$4k+ Route and living in a van for part of the trip. PIcs and spreadsheets to view too.

@ceasesmith wrote:

I stand firm on my opinion. If you don't have running hot & cold water, you're "roughing it".

smiling smiley

I sleep in my car, but I'm not camping -- I'm just travelin' cheap!

We will likely have both in a future build tongue sticking out smiley We saw a guy who had heaters attached to the bottom of their water containers and it kept it heated so they could have a warm "shower" if they wanted. Only a couple of gallons of water, but enough to shower and not have to use cold water!

But really that's super low on our priority list lol.

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum

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@karenica wrote:

@jrossetti I too sleep in my car for certain gigs out of town. I cut a memory foam mattress from Walmart to fit in the backseat and shower at Retro Fitness.

Question- Since you are such an expert on mystery shopping, what mystery shop companies are worth the time? I only like Ath Power. Other shops I did weren’t worth the time. And by the way, I don’t like reimbursement only shops After doing the assignment and filling out the form I was making close to minimum wage. Your thoughts?

There are few COMPANIES I would say are not worth your time. Even my favorite companies have shops that I consider crap and just dont fit in with either our style of doing things, our personalities, or the admin time involved. We focus on video because there is not much by way of reports vs a paper only shop.

THe best advice I could give on this is find what works for you. I used to not have a lot of collateral i could spend on routes, and ATH was my go-to back then because of their bank jobs. From there I moved onto doing gas station audits and bank jobs. I wouldn't often get to do 100 meals or hotels because back then I had no credit cards or just couldn't wait for the reimbursement.

Now, cash is no object. If needed I could do shops with 500 a day in outlay and do so for an entire month. Now I focus almost exclusively on time out vs money in and then catered to whatever our goals are on the trip.

So circling back to companies. One reason I dont do paper jobs is my memory is @#$%&. I have to take a text note of everything that happens as it happens or I will @#$%& it up. My girlfriend on the other hand has an amazing memory. FOr her to do a job that has a bigger report isn't as bad as it is for me because I'll spend most of my time going through notes, while she'll just knock out the report. So for you maybe banking jobs can be your bread and butter and you can make 400-500 bucks a day doing 15-20 of those in a day from 8 to 5 vs me doing 8 or 9 apartments in the same time making about the same. Its always going to be a combination of factors. Bonus, not bonused, type of job, base pay, etc.

I will tell you marketforce is often where shops go to die in terms of payment and reimbursement tongue sticking out smiley Ive seen so many clients get picked up by them and the rates crash. Unless you have no choice, I recommend never taking a job that doesn't pay well for the time involved. If you (or anyone else) takes low ball offers, they will keep presenting low ball offers.

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum
@SoCalMama wrote:

@Jenny Cassada wrote:

I've never done mystery shopping full time or do routes, mostly because I don't drive, but I am completely obsessed with van/bus/camper living (though I realize you're not living in this thing, it has it's own separate purpose.)

Who is going to drive the van then?

I don't know you well enough to know if you are in this thread making jokes or shitposting. Can you clarify so I dont make an incorrect assumption?

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum
Mama's post were obviously in jest.

That's a pretty nice set-up, though. How many days does the $4k cover? You have to split it so $2k each. I do routes, but so far have been able to use my points (from a card I use for shopping) or a shop for a hotel. Not sure I could sleep in my car, even a tricked out one, for more than a night. Kudos to you for finding what works for you! I'm sure the schedulers appreciate it.

ETA: Which two states are you missing?

"Let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?” ~Walter Williams


Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2020 06:22PM by iShop123.
@nslinhar wrote:

Ah yes. I have campendium bookmarked.

You have inspired me. I'll clean her up and do a route. This is the perfect weather for it south of the Mason Dixon, as I have no ac in it.

Can confirm weather is nice for car sleeping right now. but that only works well if it's' under 70 IMO. Anything above that and it starts getting toasty in that car and its too hard for me to sleep. But I also need 68-69 for a comfy sleep. If youre used to higher this is not such a problem.

Glad to be some inspiration =)

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum
@iShop123 wrote:

Mama's post were obviously in jest.

That's a pretty nice set-up, though. How many days does the $4k cover? You have to split it so $2k each. I do routes, but so far have been able to use my points (from a card I use for shopping) or a shop for a hotel. Not sure I could sleep in my car, even a tricked out one, for more than a night. Kudos to you for finding what works for you! I'm sure the schedulers appreciate it.

ETA: Which two states are you missing?

I did rough math for the 4k. If I take out our "vacation days" and chill days we'd be at about 14 days total. If I take out the extra frill @#$%& we bought that would bring the take home above 5,000. I can say oud probably have needed one extra day to do the shops if you were solo due to us having about 7 or so we got to do at the same time since they were close.

We mostly do the routes together so we can mix in vacation stuff and be together. Most of our routes can be done solo.

We'll have been away from home September 11th to September 29th.
Of that time, we have 3 sundays we will have done no work.
One Saturday we have done no work.
One Monday we have done no work (technically we did a single shop, but it was 5 minutes from the hotel for the night and took 15 minutes).
We'll have one Friday with no work.

18 days - 6 - 12 days. (this would require 14 days because of sundays not being allowed shop days though its only 12 days of shops).

There WAS work available for cell phones, retail purchase and return that could have been done on those off days but we chose not to . Someone else could have easily made 1-2 hundred a day more if they had wanted.

Safely 350 a day profit is still a pretty nice amount. Even if we factor it over our actual days gone, thats 5k / 18 we're at 277 a day total or 138 per person. Average work day including drive times spread out over every day (even vacation days not driving anywhere) maybe 9 or 10 hours. So 13 to 14 per hour. Take away/condense the days we didn't do work at all and we're at 416 per day total or 208 per person.


