>D’oh of the Day

>Hello everyone, it has been a couple of weeks since my last post. I’ve been kinda busy counting down the days until it was time for vacation time to begin. Now I’m back in the saddle again. And since my vacation started officially as of 3:15 this afternoon, I’m wondering whether time will go in super speed mode or whether it will be slooooow. Either way I plan on getting in some more posts. I had a mystery shopping experience today as I do frequently. This one didn’t directly involve completing a shop.

Let me start at the beginning. Today at about 1:30 I got a call to my cell phone. It happened to be on vibrate, as I usually put in on that at work so I don’t have to take out my cellie in front of all of my students and have a conversation in front of them. First of all it is super distracting. Secondly I am embarrassed about the condition of my phone. I am one of the types that could care less about bells and whistles on phones. I just want it to make and receive phone calls and the rare text message from my sister who continues to text me no matter how many times I ask her not to.

So there I was this afternoon, letting the kids decorate little sun visors and velcroing and hot gluing them together while a swarm of student enclosed my desk reaching their cute little germy hands everywhere. The phone vibrated in my pocket when it was ringing. I knew it had to be a call about a mystery shop because everyone else knows that I’m a teacher and they don’t call me during the day. I didn’t even pause what I was doing because I figured that I’d just call them back.

Well…at around 4:30 I finally checked my messages and found that I probably should have checked my messages earlier. One of the good shops. It was one of those alchohol shops that I’ve written about in an earlier post. Click here to read more details about that. I guess this company must have been pretty desperate to get that shop done because they were adding a $20 bonus on top of the shop fee of $10, PLUS reimbursement. Yeah…so I called the scheduler back three hours later only to find that the shop had already been assigned. ARGH

The lesson for me is to be available and to return calls as soon as I can. I mean it’s not like I was at home playing video games or something and just didn’t feel like calling them back…but I am notorious about procrastination so I guess I got what I deserve this time. Don’t be like me and miss out on your valuable shops.

What is Mystery Shopping?

Well, I realize that many people have not heard of mystery shopping and I thought I should give a little more insight into what this actually is. Mystery shopping, or secret shopping, is when an individual is paid either a fee, or is reimbursed to try a good or service for a company while remaining anonomous. Some mystery shops require that individuals remain anonomous the entire time. Other shops require the mystery shopper to do a reveal at the end. Either way, the mystery shopper is providing a service for a company.

In order to start off mystery shopping, an individual will have to find a company that has listings in his/her area. While it sounds easy enough, often there are individuals who want to charge for this information. I’ve never purchased any kind of list to find out, I’ve just done research. I’d advise anyone to avoid mystery shopping lists. From what I’ve heard, a lot of them have useless information and there are scams out there too.

Be careful for mystery shopping scams. One scam I’ve read about is when a shopper is sent a bad check and is asked to deposit it into his or her account. The next step is to wire a portion of the check through a wire transfer. Basically, in the end the shopper is tricked out of his or her hard-earned money.

My blog will focus on mystery shops that I’ve done AND received payment for. I’ll also give links to the websites so readers can sign up. I’ll list the companies that have the quick and easy shops as well as the more in-depth higher paying shops. You’ll be surprised. From my experience, you can make up to $30 dollars an hour if you do a few short quick shops. Sign up to receive updates when I write a new post and feel free to ask questions or post comments about your experiences.

>What is Mystery Shopping?

>Well, I realize that many people have not heard of mystery shopping and I thought I should give a little more insight into what this actually is. Mystery shopping, or secret shopping, is when an individual is paid either a fee, or is reimbursed to try a good or service for a company while remaining anonymous. Some mystery shops require that individuals remain anonymous the entire time. Other shops require the mystery shopper to do a reveal at the end. Either way, the mystery shopper is providing a service for a company.

In order to start off mystery shopping, an individual will have to find a company that has listings in his/her area. While it sounds easy enough, often there are individuals who want to charge for this information. I’ve never purchased any kind of list to find out, I’ve just done research. I’d advise anyone to avoid mystery shopping lists. From what I’ve heard, a lot of them have useless information and there are scams out there too.

Be careful for mystery shopping scams. One scam I’ve read about is when a shopper is sent a bad check and is asked to deposit it into his or her account. The next step is to wire a portion of the check through a wire transfer. Basically, in the end the shopper is tricked out of his or her hard-earned money.

My blog will focus on mystery shops that I’ve done AND received payment for. I’ll also give links to the websites so readers can sign up. I’ll list the companies that have the quick and easy shops as well as the more in-depth higher paying shops. You’ll be surprised. From my experience, you can make up to $40 dollars an hour if you do a few short quick shops. Sign up to receive updates when I write a new post and feel free to ask questions or post comments about your experiences.