HOW TO MAKE MONEY MYSTERY SHOPPING

HOW TO MAKE MONEY MYSTERY SHOPPING

Jennifer Coles

Imagine you are the owner of a chain of clothes shops. Whenever you visit a store, the shop assistants are extremely polite. After all, you’re the boss. The store is always beautifully laid out, and nothing is too much trouble for your friendly staff.

But what happens when you’re out of sight? Do your employees offer service with a smile, or do they act as though the customer is always wrong? Do the sales assistants have hang-ups about hanging things up? Do customers get ignored and walk out in disgust?

What you need is an undercover agent to visit the shop and report back. What you need is a mystery shopper.

Working as a mystery shopper is rewarding,

fun and sociable.

This eBook tells you everything you need to know, including:

• The best-paying and most reliable mystery shopping agencies.

• A step by step guide to the mystery shopping process.

• How to impress mystery shopping agencies and get increasingly good perks.

• How much you can expect to earn from mystery shopping and how to maximise your profits.

• Tips from a seasoned pro with 15 years experience in the field.

• How your work as a mystery shopper can improve company culture and even change government policy.

• Scams you need to be aware of and what to do if something goes wrong.

I’ve taken a hands-on approach to researching this eBook, becoming a mystery shopper myself (see chapter 5). Once I got the hang of it, I was inundated with mystery shopping work, and you can be too!

Let us know about your mystery shopping experiences on our Facebook and Twitter pages –we always love hearing from you!

WHAT IS MYSTERY SHOPPING?

Mystery shopping has been taking place since the 1940s, when it was used by the department stores of New York. Nowadays, almost all sectors employ mystery shoppers.

Tens of thousands of people across the UK are registered as mystery shoppers. These secret squirrels are paid to eat in restaurants, drink in bars and buy luxury goods. In return they write up a full report on the standard of service they receive.

Mystery shopping doesn’t require formal qualifications, so it attracts a diverse range of applicants. Agencies have a wide range of people on their books, from models to magistrates.

The industry is growing at an astounding rate. A study conducted by the Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA), found that 8.1 million mystery shops took place in the US in 2004, and Nigel Cover, president of MSPA Europe, says that the number of opportunities within the industry is rising.

Field research takes place in a diverse range of places, including automotive garages, estate agencies, banks and health spas. There’s a huge range of work available.

A mystery shopper could be enjoying a weekend break one month and phoning a call centre to complain about their gas bill the next.

In the US, mystery shoppers are increasingly being asked to investigate healthcare clinics, opticians and dentists. While this is less

common in the UK, who knows what changes healthcare reforms could bring?

All this ‘spying on staff’ might seem a bit spooky, but it’s a reality of modern retail. Think of the famous restaurant critic A. A. Gill, or ‘Queen of Shops’ Mary Portas. Both these influential personalities would insist that there’s no excuse for poor service. Mystery shopping helps keep standards high and gives good sales assistants a chance to shine.

On some occasions mystery shoppers even contribute towards Government policy and help to keep consumers safe. In 2009, TNS Research International was commissioned by the Office of Fair Trading to carry out a study of used car dealerships in the UK using trained mystery shoppers. The results of this survey have been used to protect members of the public when they buy from used car dealers.

Chapter 2

JASMINE’S VIEW

MoneyMagpie founder Jasmine Birtles has been mystery shopping since 2006. She discovered it while out for lunch with a friend.

“She pulled a stack of Pret A Manger vouchers out of her handbag,” Jasmine remembers, “so I asked her where she got them.

“She said she was a mystery shopper. I thought, ‘what a great idea’. I signed up with a company online and was offered a meal at PizzaExpress. I took a friend and they were very impressed that dinner was free.”

Jasmine firmly believes that mystery shopping is a job for someone who has a lot to say.

“Apparently a lot of people don’t fill the forms in properly, or they don’t write very much. I don’t understand that as I’m opinionated.”

“ The reason for a mystery shopper to be there is to keep standards up. At the same time I think it’s important to say if you think a staff member is very good.”

For Jasmine, one of the best things about mystery shopping is the flexibility.

She said: “Because of the job I do, I get a lot of last-minute requests to appear on television, so it’s hard for me to say for sure whether I’ll be able to go mystery shopping a week on Wednesday.

“But what I’ve found is that some mystery shopping companies don’t mind this. You can ask to be put on the ‘last-minute request’ list, and they’ll ring you up and say ‘can you go for a meal tonight?’ That’s great for me because it works on an ad hoc basis.”

Jasmine is just an occasional mystery shopper, but she estimates she makes £500 a year in free goodies, read her article on our website.

