I am hitting the age where I am being soon aged out of ID checks which had been lucrative for me for many years before I moved out of the country. Came back to the good ol USA and decided to start shopping again while I figure out the next move. Anyway, noticed a ton of these "easy" Juul ID checks and thought they would be great to fill a few days completing. The instructions make you think you will walk into a store, purchase the correct item listed and see if they ID then discard. You HAVE to accept a shop to find out that no, of course you have play the whole "I forgot my ID! Whoops!" game and leave making you honestly loos suspicious. Just venting as I see this always that shops that make you play this game seem to stay on the board for a very long time. You would think that the clients would just stop being cheap and reimburse. Even in this case with the Juul where you would have to discard as I don't use tobacco anyway. Oh well.

Those Juul shops do reimburse if the cashier allows the purchase.

And the entire point of this shop is to see if you are able to purchase without your ID.

No reason to vent/rant; if it's not your cup of tea, just don't do them.

I don't see it as "playing games". You're following a specific scenario, set forth in the guidelines.

PS -- Bait and switch is a serious accusation, and is inappropriate in this case. You can just cancel after reading the guidelines.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2021 07:38PM by ceasesmith.

Remember when they paid well? Pepperidge Farm remembers....

Forgetting your ID does not make you look suspicious that you are a mystery shopper. To me it makes you look suspicious that you are under age trying to buy these illegally. That is the whole point of the shop. I am too old to know what the Juul underage community do but somehow I suspect they are the modern version of the walk in and try to buy beer when you are 16 or 20 depending upon the state. A very common scenario.
Not knowing what the pay is for this shop it actually does sound very , very easy from what you describe. After you are back here for a while you will discover it is probably one of the easier shops out there.
And by the way, during the summer I went with friends to a bar with music. All three of us are senior citizens. They asked for ID at the door. My friend who was mid 70's did not have her ID with her and they did not let her in! These places can be closed down or seriously fined if they allow under age people in so many of them now just card everyone instead of just hoping someone who is 18 and looks much older does not slip through. Case in point I was sitting in a waterside bar watching the senior class of a local high school boarding a boat for an on the water party. All seriously dressed up with suits, ties, glamour gowns etc many of them looked at least 20 years older than my college aged daughter looked at the time.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2021 08:12PM by sandyf.

I live in a town where they have to ID everyone for alcohol regardless of age.

The OP talking about the red card/ green card scenario for the tobacco shops and there is no purchase requirement. I think this is rather easy you're in and out of that store in about 5 minutes either way.

There are people in their 20s who are balding and graying. You just never can tell.

@ceasesmith wrote:

And the entire point of this shop is to see if you are able to purchase without your ID.

No reason to vent/rant; if it's not your cup of tea, just don't do them.

I don't see it as "playing games". You're following a specific scenario, set forth in the guidelines.

PS -- Bait and switch is a serious accusation, and is inappropriate in this case. You can just cancel after reading the guidelines.

You are acting as if you can just take shops and cancel them with no penalty to you as a shopper should there be other clients or future shops with that company. I understand that companies have a relatively small amount of room to entice you to take the shops but them saying "You will walk into the store and purchase a 2 pack of Juul that you will need to discard," gives you are very narrow idea of what the true instructions really are for this scenario causing you to put a reputation at risk to cancel a shop.

I have been on the boards for quite some time, and I thought it was a great place to discuss things that could be done better in the industry. There are many times companies do peek in here and read our posts. Saying to just "move on" is a great way to stagnate progress. I also let the scheduler know why I canceled as well if it meant anything. I'm sure your advice was meant in very good faith though! :-/

It's always a good idea to let a scheduler know why we had to cancel a shop.

For example, I recently accepted a shop with a "training call". I've done lots of training calls, so I accepted the shop. Reading the guidelines, I discovered the "training call" was actually Zoom. Well, I don't do Zoom. I have no microphone, no speaker, and I would not know how to "turn on video" even if I knew what that meant.

I immediately let the scheduler know my tech skills weren't up to the shop. She was quite understanding. No black mark on my history, I'm able to do future shops with the company -- if they ever come up with any I can complete!

This is why I strongly encourage shoppers to develop relationships with schedulers. With a positive relationship, we can run into the occasional snag without penalty to further success. I've had times I had to e-mail photos to schedulers for them to put into reports for me, because of equipment (or operator, honestly!) failure. Without a relationship with the scheduler, I would never have dreamt of asking for that kind of help.

You can also send an email to the scheduler asking for a copy of the guidelines. I do that occasionally when it "feels" to me like there may be more involved than what their email says. I would say that often I am sent the guidelines. I would not do this over and over but once in a while it helps.

@sandyf wrote:

You can also send an email to the scheduler asking for a copy of the guidelines. I do that occasionally when it "feels" to me like there may be more involved than what their email says. I would say that often I am sent the guidelines. I would not do this over and over but once in a while it helps.

Thanks Sandyf that is a good tip. Sad that it comes to having to do that as even in this case I would have had no reason to think something is "off."

Just noticed every single one of those shops are still on the board since the 30th of last month. I guess I am trying to prove to myself that people like me who have not aged out of ID checks would rather not have to do the whole "ooops" thing for the price of the shops hahaha.

LOL, when you reach my age, you can look back on all the times you left your wallet/money/keys/camera at home, and went "oops" for real.

Heck, when I had my store, I had a customer leave her purse in my store. She had mentioned she was on her way to California on I-80, so I called the police next state over and they pulled her over. Of course, her DL was in her purse in my store. The entitled jerk told me to mail it to her in California. I mailed the entire purse, contents intact, and never heard back. She never sent a thank you or postage! If I'd known that when I mailed it, I would have taken the money out of the purse to pay the postage!!!

Just say, oh, hey, I left my id in my car. Leave and don't go back in.

Clerks see this CONSTANTLY, and won't think twice of it. Sometimes the customer comes right back in, with his id, but more often than not, he just gets in his car and leaves.

Well actually never having done this job I would imagine they do not want you to leave immediately but give the cashier or whoever a bit of time to offer to sell you the item anyway. Then you can leave and never come back. And hey, I am a Californian and none of my friends would have treated you that way. I hope at least you had a post office mystery shop to mail her purse back to her.

I schedule some other tobacco and alcohol compliance shops that are pretty easy, but as you said the scenario is to act like you don't have your ID. They all do reimburse though. Sounds like that isn't what you want to do, but if you know anyone we can pay small referral bonuses on those projects. Easy money that way.