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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2019 03:48AM by Lemonsweets.

A few years back, there were others. IIRC, they were mostly based in southern California.

Some companies, not MSCs, have in-house programs.

Deloitte hires them but a degree in Hospitality Management is required.

The pay is also much higher than the ones you mentioned.

Would be MUCH more attractive if the pay was ~3x that. $32k would definitely be underpaid for all the traveling involved..... Full time.

Yeah, no way I would take a pay cut to go from working 75% of the time to full time.

Pay is the main issue with all the full-time hospitality jobs I have seen. Though they will cover 100% of expenses, pay in the $30-40k range is really not acceptable even if 75% of your meals are covered at work. You also rarely have the option to bring guests along, so it's a pretty solitary lifestyle.

Add to that the constant travel and heavy workload, and it's not an appealing job. I made more as a full time scheduler just sitting at home.

I think most of the travel jobs are very much geared toward younger people without family who hoping to work their way up in the company. I have former co-workers who ended up as executives at Deloitte and they are earning much more than the evaluators.

If you want something stable, consider an editing a scheduling position that probably pays better.

@SteveSoCal wrote:

Pay is the main issue with all the full-time hospitality jobs I have seen. Though they will cover 100% of expenses, pay in the $30-40k range is really not acceptable even if 75% of your meals are covered at work. You also rarely have the option to bring guests along, so it's a pretty solitary lifestyle.

Add to that the constant travel and heavy workload, and it's not an appealing job. I made more as a full time scheduler just sitting at home.

I think most of the travel jobs are very much geared toward younger people without family who hoping to work their way up in the company. I have former co-workers who ended up as executives at Deloitte and they are earning much more than the evaluators.

If you want something stable, consider an editing a scheduling position that probably pays better.

Speaking as someone who works as a full-time consultant in the energy sector, paying employees only around $30-40k is abysmal and using 100% travel expenses as a justification for the low ball pay is a terrible excuse, as all expenses should be covered by the client (or company for overhead work) regardless. But your view's coming from the hospitality sector, so maybe that is the norm?

Thank you @bgriffin, but I do not have a degree in hospitality.

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2019 03:49AM by Lemonsweets.

Sort of reminds me of this ... in a way. [www.orlandosentinel.com]

@Lemonsweets wrote:

I wish someone would actually answer my question…

Well....since the only question was asking if anyone had any suggestions, and you did not initially give us the 411 on your job history, looking at an alternate job WAS my suggestion.

Basically, it seems like you are looking for a perfect scenario; A job that allows you to work in your chosen artistic field, consistently pays enough salary to live on, and provides travel benefits. Top that off with you asking for it on a forum for mystery shoppers and you're probably not going to get the answers you are looking for.

Yes, there are companies that will hire full-time "Shoppers", but they are not generally not going to consider someone who worked as a MSer as having the right experience (those companies tend to look down on us IC shoppers) and your degree is in the arts, so it's going to be tough to get them to hire you unless you know someone there...and since you are asking here, it seems like you don't.

Point being that you need to look outside the box a bit, and probably remove one item from your perfect job scenario. I would suggest dropping the consistent pay concept and find your way into the better hospitality companies that will provide paid travel as an IC, and possibly look at other sideline jobs you can do around that. $40k is achievable as a contractor if you are willing to travel.

If you need a solid job that allows travel, look outside hospitality.....

@SteveSoCal wrote:

Well....since the only question was asking if anyone had any suggestions, and you did not initially give us the 411 on your job history, looking at an alternate job WAS my suggestion.

I'm glad I bit my tongue, you said it much nicer than I wanted to.

I will say that I am friends with the person who used to be the scheduler for a company that works with employee shoppers and he recently left to be an IC because they make more. Just sayin.

Speaking of hospitality... it is possible to make some money by working the resort seasons. These are full-time positions with definite start and end dates. You pay your way to/from and enjoy the heck out of the surrounding areas during your time away from the job. Most if not all employers feed you and house you for a designated paycheck reduction. If you save the rest, you might make it for awhile in places you enjoy, build a network, be free of reports (unless you are supervisory or management-- but those are easy to do), and meet people. You might even be able to recognize or strongly suspect the resort shoppers based upon their behaviors and remarks. Please do not ask why I know this.

Some resorts are near art communities and galleries. Might you place some of your art?