Chapter 3

THE BASICS

The benefits

Although some people do make a full-time living out of mystery shopping, agencies tell us that most people use it to supplement their income by £30-£40 a month.

A typical assignment might involve travelling to a shop, purchasing an item for £10, traveling home again and spending about 30 minutes on your computer compiling a report. For this you will be paid £25. This is £15 for your time and £10 to spend on the item (which you can keep).

To save time and reduce transport costs, it’s a good idea to combine mystery shopping with your weekly shop. If you have to start paying out for petrol or buses to the shops, it won’t be so worthwhile.

How to apply

While a small number of shops employ mystery shoppers directly, most go through agencies. So it follows that if you want to become a mystery shopper, you will need to register with an agency. Below is a list of tried and tested mystery shopping agencies. All these agencies have either been road tested by us MoneyMagpies, or they’ve received lots of positive recommendations on internet forums. Because these agencies use online forms, the registration process is quick and easy.

Here are a few other helpful articles:

Become A Mystery Shopper And Get Paid To Shop And Eat Out

Make Money Buying Alcohol

How to Make Money When You’re

Unemployed

Directory of mystery shopping agencies:

Service Monitor

GBW

Grass Roots

TNS International

Checkout Mystery Shopping Services

ESA Retail

Writing up your report

When you get home after your assignment, you’re required to fill out an online form. You have to submit this on the same day as your assignment, but it’s fine to go mystery shopping on your lunch break and fill out the form in the evening.

Although it might be tempting to rush through the form, a good write-up is the key to getting more mystery shopping work and goodies! Here is how you do it well:

• Complete the form as soon as possible after the assignment. This will ensure you don’t forget key details. It might be a good idea to print a paper copy of the form, and complete it in the car after your assignment (making sure no one can see you). Type these notes into the online form once you get home.

• Spelling and grammar is very important, as Lee Ryan explained. “We are astounded sometimes when people can’t use upper case letters or basic punctuation,” he said, “We have to correct spelling mistakes before we

• pass the report on to our client, and when this happens, we won’t offer the mystery shopper any further work.” Use a spell checker and write in full sentences. Online dictionaries and thesauruses can help you to express yourself accurately.

• Make sure you write a full paragraph of three or four sentences for each section of the form, not just a brief comment.

• The questions on the mystery shopping forms are usually very specific. However, if you’re struggling to think what to write, imagine you are telling a close friend about your visit to the shop. What are the main points you would tell them?

• Try to be specific (use details, don’t be vague) and objective (keep your opinions out of it). For example, say “we queued at the bar for five and a half minutes,” instead of “there was a horribly long wait at the bar.” Write “the assistant said ‘Is there anything I can help you with?’” instead of “the assistant was lovely.”

ADVICE FROM A PRO

In 1996, Barry Grossman spotted an ad placed in the Guardian newspaper by mystery shopping company Research Resources. Little did he know this was the start of ten years in mystery shopping, and a move into a full-time career in market research.

His first mystery shopping assignment was to visit 16 pubs, luckily not in one go! He had to visit some Wetherspoon pubs and some owned by their competitors, and he was paid £4 per pub.

He said: “It was a good talking point. I could tell my mates I was getting paid to drink in the pub. I was working as a freelance writer, so mystery shopping was a good way to make some money on the side.

I got sent to some nice restaurants; not wonderful, but not the local burger joint either.

Things soon started to get more lucrative. At one point I was getting a few hundred pounds a week, back in the 90s, just to check that high street charity promoters were doing their job. It got to the point where they were asking me to stay in hotels and to try Eurostar

After a few years, things changed. I think more people were trying to get into mystery shopping, so they stopped paying you for staying in hotels. You got your expenses but other than that you did it for the experience. Still, in these thrifty times, a free weekend break is not to be sniffed at.”

We asked Barry if he had any advice for people getting into mystery shopping today. He said that because most of the assignments are now announced by email, you need to be the sort of person who is often on your email and very quick to respond. He also suggested you do what you can to build up a reputation for reliability.

ADVENTURES OF A ROOKIE MYSTERY SHOPPER BY JENNIFER COLES

However good something is, it can always be made a bit better, right?

That’s always been my mentality. I have to admit I’m a stickler for good service. And a little bit of a perfectionist. So when I heard about mystery shopping, I was instantly intrigued.

I worked as a waitress and in a call centre as a student, so I accept it is difficult to get things perfect for every customer. Yet I always had a conscientious attitude and I was keen to put any mistakes right as quickly as possible. I think paying customers shouldn’t feel embarrassed to speak up if something isn’t right, because then the shop or restaurant has the chance to make amends.

