Hello Fellow MSers

I hope all are doing well, and that none of you have fallen into the trap of any of these scammers targeting mystery shoppers. There is no easy way to find out who is a scammer and who is a legitimate company when you receive an email, and certainly the MSPA does not make it easy to find who are the legitimate member companies, I wounder why that is, but with a bit of do-diligence you can save yourself a lot of grief. First don't jump from joy about you getting the assignment. Calm down, then simply use a search to gather information about the entity that is sending you the assignment. If there is any payment issues, you paying them to get the assignment, that is a No No from the get go. If it has an email that does not have anything to do with company for example the company name is Best Secret Shops, and their web site is www.bestsecrtetshops.com.ng and their email is @hotmail that is a sign of trouble. Professional people should have company issued emails ending with @company.com and notice the .ng that is the domain for Nigeria no offense but Nigeria has been a hotbed for scams and that does not excuse other countries at all, in fact Africans are well versed in the ways of the Europeans, specially London, so you may find a London based address. Speaking of addresses, use Google maps or Google Earth and look up the address given of the home office.

So you see that you need to be careful and not simply think that anyone sending you an assignment has your best interest at heart. I only wished MSPA would list their company members so that a simple search will do all that for us.

Be safe and happy holidays to all.

Wassim

@Wassim wrote:

. I only wished MSPA would list their company members so that a simple search will do all that for us.

MSPA does have a list of member companies on their website:
[www.mspa-na.org]

So does the IMSC:
[www.imscinfo.com]

At the bottom of posts here there is an Official List of Mystery Shopping Companies, although I have no knowledge if it is pruned or just a list of companies people on this forum talk about.

As far as being careful of the web address, I wouldn't automatically trust a .com. Anyone can register a www.whatever.com address, including scammers.

And yes, definitely stay safe out there and don't trust a company asking you for money or sending you information that you didn't ask for.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2016 06:11PM by bmarvin.

The easy way to determine if it's a scam is: they want to send a large check to Western union for you to cash and take out a few hundred dollars and send them the rest....never accept money for a job NOT done. No brain power needed here, just common sense.