I think the biggest thing we've realized so far, is we still like hotels and were maybe a bit optimistic for how often we'd stay in the van with the current build. (We need a platform bed like yesterday).

Lol. But we will have still saved 700 bucks in hotels minimum at this point and another 550 in rental costs and may still end up spending more nights in the car increasing those totals. I see us using this about half to 2/3 of the time once it's all outfit. We'll still probably do a hotel when it's raining or really snowing hard and on some days off. We save our points until we can use 4 or 5 days in a row because when we do that one of the days is given free as a credit card or status perk. That effectively gives us 20-25% more bang for our points than one night bookings.

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum
@jrossetti wrote:

@SoCalMama wrote:

@Jenny Cassada wrote:

I've never done mystery shopping full time or do routes, mostly because I don't drive, but I am completely obsessed with van/bus/camper living (though I realize you're not living in this thing, it has it's own separate purpose.)

Who is going to drive the van then?

I don't know you well enough to know if you are in this thread making jokes or shitposting. Can you clarify so I dont make an incorrect assumption?
Unless you are Jenny, I actually wasn’t asking you anything.
@SoCalMama wrote:

@jrossetti wrote:

@SoCalMama wrote:

@Jenny Cassada wrote:

I've never done mystery shopping full time or do routes, mostly because I don't drive, but I am completely obsessed with van/bus/camper living (though I realize you're not living in this thing, it has it's own separate purpose.)

Who is going to drive the van then?

I don't know you well enough to know if you are in this thread making jokes or shitposting. Can you clarify so I dont make an incorrect assumption?
Unless you are Jenny, I actually wasn’t asking you anything.

Nor did I claim you did.

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum
My boyfriend. I don't plan on traveling the country by myself.

@SoCalMama wrote:

@Jenny Cassada wrote:

I've never done mystery shopping full time or do routes, mostly because I don't drive, but I am completely obsessed with van/bus/camper living (though I realize you're not living in this thing, it has it's own separate purpose.)

Who is going to drive the van then?

Shopping the South Jersey Shore
Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Please keep us updated. Did you give your route van a name yet??? The Mystery "Shopper" Machine as a Scooby Doo spin off??? smiling smiley

What do you use for internet access while on a route? Do you rely on cell service and a hot spot or do you try to find a business with free WiFi and park in the lot until you get your reports done each day?
I try to use the mobile hot spot from my cell phone while doing day routes, but the cell service lacks as soon as I get a few miles from a city. I usually end up completing my reports when I get home and can use my reliable WiFi.
Hotels are not even reliable when I do overnight routes. Once I had to go to the front desk and ask to plug in with an ethernet cord so I could upload my video from the day. (Holiday Inn Express)
@yoya301 wrote:

Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Please keep us updated. Did you give your route van a name yet??? The Mystery "Shopper" Machine as a Scooby Doo spin off??? smiling smiley

What do you use for internet access while on a route? Do you rely on cell service and a hot spot or do you try to find a business with free WiFi and park in the lot until you get your reports done each day?
I try to use the mobile hot spot from my cell phone while doing day routes, but the cell service lacks as soon as I get a few miles from a city. I usually end up completing my reports when I get home and can use my reliable WiFi.
Hotels are not even reliable when I do overnight routes. Once I had to go to the front desk and ask to plug in with an ethernet cord so I could upload my video from the day. (Holiday Inn Express)


We're calling her the VANderbilt. Lol. A.k.a. the sienna suite.

We have 30 gigs of hotspot data in any band up to 5g. We're gonna get a cell booster at some point, but we plan hotel stops so we can do uploads. Stick to hiltons and you'll almost always have good enough data to upload fast. Yesterday I did ten gigs in under an hour. We aren't intending on spending weeks in this thing at a time. More like complimenting our sleeping. We ended up only sleeping in the van 5 times this trip over about 20 days.

We travcel as a pair so secretary @#$%& does the reports, but we did split up a few times and I either do the report immediately, or I open a survey, and start a video and verbally answer each question before I go to the next shop. Then I can either use this to pay someone to do my report for me, or i can use it to quickly key in later when I have time. I will go out of my way to avoid ever having reports to do at the end of the day. If I dont do a report right away, it means i now have to watch the whole damn video and that makes it a @#$%& ton longer and Im not having it. So doing the report is my priority, and video doing the report is only when I can manage to do it right away due to time constraints or a tight schedule that day.

We are doing video work and most video work is along interstates or in cities where internet is not an issue. HOliday inns aren't always the best internet sad smiley IHG is usually good, but not generally the same consistency as hilton.

CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum
Thank you for letting us all ride along on your adventure! It has been exciting and inspiring. This had been my plan for "When the kids are grown." Just take to the road and shop all over was a dream, even before internet was this easily accessed. But then I committed myself to taking care of an old guy so my road trips are limited to 2 or 3 days. I still hope to do it some day.
For the van life or just sleeping in your car check out HOWA.org that is Home On Wheels Alliance.org there is some good info on there. Also, check out the youtube videos. This one about mounting a fan. [www.youtube.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2020 07:15AM by 2stepps.
Hot and cold running water is not that hard in a Van. Cold running water is a 5-gallon water jug that has a spigot and is elevated so that it runs down into a basin. Hot water would be water in a 3 inch PVC pipe that is painted black attached to the roof of the Van with a fill spigot and a use spigot at opposite ends of the pipe. Use a 12 v pump to fill with and then let it warm in the sun. But if it gets below freezing for a couple of hours the water will need to be drained out of it overnight.

@ceasesmith wrote:

"Real camping"? LOL, if you don't have running hot & cold water, you're already really camping!!!!
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