Hello to everyone! I am soooooo glad I found this forum. I've been self employed for 10 years with little to show for it. Trying to find full time work at my age is next to impossible! I don't know why I didn't think about Mystery Shopping before - my wife supervised over 75 shoppers at the fast food company she worked for. I used to help her fill out those 20 page questionnaires and follow all the silly rules about "each form has to be unique and different".

Something we discovered was she got in hot water for writing a bad review for a franchise owner. They were required to get 100% on each review but the place was a dump. My wife refuses to "give in and lie" and she paid the price and got a written warning.

Before I start signing up with the companies listed at the bottom, can anyone advise me on the subject about Being Honest vs. Tell them what they WANT to hear? I have no problems bending the truth if it will prevent me from being deactivated! (lol I find that term hilarious... deactivated...

I would also like any info about canceling a shop offer after accepting it if I feel it's not worth the time and effort. Will this hurt my reputation? Should I just do it and lick my wounds later?

Thank you in advance and sorry for the long intro!
~David

Welcome David,
For 99 percent of the companies there is no need to worry about a negative report getting you into hot water, although the client may start out by denying, causing the MSC to ask you for further detail or clriication. You have happend upon a forum mainly populated by dedicated, professional MSers. Rarely will you find any here who are willing to bend the truth. There are over 200 MSCs to work for, so there are more than enough to keep you busy while allowing you to be totally objective and honest in your reporting. As for the 1 percent tht solicit untruthful reports, you will find those companies and/or scheduler called out, most often by name, here so that shoppers can elect to avoid working for them.

If you want to make serious money at this, start by reading the major topics in the New Mystery Shopersarea and then start signing up with 100-150 of the MSCs with links at the bottom of each page. You will want to save a writing smple to be used with many ofthe applications. Working your wy up the better and better paying jobs is the way to go with ost MSCs. With a few, often named as good for beginners, there is little or no upward mobility, so be sure to branch out early, and often, to more challnging and better paid assignments.

Welcome; youare among friends!

Welcome, David. I'm still too new to really answer your questions, but I would not advise lying or bending the truth. If you are caught, it can get you deactivated. Once is enough for some companies from what I understand. Also, it's a small mystery shop world out there and so many of the companies are connected anyway, that if you get a bad rep with one, you could feel the fallout from other companies that you actually haven't bent those rules for. Best thing: be honest in all areas. Re: canceling, do it too often and it's the same thing. You might be able to get away with it a few times with different companies, but the ones I know will keep track and you'll end up on probation or worse if it's a regular thing. On most shops I've seen, you can download the guidelines before signing up. I always try to do that first. There are some sites that don't allow that and you just have to use your gut to decide. I've never backed out of something I signed up for. The only time I've ever canceled a shop was because the guidelines were not available up front and they failed to say that there was a time limit from when you made a call to place an order and when you arrived to pick it up. I was too far out to meet that timeline so had no choice. My personal opinion is that respect is a two-way street. Companies need to respect us and we need to respect them, so if you sign up, follow through and then make a note not to do that shop again. Just my two cents. At any rate, welcome aboard!

Thank you so much. I was raised to be honest so I'm glad to hear there are no unwritten rules. I will start reading all the great forum posts you mentioned. Although I'm familiar with the MSC process, I'll start out slow like I did in the IT industry - that way I won't set myself up to fail

@Orrymain wrote:

On most shops I've seen, you can download the guidelines before signing up. I always try to do that first.

That's great news - thank you!

Welcome to the forum David. With some background in the industry I'm guessing that you know this field will be difficult to put together anything that looks like full time income from a regular job. But it does have its own perks, and that is what makes it interesting.

No, you don't bend the truth, but you are as coldly objective as possible about it. No establishment is perfect and no establishment is completely awful. My last nearly perfect got a couple of observations of things that could be improved and my last almost completely awful I found a few nice things to say about it. On a poor experience I usually add some notes to my file about additional concerns/issues just in case the shop comes back to haunt me. I have had challenges and been able to respond with very specific additional information. The biggest slobs are the ones most likely to challenge.

But challenges have been few and far between.

Hello Flash, thanks for the reply. You're correct about the income aspect. I'm not poor by any means, but I will be in a few years if I don't do something other than Ebay selling. I'm starting out slow since this is a different ballgame than I'm used to (outsourced vs. in-house). Learning the terminology i.e. self-assign, auto-assign, scheduler assigned as well as making sure I'm not losing money while building a good reputation... opportunity cost so to speak.

I'm pretty OCD when it comes to taking notes and keeping detailed records and Excel has been my program of choice for 20 years.

Thanks again!

I report truthfully, be careful when selecting shops.and you probably won't need to cancel, just in case you do, try to cancel before due date. good shopping!

@jcarson1 wrote:

try to cancel before due date

Do ALL companies have schedulers that I can contact if I need to cancel? I have medical issues that prevent me from driving (and even walking) on some days but I never know in advance when those bad days will occur. It happens about 3 days each month so I may wake up on the day I'm scheduled and physically can't do it.
Thank you!

Some do and some don't. And some schedulers get back with you promptly and some once they have handed off a job to you just disappear.

What you may want to do is look for jobs that have a 'window' of a few days. Say the job could be done on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, 7/27-7/29. If you have to state a specific day you will do it, select the first day. If on Monday the 27th you are having a 'day', you can reschedule to the 28th or 29th. Even better is if you don't have to state a specific day and can just plan for yourself to do it the first day of your window with the other two days as a 'fall back' if the 27th is 'a day'. In your notes for the job you may want to show yourself the entire window if you had to specify a particular day so at least you know what the options may be.

What you do not want to do is straight cancel a job--always try to reschedule.

There are generally two reasons for tight deadlines. One is that a company needs to get the data to the client by a deadline and they don't particularly want to be rushed themselves in editing (and they want wiggle room if a shopper doesn't get a job done and they need to schedule someone else). The other is that when a company does multiple visits in a month they usually need to have them a minimum number of days apart. This means that sometimes a scheduler can work with you and sometimes they just can't. So the more of this you can handle through your own efforts, the better.

Yeah, I'd stay away from any job that requires a one-day only option. You could also try contacting a scheduler before taking a job, explain your situation, and see what they say. Some might respond that they have a bit of leeway, others not. One way to tell is that if a job window on the announcement is, say, 7/15-7/21, but then you are required to pick a day, as long as you aren't selecting that last date, you can bet they probably have some leeway to work with. You just don't want to put yourself in a position to be penalized from a lot of cancellations or revisions.