A case in point is my favourite Italian restaurant. They once committed the faux pas of serving me carbonara sauce as thin as water. When I complained, the waitress couldn’t have been more understanding. She admitted others had complained, and that the chef was at fault. She then refused to take any payment for my starter, main or dessert, despite my insistence that I was happy to pay for the starter and main. I’ve been back to that restaurant many, many times since then.

Unfortunately this doesn’t always happen. I’ve stayed in an expensive hotel room, discovered the shower doesn’t work, mentioned it to reception, and received only a distracted apology. I’ve found lumps of brown grit in a pasta dish, discreetly told the waiter, only to be told it is sea salt, with no offer to replace or refund the dish.

When this happens, what do you do?

Demand to speak to the manager and make a scene? Not if you’re on a date you don’t, or

if you’re out with elderly relatives. Mystery shopping gives you the chance to offer constructive criticism through a legitimate channel.

Getting started

I decided to sign up with GfK mystery shopping. The registration process had three stages: a personal details form, a ‘census’ section on my likes and interests, and some training on how to be a good mystery shopper, with a test at the end.

The personal details section took no time at all. The census took a little longer, maybe ten minutes. I was asked about my household income, shopping habits, energy provider, marital status…as a journalist who has written on data protection, this made me a little uneasy, but GfK’s privacy statement reassured me.

GfK sends you mystery shopping assignments near your home, but you can add a second address, perhaps your work or somewhere you visit regularly.

Once I’d finished the census, I got an email advertising new mystery shopping assignments and signed up for one the following week, at a mobile phone shop.

I would be paid £14 to go into the shop, enquire about a mobile phone then head back to my computer and submit a report online.

On the day, I read through the briefing notes; 17 pages long and very detailed. As a journalist I am used to sifting through large quantities of information but it took me 30 minutes to read the notes. There was a lot to remember – it was like learning the stage directions and script for a play. Once you’ve read the notes you take a short test on the GfK website to show you’ve understood.

Going undercover

Arriving at the shop, I browsed the phone displays and waited until a sales assistant approached me, secretly timing how long it took him to come over to me.

The ‘sales consultant’ was very charming (are mystery shoppers allowed to flirt?), but I felt rather tense, as I didn’t want to let a single important detail pass me by.

What was his height, build and hair colour? Did he display his name prominently? What mobile phone contracts could I get with at least 500 minutes and 100 texts? Did he offer me insurance? To be more specific HOW did he hand me the insurance leaflet?

There was a lot to think about, but once I was back at my computer, I realised I remembered a lot more than I thought I would, and it was easy to answer all the

Excluding travelling time, this assignment took me 90 minutes, so it works out as a rate of pay of around £9.30 an hour. I wasn’t supposed to buy the phone, so there were no freebies. If you are a professional consultant able to earn £100s per hour, mystery shopping is probably not worth your while. If you are on a lower wage, I do think it’s a good option.

I’ve done a couple more mystery shopping assignments since then, and I’ve found it gets quicker with practice. I’ve also been able to repeat the same mystery shopping ‘scenario’ at other branches of the store, which is useful. I get paid the same, but I don’t have to spend long re-reading the brief.

Bear in mind you need a digital camera or camera phone so you can take a picture of the front of the shop to prove you’ve gone to the right one, and you need to be able to upload the picture quickly.

Personally, I’m going to try and go mystery shopping once a week. In two months, I could have an extra £100 towards a holiday. The beauty of mystery shopping for me is the flexibility and the novelty value – it won’t get boring.

questions on GfK’s online form.

REALITY, RULES AND REASSURANCE

The reality

Mystery shopping can be fun and there are lots of perks, but it’s a good idea to be realistic about what it can offer. It can involve a lot of travel, and if the brief is not carried out exactly, you may not get paid.

We asked Luke Ryan, operations manager at Checkout UK, to fill us in on the reality of mystery shopping. Here is his advice:

Most of our members take part in mystery shopping for a bit of extra income. But full timers need a reliable means of transport. Outside the bigger cities, it’s not unusual for ‘career’ mystery shoppers to travel 250 miles a day.

You must have a good memory for facts, figures and faces. Good mystery shoppers are observant and detail-focused.

Watch your waistline! Some of our mystery shoppers will visit five fast food outlets a day. They’ll take one bite of a burger and throw the rest away.

You need to be able to read a brief, stick to a brief, and not deviate from a brief.

GfK stresses that mystery shoppers must be scrupulously honest. This means that if you complete the mystery shopping assignment and realise you have forgotten to check an important detail, you should own up to it, and if necessary go back to get the missing information.

The golden rules of mystery shopping

• Register with lots of mystery shopping providers to maximise the choice of assignments.

