What happens if you are figured out? And if I were to shop at a higher end hotel do I pay for my stay out of pocket or does the company? Last, how does the pay work

My experience is that if I am figured out I am still paid/reimbursed but just not allowed to shop the same location or the same client for some period of time. I suspect if you did something outrageous that called attention to yourself you might not get paid or reimbursed, but in the normal course of things the client could only at best guess you were the shopper.

Obviously on high end restaurants or high end hotels there is a significant amount of cash out of pocket. This is precisely why most companies require that a shopper have a history of good, useable shops with them before they will assign one of these. When a company has to reject a shop there often is all sorts of screaming about how horrible the company was, how much the shopper lost, how the shopper was going to take them to court, etc. etc. Yet my sense is that 95% of shop rejections are due to shopper error if not more. When I think back over the years, more of my shops have been accepted and paid when I had a minor screw up than were rejected because of a similar magnitude screw up.

As for pay, I'm not quite sure what you are asking. If you are asking specifically about the pay for high end hotels, there is a range. I have seen them as low as reimbursement only where the number of needed observations was low and the write up would only take an hour or two to in excess of $200 per night when virtually every hour is spent on site either doing additional observations or writing them up, because typically a hotel report needs to be submitted with all photos etc. by 5PM the day you check out. Most of the time the hotel reverses the charges for your stay on your credit card in 10 days to 2 weeks. The shopping company you work for will pay your shop fees according to their schedule.

I'm not sure if I've ever been figured out, though I suspect I was at a simple burger shop. Quite often, nobody really says anything and you just wind up with excellent service, plus you get to watch employees scramble around cleaning up the mess that their restaurant usually is. Win-win, near as I'm concerned.

Often it's worth it to the store staff to not to report that they spotted you, and certainly that much has never happened to me. I have read of multiple types of shops where people noticed their customer profile called them out on being a shopper, such as a car service shop.

The only reason I've ever had shops rejected is, as Flash points out, mostly my own fault in missing a guideline, and once when a scheduler biffed it and put me up for something before the rotation was up.

Finally, yes, even with the high end shops, you'll be paying out of pocket. I keep a specific credit card just for hotel charges that will ultimately get reversed.

I've wondered too, if the client pegs you as the mystery shopper, do they tell the company, and does the company in turn let you know that somehow you were spotted?

@Delights79 wrote:

I've wondered too, if the client pegs you as the mystery shopper, do they tell the company, and does the company in turn let you know that somehow you were spotted?

It's impossible to answer that question. Every client (and every individual who works for a client) reacts differently, and each mystery shopping company handles it differently. If a client employee who gets shopped figures out that he is assisting a mystery shopper, if he is smart, he will simply do everything right and get a very good score. If you know you are being mystery-shopped, why do a bad job? And if you do a bad job, why would you admit you knew the shopper was mystery shopping you?

In some cases locations will dispute a poor report by attempting to discredit or identify the shopper. This can result in the location needing to be reshopped so the location thinks they got a 'free pass' on the poor report. If the shopper did what they contracted for it is up to the MSP to pay for the shop and they can have the discussion with the client about whether the location in question gets shopped again and at whose expense.

It has happened to me twice that I know about.
I had been shopping one location for years and, from what I remember, my experiences and reports had been positive. After I entered the report, I received an e-mail from the shop company explaining that I had been identified as the shopper and would no longer be allowed to shop any of the locations. I was still paid for the final visit.
The other one was a fluke. It was a pizza delivery company and, according to the shop company, they would randomly pull customer addresses. If one of them happened to be the shopper, you were banned from shopping for a few months. I was allowed to continue completing those shops after my cool-off period.

They can be 99% sure, but never 100% unless you tell them.

The burger shop I think I got identified at, for MarketForce, seems to be adept at spotting people from what I've read here. I notice the customer service ramps up a bit when I enter, for instance with people delivering orders directly to tables, and the aforementioned cleaning frenzy.

One time, I entered as one employee was just off, and he was being boisterous with some friends as he was leaving through the dining area. He let out a loud curse word, and the shift leader looked like a dog that just had water thrown on him, calling the employee out on it. The employee looked at me, oblivious, and said something to the effect of how I probably didn't mind. I said, "What am I, your mother?" But the shift leader was looking at me with this total guilty look.

I didn't bother reporting it. The guy was out of uniform and on his own dime just then.

I was "outed" on a shop for BARE. My scheduler e-mailed me and told me I couldn't shop that location again. Darn! And once I was at the Arches, and they just totally messed up my order. This was back when you were supposed to get your order corrected, so I did. I HEARD one employee say to another "that's our mystery shopper!" and the other employee said "I know -- and we screwed her order up!" But most of the time, I'm treated so badly, I'm quite positive they don't suspect I'm shopping them!

I have never had a shop where I received money from the company before performing shops. Indeed, in certain cases, I have waited up to 7 weeks to get paid.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/16/2015 03:45AM by ceasesmith.

I was figured out on one mystery shop. I had to buy a gift card (for a specific amount) online and try to use it in the store. When I went to the store and brought my items to the register, I asked the salesman if they accepted gift cards. He said no, then asked me if it was for x amount of dollars. That surprised me, but he didn't say anything more and neither did I.

You do realize you were just recognized as the shopper right?

@HonnyBrown wrote:

I was figured out on one mystery shop. I had to buy a gift card (for a specific amount) online and try to use it in the store. When I went to the store and brought my items to the register, I asked the salesman if they accepted gift cards. He said no, then asked me if it was for x amount of dollars. That surprised me, but he didn't say anything more and neither did I.

Maybe I'm dense, but how would pulling the shopper's address, clue them in that (s)he's an MS?

They just randomly pull a shopper's address and tell the MSC that they identified the shopper in hopes that they got it right. If they had a lucky guess and were right, then the shopper gets pulled from rotation.

Remember, kind sir/madam [Honnybrown], this is for newbies! I have no idea what the significance of that interaction is.. Did the client have only MS use gift cards? Thank you for your post; wish I was more clever. =D

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/25/2016 12:36AM by raincade.

Raincade, I didn't quite get what Ms Honny was talking about either, dear. Maybe the gift cards are only accepted online?