Mystery Shopping 101: My First Mystery Shop

Well, thanks to a great tip from a list of mystery shopping companies, I signed up with a company to do mystery shopping. I only checked out the first couple on her list, but got an answer right away from About Face. (http://www.aboutfacecorp.com)

I live in a smallish town on the coast of California, so I figured that if I was contacted at all, it would be for something like The Gap or Abercrombie, since those are the only nation-wide stores that are near me. Not so......yesterday, my boyfriend and I got to have some fun! We got to play a married couple looking to purchase a new home. It was for a new tract of about ten homes going up about ten miles from our current home.

Now you have to know a little bit of background on us to see how funny this really was. First of all, he is going through a divorce, so technically, he has a wife and it isn't me. So every time the sales person referred to me as his wife, we had to hold back from laughing out loud. I kept wanting to say his wife is home just to see what the guy would say. Second, there is a rather large age difference between him and I. You don't notice so much when you look at us, but I saw the guy do a double take when he was looking at our paperwork. Let's just say that he is a few days older than my dad and when you look at 1971 versus 1948, everyone does a double take.

Enough of the basic funnies. The shop was long, we were there for about and hour and a half. As I said, we had to act like real home buyers with financial numbers, paperwork, loan apps and the whole nine yards. Then there was the picking of the floor plans. Honey, that is the perfect spot for my antique sewing machine, etc. I must admit, that since I have never been married or bought a house....I got a little kick out of it. (but don't tell the BF that I was mentally picking out my wedding dress, invitations, etc.)

It was VERY hard to keep the act up that long. The houses were nice, but all two stories, which I would never even consider. The lots were no bigger than a postage stamp and I think that I could have passed the neighbor TP through our bathroom windows, they were so close together. I hope you get the point that it was work and this was 1 ½ hours remember.

After we left, we laughed so hard that he had to pull over and recover himself. Then came the even harder part, the report. They asked specific questions about the sales techniques, wanting quotes from the salesperson, things that you liked about their approach, didn't like, etc. All told, that took me another ½ an hour or so when we got home.

Overall, the experience was a good one, no make that memorable. I don't really think that I would do this particular kind of shop again. I have sent in the report and as long as I answered everything to their specs. I will get at least $45. If you divide that by the 2 hours it took, then again by 2, because we both had to go, that comes out to $11.25 an hour. Not bad, but not enough for me. I will try another mystery shop if it is at a retail store and not as involved as this one was.

I encourage you to try it. As I said it was a new experience and was a lot of fun.