shops, you absolutely must meet the following criteria, with no exceptions:

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Greet America needs representatives to place decal credit card signage in specific retail businesses. They are assigning on a first come- first served basis.

This assignment will start immediately and must be completed within 2 weeks of receipt of supplies. Representative requirements are as follows:

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National Shopping Service is seeking mystery shoppers for a new project for Tacori. Tacori is a line of jewelery. If you are interested in shopping this project, please contact National Shopping Service directly.

I'm not sure if there's been an uptick in the demand for customer service analysis or if it's just a seasonal deal now that the temperatures are climbing, but for some reason I have been getting bombarded with mystery shopping requests the past several weeks. I no longer mystery shop myself, but if this is something your wanting to get into, then check out the mystery shopping resource page here on the site.

-Jassen

I had an interesting experience the other day: Somebody came to mystery shop me. It was pretty interesting being on the other side of the fence for the first time ever, and I think I took away a few things from it that might actually help me in my mystery shopping and field inspecting endeavors.

First of all, keep in mind that the person you're mystery shopping or auditing is somebody very similar to you in many respects. They're at work, doing there job, making a living. When I go mystery shopping, I try to be as pleasant and upbeat as possible, since some people might freak out a little bit about getting graded at work. The individual that mystery shopped me was by no means rude, but definitely carried an overly authoritative attitude and was not a pleasant person to speak to. I wasn't busy with any customers during the entire time they were here, nor was I in any way stressed by their presence, but my partner on duty was with a customer and appeared slightly uncomfortable having somebody watching over her shoulder. In short, try to make your mystery shopping experiences positive both for yourself and the customer service person you're auditing. Obviously, the person that mystery shopped me was an announced shop, so it was no secret. A lot of mystery shops are unannounced, meaning the person being evaluated doesn't know and likely never will.

Second, it appeared to be a husband-wife team that did our shop. One person was taking the photographs (which are usually required to ensure that we, as a franchise, are maintaining the required corporate signage and image to the public), and the other person was actually doing the audit. If your mystery shopping company allows you to do tag team like this, it's a great idea, particularly if you have a large volume of shops to conduct.

Third, be sure to take your time and be thorough. This can be difficult to do if you have 10 shops to get through in a day, but keep in mind the fact that you're being paid to be the eyes and ears of the company that hired you, and by accepting the shop you agreed to meet there standards. One of the best ways to get on a scheduler's good side (schedulers are the people that ASSIGN mystery shops to you) is to do good work, be timely, complete, and accurate in your reporting, and to do the little things that are slightly above and beyond what's expected. This might include waiting for somebody to vacate the restroom to inspect it for cleanliness, rather than just marking "restroom unavailable" on your report form, or perhaps meandering through the store for a few minutes and coming back to observe a cashier's interaction with a customer at checkout, rather than just marking "unable to observe/no customers at checkout" on your report form.

These are just some thoughts off the top of my head. Incidentally, since I wasn't with a customer, I had hopped online and completed my registration with the company that sent that auditor to us before they had even finished up and left. I'll be adding that company to the roster on the mystery shopping jobs board.

Stay positive, be enterprising!

-Jassen

There's a new mystery shopping scam going around that I wanted to alert people to. It seems to be most common in the southeastern United States right now, but like all such frauds, is likely to spread.

Here's how the scam works. People put classified ads in local newspaper or on classified ad sites like Craigslist and Backpage for mystery shopping jobs. Then, once you register they get you to do an "assignment" where you take a check, usually a cashier's check, to conduct an evaluation of a bank, cash advance or check cashing company, or someplace like the Wal-Mart customer service desk, which will cash checks for you.

Then, they have you cash the check, keep part of it as your shopper fee, and then send the rest back. The problem is that the cashier's check is fraudulent, and they just got real money in exchange for you helping them launder fake checks.

Never forget: If it souds too good to be true, it probably is!

A legitimate mystery shopping assignment will NEVER, I repeat, NEVER, send you a check in advance of the shop. You will ALWAYS have to front the purchase yourself and then include receipts with your report to receive a reimbursement.

So, be careful, and always be skeptical out there.

Peace,

-Jassen