Has anyone completed any of these shops? What exactly do you do?

Are you talking about doing an audit in an electronics store or office supply store? You have to identify products on the floor. For one version of this assignment, I believe they were mostly printers. It was a little nerve-wracking at first, especially because I had to recognize whether the model was operational for the customer to try in addition to knowing each model. While doing a mystery shop in the same store later, I met a woman doing the audit. We had a discussion about it. She said they get easier because you know the store is nearly always going to have four models of this or one model of that. She could stand in one place and just point to the other aisles and say, "That one's a. . . ." If I remember correctly, there is some terminology you have to get used to if it is an office supply store. Part of it was whether the product (printer paper) was "rainbowed" or "framed" on display. There was also a question about whether the paper had been recycled or whether you could recycle used toner cartridges at the store. Eventually, the company had a test I had to take to prove I knew the terminology. I believe these two different assignments were for two different clients, but it's been so long I can't remember right now. For the one that was a mystery shop and not an audit, I can't see how the staff wouldn't know you were the shopper.

There is a currently offered electronics audit with GFK that requires two days in the store every other month. Each two day stint is considered 'one audit' and is advertised in some places as $150 and others as $130. The price is $130. A shopper who did the pilot project indicated that data input for the report was around 7 hours (this is in addition to the 2 days on site). You are checking a lot of items in each department with an electronic bar code reader and comparing the reader price to the shelf price. You are looking for items in the store ad and seeing if they are in stock and priced correctly. You are looking at the facility itself, including non-public areas. You are interacting frequently with various managers. You are doing print outs from your bar code reader, etc. etc. A major concern I have with this job is that it is always difficult to find even a salesperson in my local stores and I hate to think how much time would be spent waiting for a manager to appear to report my findings of discrepancies.

Your comments remind me, Flash, that I used to do an audit of what used to be a catalog store. With either MSP the client used, the work wasn't worth the small pay.

My sense also is that if you want to run a background check on me and have me pee in a cup for drug testing perhaps you should be putting me on salary with benefits or at least paying me as the professional I am.

Thank you all, that is exactly what I wanted to know. Does not seem worth the time for the pay.

I am scheduled to do one close to me next month. I will report back if it was worth it...