This is just one very tangential method of including your interests and plugging a fun way to work... When SteveSoCal says think outside of the box, I immediately think of my usually interesting non-career, and I invite people to pop in and out of it if might benefit them.

In the right place, you can do shops and merch gigs on the side. This is far from a stable full-time mystery shopping life. i suggest that it might be infinitely more interesting than that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/03/2019 12:02AM by Shop-et-al.

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Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2019 03:49AM by Lemonsweets.

Well, way to make a first impression.

I was given full time work with per diem and all travel expenses paid. It was doing audits for a very large client for a very large mystery shopping company. There were hundreds of locations so it was definitely going to be a 40 hour work week. I am more about the glamour and less about the drudgery, so I turned it down. It probably paid between $30,000 and $40,000 a year, but that’s not nearly enough for me to live on.

This was maybe four or five years ago? I completely forgot about that until this post.

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/09/2019 03:49AM by Lemonsweets.

@Lemonsweets wrote:

Are you comfortable sharing the name of the company? When you say you were given full-time work, did you apply for a full-time position specifically? I know it is not for everyone, but I would take that position hands down.

I can only narrow it down to three companies. I recall that they had business cards made for me and everything. They reached out to me based on my shopping history with them. I did not apply or ask for the position. Even if I could recall exactly which of the three it was, I don't know you. I don't know your work. They both have at least 100,000 shoppers in their data bases. I don't even know if the program still exists? They had 4-10 total employees from different regions of the USA. I was mainly going to cover the Western USA. I have no idea if it's still going on?

Basically, in 20 years, I can only think of one time that I heard of this (plus the Safeway and Taco Bell programs that no longer exist).

I'm one of those people who was able to make over $50,000 a year when I shopped full time. I make about half that now, and I am back to my regular full-time job. So $25,000 or more (net plus expenses) added to my full time salary is not a bad side hustle.

I recall there was a hospitality company that hired in-house evaluators for their hotel chains. I believe it was based in Florida.

Like I said earlier, others were based in southern California.

Maybe somebody else can come up with the right phrases for your job search. When I looked, it wasn't like "in house mystery shoppers", but something else entirely. Customer Service Evaluators, maybe? And if I recall correctly, they came under HR headings (Human Resources).

So maybe change the job search parameters a little?

It definitely would NOT be with MSing companies, but with corporations with many stores/outlets/branches.

So if you want to do this for restaurants, you might check the websites for job opportunities for the biggest ones (like YUM brands).

I hope this makes sense.

@Lemonsweets wrote:

The job does not need to be in an artistic field at all and I never said it had to be... The post was titled "Companies that hire FULL-TIME shoppers?" I am willing to do any and all types of mystery shops and have done restaurant, banking and alcohol compliance shops to name a few.

Seriously....did you even try to understand what I wrote, or just get offended that I mentioned "artistic" and decide to focus on that? I meant that you are focusing on evaluations (i.e mystery shops), and your past job experiences, and that you may need to look outside that for solid work. If you haven't cracked the code on making it work f/t as an IC, and were shocked at being turned down by the RBG job offer you located, you might not have the grasp on this industry that you think you do, and/or might not be in the correct geographic area to make that happen.

While there are rare jobs that hire shoppers as employees, the ones I knew of that actually advertised for Mystery Shoppers did not hire for full time positions, and no longer exist. I used to work for Jack in the Box and Safeway. Both programs were part time and are now defunct.

The others, as you have noted, do NOT consider it mystery shopping, or call it mystery shopping, and they generally do not want mystery shoppers working for them. Most want hospitality majors, or marketing professionals, and there are plenty of those looking for that work. So...despite your travel experience, you will likely not meet their qualifications.

There are no full time jobs as a "mystery shopper" that I know of and I have worked in various parts of this industry for almost 20 years now. It simply makes more sense for companies to hire contractors for that work, unless they have very specific protocols that need to be followed that require extensive training. There are other full time jobs within the MS industry, however, but you have stated that's not what you want.

I would heed the advice ceasesmith offers and expand your searches, or you could just keep hoping that another shopper here will lead you to that full-time mystery shopping job...

Check AAA Career Opportunities and Forbes Travel Guide Career job sites - both sometimes list full time evaluator positions for hotels - I saw one about a month ago in the SW region of the US and right now they have a hotel evaluator position (FT) in Japan, but you have to speak Japanese. They also have a Asia Evaluator that will write in English but must have some knowledge of Mandarin or Cantonese.

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