What is the best watch to buy for mystery shopping?

I can't use my cellphone to time for certain shops, so I'm looking to buy a watch for mystery shopping.

What is the best watch to buy? I am fine with any price and brand; I don't have a budget.

Create an Account or Log In

Membership is free. Simply choose your username, type in your email address, and choose a password. You immediately get full access to the forum.

More About Favorites

My all time favorite are digital watches from Walmart that run about $10 ea. Almost all of them have a backlight button which helps in a dark restaurant and a stop watch function that is perfect to unobtrusively start up when timings to the second are required. Most of them have plastic bands, which also fit in well with the current fads of wearing plastic band fitness bands.

Which MSCs won't allow you to use a cell?

"I told myself to quit you; but I don't listen to drunks." -Chris Stapleton

I haven't seen a specific MSC that prohibits them, but I have seen many shops where they don't want you using your cell phone. This is especially true of shops where you are awaiting an employee to approach you and you are timing how long that takes. The sense is that an employee is less likely to 'interrupt' you with a greeting if you are engaged with your phone. And even where it is not prohibited, there are many shops where a watch makes a lot more sense than wagging around a phone.

A Closer Look wants you to have a digital watch. No cell.

@rosaestanli wrote:

A Closer Look wants you to have a digital watch. No cell.

Why do you believe that? I have worked with A Closer Look since 2008 and I always use my cell to capture timings.

I had a digital watch once that beeped every time you pushed a button. Avoid those like the plague.

Many of them beep, but the beeps are quiet enough that you will likely be the only person to hear them. Mine makes a beep and if I have my right hand over the watch face when I start the stopwatch with my right ring finger even I can't hear it without listening very closely.

Right, I would think a digital watch would be more obvious, especially the paper and pen you use to record the time.

I find a cell to be more discrete and silent. Between a screen shot to record the time, GV, and the stop watch, it's a win-win all the way around.

I also work with ACL. I haven't seen the cell restriction in the shops that I do.

"I told myself to quit you; but I don't listen to drunks." -Chris Stapleton

I click on the DVR in my pocket and quietly tell the microphone in my shirt the recorded time. I am in a two party state so use the DVR to record my own findings, not the shop itself. There is no cell phone on the table, no paper and pencil, nothing that would indicate anything was being recorded. So a few more private moments and I have dumped to DVR the observations, timings and I am ready to put it on pause until I need to do my next information dump.

Flash, you have a DVR in your pocket, a mike in your shirt, and you think a cell is over the top?

"I told myself to quit you; but I don't listen to drunks." -Chris Stapleton

None of them are visible to the person being observed. But if you have a whole lot to remember it is probably the more sane way of dealing with it than fiddling around with a cell phone. I have watched a manager walk down a row of tables in a restaurant, greeting guests and checking for satisfaction, and walk right past tables where folks were having any sort of interaction with their cell phone rather than interrupt. So when we do shops the cell phones are left in the car rather than be any sort of possible excuse for the table being ignored.

Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.

Click here to login

What is the best watch to buy for mystery shopping?

Create an Account or Log In

Official List of Mystery Shopping Companies

Mystery Shopper Magazine