• Before you leave the house, make sure you remember the most important points of the brief, the ‘must dos’.

• If you don’t understand what you have to do, call the mystery shopping provider and ask for an explanation.

• Go to the right shop. There might be two branches of the same store in a small geographical area, but if you get the wrong one, you won’t be paid.

• Take the photograph of the outside of the store after you’ve performed the mystery shop, so you don’t arouse suspicion.

• Keep cool. Don’t give yourself away by giving the staff strange looks, acting embarrassed or lurking behind plant pots making notes!

• Make notes straight away so you don’t forget anything.

• Be objective when you do the write-up.

• Never tell one mystery shopping company any details about the work you have done for another mystery shopping company. It’s important not to share commercially sensitive information with a company’s rivals.

What if my report causes someone to get fired?

Mr Cover had reassuring words for any mystery shoppers worried about this.

He said: “No information you provide can be used against a member of staff in a way that could affect their employment. It might be used to help improve their performance, but it will not be used as part of any discipline procedure.

“The information mystery shoppers provide is usually used in a more general manner for company-wide training.”

SCAMS AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

Make sure you avoid mystery shopping scams at all costs. Sadly, some cruel con artists prey on people who see mystery shopping as ‘the road to riches’. The following cons have been brought to MoneyMagpie’s attention:

• A fake mystery shopping firm calls up and asks you to accept a delivery as a mystery shopper. A parcel arrives, you complete a report, and later on, someone comes to pick it up. You later find out that the con artist has paid for the goods using a stolen credit card, and your address has been blacklisted by credit reference agencies.

• A bogus mystery shopping agency asks you to pay £30 for a list of its ‘exclusive providers’. When you receive the list, it turns out you could have easily got this information for free just by surfing the web. Watch out for a company called UK Mystery Shopper Employment Agency.

• The ‘advance fee’ or ‘Ken Coker’ scam A letter from a mystery shopping company (specialising in the financial services industry) lands on your doormat. It contains a cheque for a shockingly large amount of money – £2,000 – along with a briefing, and some leaflets about mystery shopping. You are asked to pose as an ordinary bank customer by depositing the cheque into your account You keep your ‘fee’ of £300, and wire the remaining £1,700 to the bank account details provided Of course, once you have done this, the cheque bounces.

Read our article; Don’t Be Conned By Money Transfer Mystery Shopping Scam

How to stay safe

• Never pay to join mystery shopping companies or for lists of information. In fact, never pay anything at all, there’s just no need.

• Exercise caution if you see mystery shopping work advertised on Gumtree. The website allows anyone to place a free advert, so although some offers of work are genuine, there are also scams in operation.

• If you are offered payment in advance of a mystery shopping assignment, don’t spend anything, or carry out any bank or Western Union transactions, until you’re sure the money is in your account. Some legitimate companies, such as Mystery Shoppers Ltd, do occasionally fund upfront for very large spend purchases but they use cheques or direct bank transfers. This means you should be able to see when they have cleared, so you can be sure you really do have the money.

• Stick to the providers listed by MoneyMagpie, as these are tried and trusted.

• Check with the Mystery Shopping Providers Association to see if the

• See if the mystery shopping company has a UK address and telephone number. Unfortunately this is no guarantee of legitimacy. In 2006, The Office of Fair Trading reported on a scam listing an East London address, but the email originated in Canada, and offered a US fax number. The East London address was that of another company – one completely unrelated to mystery shopping, who had no idea their address was being used.

• Don’t be afraid to ring the company up for a chat. You can often get a feel for a company this way. Use your instincts.

• Look at the website of the mystery shopping site. If they have a welldesigned site with many functions, such as online report submission, this is a good sign. A single page advertising a company is less credible.

If something goes wrong, what can I do?

Nigel Cover was president of MSPA Europe until 2013, a regulatory body overseeing the work of 160 mystery shopping providers He is also Executive Board Director of Grass Roots, a large UK mystery shopping company. He had this advice on staying safe while mystery shopping:

“Like any large industry with many providers, most are ethical, some are not. Check on the MSPA website to see if the company is registered with us All our members have to sign up to a code of conduct to make sure that everything is done ethically. If anyone has a problem with any of our mystery shopping providers, they can complain to us.”

Mr Cover says that if the MSPA hear of a scam, they do their best to publicise it on their website.

We would add the following advice:

If you see an advert on Gumtree and you think it is a scam, report it and give yourself a pat on the back for helping to keep other mystery shoppers safe.

If you encounter any type of mystery shopping scam,

report

it to the police Although the chances of getting your cash back are often slim, the more information the police have to go on, the more likely it is they will be able to prosecute fraudsters, who may then be ordered to reimburse their victims.