bhome83

Looking through the classifieds of my local paper they have an ad for secret shoppers who get paid to rate certain retail and dining experiences (kmart, walmart, jcpenny). so i call the 800 # and lady on the phone says they require $1.95 for the welcome material and after the first month $10/month after that. then for each shopping adventure you get $50 for 15min of rating employees, store etc. so the ad says you can earn up to $150/day!!! of course you have to subtract the $10 monthly fee. this sounds like a scam, but am curious if anyone has been a secret shopper and what their experience has been? i could really use some extra money but this sounds too good to be true. how would they be able to tell i even went to the store? i could just rate the store w/o going to it. hmmm............

rich-y

The did a story on this the other day on my local news. It's a scam, and you're correct; it is too good to be true.

SterlingBen

Good rule of thumb, if it sounds too good to be true then it probably is.

pantala

There are several companies that arrange secret shops at no cost to you the customer. (Can be found by a bit of searching online.) These usually involve an employee interaction and sometimes a purchase which is reimbursed up to a certain amount. Each shop will typically also have a flat fee that you are paid for your time/travel/etc.

Shops range from tobacco and alcohol policy compliancy checks at gas stations to high-end dinners. Based on what you get vs time/effort/travel, I find that a lot of the shops are no longer worth my time to do now that I am out of college. The occasional high-end dinner is definately worth it though. I had a huge dinner including valet and drinks at Ruth's Chris reimbursed just a couple weeks ago.

I find that secret shopping is good to get a couple extra bucks here and there and sometimes a free dinner or lunch, but I would definately not even consider it a source of supplemental income.

M2theAX

Have any links to the company you use? I just went to Ruth Chris for an anniversary.

bhome83

yeah, id love to hear from some of you guys where you found out about the dining places that have these secret shoppers.

arsmith7

I have never been a secret shopper, but I've been secret shopped. When I was working at Best Buy I helped a lady with some laptop questions and went through the entire Best Buy lines of bullshit to sell accessories and services and whatever. A month or so later my manager comes to me and says I was secret shopped and he had the results. Unfortuntately I underperformed and ended up getting written up for not offering financing or reward zone. I had secret shoppers

I guess the point of my post is that there are some legitimate ones out there if you know where to look. The lady who shopped me just had to answer some multiple choice questions and give short answers. She did leave a lot of general comments at the end, but I'm not sure that was required.

BKenn01

Yes, there are companies that do this. The company I work for hired a company for alcohol policy compliance. The people who shop are apparantly paid minimum wage, because we got some pathetic service. It was truly sad. I would reccomend any business to contract it themselves. Which is what we do for our mystery shopper.