It should be noted that not everyone lives in or near an area where parking garage shops and $40 bank shops are common. We have like 4 parking garages in our entire community, and we're not hardly a suburban area. I doubt there are more than a dozen communities in most states, with high-rise districts that have that kind of sprawl. And most of the MSC boards only have a few jobs near me in any given month - hence why I am on SO VERY MANY. But like with most gig work, the question of whether or not mystery shopping and gig-merchandising are a good money-making opportunity all depends on where you are. The same has been said of Lyft and Grubhub drivers; sure the people in major metropolises and their suburbs can do well, but most everyone else is getting screwed.
It should also be noted that, if you read any articles on the current gig economy, you'll find it's all starting to falter in anticipation of legal limitations on what you can pay gig workers, what kind of work you can assign to a gig worker, your liability in case of accidents and who you can or can't qualify as a contractor. And while that pinch is being felt all over, Survey.com's business is particularly in line for those hits, as they push more and more to having reset crews and display demonstrators over the one-off items. I'm guessing some clients are paying as little as they can get away with, until they legally can't get away with it anymore.
I was an early user of Survey.com's system, to the point where I knew the cell number of the local assigning agent. But many of the things they've needed to implement have been overlooked for flashier nonsense - like the special routes notifications that you can't seem to customize in any rational fashion. For example, they're recent push to entire reset crews or hours-long restocking jobs have never included details about the amount of weight you have to lift or carry or other details about physical requirements. The settings to not be notified of reset jobs have never worked correctly. You have no way to limit your profile to what kind of jobs you're willing to do, or mark off what things you can't do.
And all that is before the fact that the pay rates have indeed been going down. At one point they were paying $6 a store for those stupid beef-jerky-like product merchandising, which took a bare minimum of 40 minutes to do. And it's not like you can build up enough of a route for them to be worthwhile, when you have at least 20 minutes drive-time between them.
They also have not been reliable on paying for buybacks on time, to the point where I once waited more than a month for reimbursement. And if they're running behind on payouts, they'll say so at the start, but they won't send updates as they catch up, so you have no idea when to start checking to see if your payout was missed. And even when it seems clear you were missed, they don't admit it. They act like you jumped the gun in asking, and they were just about to do it.
I used to prefer them overall, because they paid out at multiple times in the month and direct to Paypal. But now I avoid even opening the app, lest I am bombarded with push and SMS notices of jobs that I should be able to note on my profile that I am physically incapable of doing.