My Experience as a Mystery Shopper

When I first told my friends that I was going to become a mystery shopper for the summer, they all cracked up. Their laughter was not born of genuine amusement, but rather of an astonishment at my apparent ingenuousness.

"You're going to get conned!" they scolded.

"Those things aren't for real," they said, referring to mystery shopping companies.

"You just don't want the responsibility of a real job, don't you?" One of them dared to say what everyone else held back.

I didn't care. I was determined to forgo the usual summer job in a lab or an office in order to live a life of freedom and luxury.

I was going to get paid to shop, and I was going to get rich painlessly.

My first experience consisted of getting swindled by those websites that claim that you'll have access to a database of "privileged information" that consisted of listings of "superior" mystery shopping companies for a "nominal" fee of $29.95. Considering what I had in the bank at the time, that was like buying a car. Or rather, paying for a car, but receiving a peanut. I spent hours giving my information to useless (and probably just as fraudulent as the first website) companies.

June was a very difficult month indeed. I could have quit, but I still wasn't motivated enough to get a "real" job, so I decided to keep at it because I needed some sort of income in case I got screwed over again.

So I found Volition.com, which lists reputable websites and has forums and links and everything a baby bird mystery shopper could ever dream of--all for free. And they warned against giving your money for this sort of information to websites on the web.

Of course.

I went through the forums at volition.com and gleaned hundreds of bits of advice on which companies were reputable, which paid on time, which paid within 2 weeks, one month or several months (or never) and so much other useful information.

So I finally signed up with decent companies and began my journey.

First of all, it can be tedious. For a free doughnut and coffee and 5 dollars in commissions, I had to go to the food joint, make an order, time everything exactly, eat the food in the joint and sweat like a hog from worrying about getting "caught" (the companies avidly stress the importance of concealing your identity as a mystery shopper). In the end, I got "caught" a total of zero times, and I had done nearly 50 assignments, so unless you stupidly blurt out that you're evaluating the service for so-and-so, the workers are not going to suspect anything. To add to the tedium of conducting the assignment, you have to fill out a form at the end, which can range from yes-no questions to short essays.

I once had to do a hockey store far away, and upon entry, was surprised to see that it was filled with male teenage hockey players and their fathers. It was awfully awkward when the sales associate approached me and I had to pretend to be interested in hockey gear (part of the assignment was to assess how knowledgeable and helpful the sales associate was in regards to various sorts of hockey gear). I asked about the mouth guards, which turned out to be jockstraps, and so I left the store soon after that with a purchase of socks. I was in the store for an hour, standing stiffly in the corner, and all I gained was a pair of socks.

On the plus side, there are occasionally great assignments. I liked doing the movie assignments. Those were incredibly fun and while I'd only get paid a total of $5-8, I would usually get reimbursed for two movie tickets and a small soda. Perhaps the best assignment (and a rare one indeed), is a multi-store evaluation in a mall, for which I received a total of nearly sixty dollars.

If you'd like to try your hand at this hobby (it certainly doesn't suffice as a summer job, as I've learned), then try it. It's an interesting experience and can actually be kind of fun. Sometimes, you'll come across some prize assignments that you really enjoy. Though those have been rare in my experience, they do come once in a while. Check out the mystery shopping companies list on volition.com and sign up for those that have assignments in your area.