In alt.home.repair on Sat, 18 Dec 2004 09:20:52 -0600 "Iowa883"
posted:
I keep on getting these emails from ReportCard.com about being a Secret
shopper. Does anyone in here do this and does it work ? I could use some
extra cash but I am kinda leary.
Does it work and is it as easy as they say ? Also, they say you COULD get
$1000 gift card, what does this require ? I guess I am still old fashion and
believe you can't get something for nothing.
Mystery shoppers don't get something for nothing. They work for it.
As far as a gift card goes, you know very well that people win things
that are worth more than the effort they put into it. What does being
old-fashioned have to do with it? There is Publisher's Clearing
House; there are raffles at your kids' schools or the Elks Club; at
various times there are prizes under the caps of Coke bottles, etc.
There are loads of ways people win things with little effort on their
own part.
However there is no reason to think you will win anything from this
place. Contests that follow the current law say how many prizes are
being given, how many entrants are expected, and what the odds are of
winning. They haven't bothered to tell you any of that. Maybe by
including this in a job offer puts them outside of this law, but you
have to remember the origin of this, SPAM. Spam is dirty. You
shouldn't even touch it. It has germs.
My friend is a mystery shopper, for the last 15 years I think, maybe
20. She has a full-time job too. No matter what they say sometimes,
no one could live on what being a mystery shopper pays. (Some woman
in Arizona wrote a book recently claiming people (usually women) could
earn 50G iirc a year doing this. She's crazy or lying. 50G is 25
dollars an hour, 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year. Most jobs don't
pay 25 dollars, so if they pay 10 or 15, or 12.50 you'd have to do 2
an hour all day. There may be some jobs that can be finished in a
half hour, but you could never schedule them one after another all day
long, physically arranged so that there was little travel time in
between.
Also, pay has gone down in recent years. Perhaps because unemployment
is higher, and there are plenty of people looking for these jobs.
And strangely, it is somehow harder than before to deal with these
companies since the popularity of email. Well it's not so strange
when you discuss it. It used to be they wrote people with shopping
offers, and the people called back I think (800 numbers). When they
called, they talked to a real person; they could ask questions; they
could give details, like where they would work and where they
wouldn't. Also, they are in a much bigger rush than they used to me.
It was typical to get a week or two to do an assignment 5 or 10 years
ago. Now they often want it done in 2 days. Email made such speed
conceivable, and now clients want that.***
But my friend has done some interesting things that spun off from her
mystery shopping. Once or more she was sent to liquor stores to check
the freshness date on many of the canned and bottled beers for sale.
It was cold inside the cooler. When something was recalled, she
accepted a job to either watch while the shopkeeper destroyed it, or
take it away and ship it herself back to the maker. She's done focus
groups. She's applied for jobs, to check out the personnel
departments. (She got every job she applied for.) I think she's
checked doctors' offices to see what magazines they subscribe too
(orsomething like that.) And other interesting things. But most of
it is shopping (and sometimes returning what she bought).
Some companies want the mystery shopper to note the name of the person
who waits on them. Others don't care. (I don't understand the second
group. They don't have to fire or even punish someone for not getting
everything right, but I would think it would benefit them to know who
it was. ) A lot of them want to time how long it takes a clerk to
offer to help a customer when she walks in the store. And they want
them or the casheir to say "Is there anything else I can help you
with? Thank you for shopping at Armondo's House of Junk. Would you
like to open a 'special shopper account'? Have a nice day (Or the
recent atrocity, "Have a nice rest of weekend.") I hate all that
stuff. I don't like clerks' trying to help me unless I ask for it,
and I hate all those questions by the cashiers. They should just say
4.95, and Thank you. If we have time left over, we can discuss the
Mets, or the weather, or politics.
Back to shopping, about half the stores (usually chains) that she is
hired to check out go out of business within a few months after they
hire her. Either she has very bad karma, or they don't hire mystery
shoppers until their business is near bankruptcy.
But other stores have done well. One sent her a thermometer to
measure the temperature of the coffee they sell. She doesn't drink
coffee or eat much sweets, so when I went with her, I got to have
both. (I don't drink coffee either, but someone had to drink it.
)
***(Related: When I buy from ebay, I almost never care about shipping
speed. I would rather pay less and have them ship surface mail**.
But everyone ships express-mail -- two days or so. So when I bought
from a mail-order company that took 2 weeks, it seemed like forever.
**I think, just guessing, that vendors like express mail, so they can
wrap things up quickly. If a two week shipment didn't show up, by
then, the vendor wouldn't remember what it was.)
What the scoop ?
BTW, "Reportcard.com is currently upgrading its systems. We hope to be
up and running shortly. Thank you."
Thanks,
Iowa883
Meirman
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