Can someone give me ther input on shadow shopper. Why do I have to pay a fee to be a part of there ms group. They have monthly, yearly, and lifetime.

Thanks
shopperbc

Uh, you need to pay a fee so they can make a buck off you? Frankly I can see little purpose in joining shadow shopper as a 'trial offer' or a 'dues paying member'. They are a referral service with basically lists for sale. If you do choose to accept a 'trial offer' make sure you get it cancelled well before the end of your trial period as there have been many issues with credit cards being charged despite cancellation and they will NOT refund your money.

The shopper's mantra - **don't pay to shop**!

I paid for SS for a month when I got a $3 deal late last November....I got some decent shops and two new to me, continuing-forward MSC relationships out of it, ones that paid better than most, too. Certainly more than I have gotten from them than I have gotten from my free Premier Shopper membership-I have never even gotten a single new lead from them. I made sure to cancel a couple of days ahead of the due date as they are well known for their take no prisoners attitude. It was worth the $3 bucks in my case, but you can never tell. I might have just gotten lucky.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/04/2009 03:08AM by dee shops.

I did the free Bronze Member thing about 2 years ago. I got hammered by partial job listings for several months afterwards. I researched the partial info they provided and that really opened the door for me. They still email me once a month about a $9.95 trial membership. No need for that now...

Thanks all.

Shadowshopper is a job board basically that you can find elsewhere for free at times. Some companies may post exclusively on shadowshopper (The posting process is SO much easier than other job boards for companies side)

There are some resources that Shadowshopper offers people to help them, but it's just a resource put together that you can find on your own somewhere else. I know of several companies that post exclusively on Shadowshopper and no where else (Their openings) That's what we do. Job slinger is the other big job board, which is free, but it's such a pain in the rear to post jobs that we rarely do it.

It's up to you, really. If the value is there, go for it, but if you use the partial ads like mentioned above, you'll probably find it somewhere else and not have to pay to see the company and where to apply.

Jellybeans, your firm posts all over the place. How can you say that SS is the only place you post?

I post on Shadowshopper myself, I forgot about the other ones who post when I said that. They're still new, only been doing it about a month and a half now, I've been posting on Shadowshopper for 4 years. Honest mistake.

I tried the Bronze membership one time but was disappointed that there was no real information. Then, last March, I got an email about a trial Gold membership for three months. I bought it. I was flooded with emails. Many of them were repeats, but I really did get benefit, such as companies with interesting mystery shopping assignments that I never would have known about otherwise. I'd say the best benefit was that I was given information on merchandising companies that really did have jobs in my area, and I could see the description. Therefore, I didn't waste my time applying with companies recommended on websites that might not have anything active in my area. I have lots and lots of merchandising and mystery shopping companies on lists that I hope to get to someday, but Shadow Shopper made me apply with new companies in a much more organized way because they had work in my geographic area "right now". I am now working for some of these companies.

I paid for this membership with a gift card, which I made sure to use up before the deadline. I forget the exact amount, but I think it was $33. About a week before the deadline, I got an email saying they couldn't use the "credit card", inviting me to renew my membership. In fact, they gave me an extra week of free Gold membership to think about it.

I classified the emails I received as either Known, Used, Couldn't Use or Repeats. Of course, some overlapped, but they were recorded in only one place. During this three months and one week, I received 134 emails about situations that I already knew about or would have known about if I had been checking websites with which I was already registered. There were 182 repeats. One hundred and sixty three of them were notices that I couldn't use, either because of distance, or skills I didn't have, or other similar reasons. There were 53 announcements that I responded to. Some turned out to be things I didn't want after all, but that wasn't many out of the total. They were both mystery shopping and merchandising. I did not keep a record of how many of those applications were actually accepted.

Therefore, I received about 14 emails a day. I received more than one a day on average that I could respond to. I call that money well spent.

On their website, Shadow Shopper keeps a record of how many I responded to. They have a really good website with information on how to make a resume shine, for example. I am a former professional resume writer. They were giving very good information. If I needed to pick up more assignments quickly and had more time, I'd certainly do this again.

While the free sites do help, they often have things outside my geographic area, and they don't flood me with emails about possible jobs, either.

THAT was a really organized accounting of your SS experience, Sandra Sue. I liked reading it. I know I benefited from my $3 (yes, three) dollar trial, but, I could never have said anything close to what you did-I just never thought to track that much. I learned something awesome from you.

Yes Sandra Sue thats an awsome reply. It was very informative and helpful. I too used SS when I started out. I think it was really worth the money. I don't remember now but it must have been the Bronze cause I paid about 30.00 for a month. It was very helpful to me and when I have people aske me about MS'ing I always recommend they start out by checking out the SS site.

I guess I was one of the lucky one. I canceled my membership within the deadline, and did not have a bit of the problems some talk about having, chargine the CC etc.

jessica darling. please do not pay for this

Dahling beisen, why not stay quiet about that which you do not know? Dahling? So quiet now? Yes, we see you for the faker you are.

jessicaclarke Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Can someone give me ther input on shadow shopper.
> Why do I have to pay a fee to be a part of there
> ms group. They have monthly, yearly, and
> lifetime.
>
> Thanks
> shopperbc


ShadowShopper is unique in the mystery shopping industry. We are not the company that's shopped, a mystery shopping company or a mystery shopping scheduler. Instead, we are an impartial and independent company, serving the best interests of the mystery shopper AND mystery shopping companies. The best way to think of us is as the "eBay" of mystery shopping. While we DO NOT auction jobs, we DO put shoppers and mystery shopping job schedulers together online. For job schedulers, we enable them to post the mystery shopping jobs they are trying to fill in the easiest way possible and get these jobs to thousands of qualified, targeted and motivated shoppers nationwide. For mystery shoppers who are looking for work, we get them the job opportunities they want; in the quickest and easiest way possible.

thank