Many fewer good shops this year.
Low playing shops - can't do any more if travel is required.
$10-15 shops that barely cover fuel costs.
High paying shops only for banks, telecom or other which require becoming their customer.
Worst of all, shops that require handwritten surveys in addition to electronic.

Many other shoppers have mentioned similar experiences. I hope that they will see this thread and commiserate.

I'm new to it all so I'm not aware of what the good old days were like. It can be hard to try to string together full days that make sense when it comes to driving distances, lengthy reports and unclear job descriptions.

I'm guilty of some "will work for food" jobs but reimbursements for groceries and some fast food shops can be worth my while if they are something I'd be doing anyway. Some of the reimbursement shops are truly unreasonable, in my opinion. When they require hours of detailed work, revisions that must be done at the drop of a hat within hours of when they contact you (often in the middle of the night) and $10 plus an expensive mediocre meal then I've decided it's just not worth my time.

For the handwritten portions of those banking shops, some are reporting that they are either typing them up and signing the last page or adding, see addendum, and then typing up the responses. It does seem that they add a lot of busywork to these jobs.

My personal pet peeve is instructions that are unclear. The description says one thing and the guidelines say something else. Also, instructions that are unclear because they are coving multiple different locations/restaurants and each has its own nuances. So, you're forced to weed through tons of erronious information or information that does not apply to the job that you are performing.

And... just becuase I'm trying to work on my own outlook - I'm grateful for the money that has come into my household and also the food that I otherwise would have been paying for out of pocket. I'm also grateful for something I'm able to do around my schedule. I've definitely been able to indulge in some guilty pleasures as "jobs" - like fast food burgers, chinese takeout and choclate! So, I'm happy to have some guilt free treats now again that I legitimately earn.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2022 02:13AM by olympia tennenbaum.

@Olympia, sounds like you are learning which MS jobs are a good fit for you, and which are not. We have ALL been there. Some of us have particular niches, others do many different types of MSing. What works for you may not work for me, and vice versa. It's an interesting and sometimes frustrating road to travel. Hope you do well.

@olympia tennenbaum wrote:

I'm guilty of some "will work for food" jobs but reimbursements for groceries and some fast food shops can be worth my while if they are something I'd be doing anyway..

Same! I do this for fun and free food!

There have always been and always will be low-paying shops as long as there are shoppers who will work for those fees or even worse, for free. There are also well-paying shops for experienced shoppers.

@rmkeith wrote:

@olympia tennenbaum wrote:

I'm guilty of some "will work for food" jobs but reimbursements for groceries and some fast food shops can be worth my while if they are something I'd be doing anyway..

Same! I do this for fun and free food!

It is not free if it cost you time, equipment, training, fuel for your car, or filling out a report.

I miss the days of LEGO, Disney Shop, Aveda, Build-A-Bear, Cheesecake Factory, Coopers Hawk, eat-in movie theaters, nice hotels, even Chipotle. It seems like the fees are going down, editors are more picky, and there's more ridiculous requirements than ever before. I've been doing this 11 years and I don't see it getting any better unfortunately.

With you 100% Phoebe 70 and also am in this for about 11 years. Used get about $1200.00 of reimbursed groceries alone per year from almost every local chain- ShopRite, Food Emporium, A&P, Pathmark, Whole Foods, IGA.
And there was that super easy $25.00 Fairway Liquor store shop too. GNC, Models, Forever21, Aeropostale, Boston Market, Haagen Daz, Castrol oil changes and many, many others, long gone and missed !!

Times change, both personally and on a larger level. When I first started mystery shopping, it was to both get out of the house and to fill in some schedule gaps with my day job, as I was mostly working from home then too. Early on, I was all about the perks and what I perceived as the "glamour of mystery shopping." I loved it, shopping trendy stores, eating food I could seldom afford, and helping to fund weekend outings. At that point, I really didn't pay a lot of attention to what, if anything, I was making on MS'ing.

I got more serious about MS'ing during the pandemic. Now, I am more about the cash than I ever was before, and I am deliriously happy with an occasional perk. However, in just the last year, I have watched as what would be considered good companies continuously drop what they are paying the shoppers. I could not even name another field where the pay is in apparent free fall. This is amid ongoing shortages, run away inflation, and the fact that workers in other industries are already coming out on the other end of the pandemic with higher pay, more respect, and better treatment. I am surely discouraged with what I am seeing with MS'ing from those perspectives.

Getting more serious into it than I ever was before, I am also starting to rethink what a good MS company actually is, who I really want to work for, and who really should be on my ten-foot pole list. There surely are some good and fair MS companies out there. They are just not always the biggest or the ones that get the most attention. At the end of the day, we do have choices. It could be that I was never around enough before to even start to learn the ropes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/14/2022 07:54PM by GinnyLynn.

Hmm. Since I began, I aged out of a fun clothing shop. I still like the cute clothes and the price point. But nothing can change my birth date.!

Just hope the oil change shops will continue. Not doing them for Ipsos either.

It's changed for sure. I moved on for the most part, but take a shop or two here and there these days.

@Phoebe70 wrote:

I miss the days of LEGO, Disney Shop, Aveda, Build-A-Bear, Cheesecake Factory, Coopers Hawk, eat-in movie theaters, nice hotels, even Chipotle. It seems like the fees are going down, editors are more picky, and there's more ridiculous requirements than ever before. I've been doing this 11 years and I don't see it getting any better unfortunately.

Are you near Chicago? I used to see all those shops and rarely see them anymore. I've been doing it nearly 20 years with some breaks here and there. And yes the requirements on some are just insane and fees have gone down.

Just a few thoughts:

Everything changes. Always will. I find it to be somewhat better in the ways that most suit me. I live in a weird area where the closest metropolis (San Antonio) is 180 miles away. So there is this "target rich environment" in the smallish towns around Corpus Christi and McAllen. Just today, I saw two shops paying $50 each. One in Dilley, Texas and another in Tilden, Texas. There is a Lowes Shop that pays $60 that I'm considering doing if it's still around later on this week.

What has gotten worse, in my view, is that the shops I "want" to do are either no longer around or they are offered only to select other shoppers. It makes me wonder if it's worth getting MSPA Gold. I used to love doing the billboard audits, someone mentioned Cheesecake Factory....there was also one called the Grande Lux.

The oil change shops are the ones I most covet I guess. And there are two down in the valley....I'm giving them a very long look. But the income I'm making now is among the highest I've made but that is more a function of me taking it more seriously than I used to... I need the money I'm pulling in versus the "beer money" I used to view the income as being. So I'm just "sucking it up" and doing shops for restaurants I don't really like that much.

I remember Cheesecake Factory and Grand Lux. Those have been gone for a long, long time. The company that did those I do not believe is around anymore. Also, there was no pay, but they gave you a $40 gift card for Cheesecake factory, so you could go again and use the GC they gave you on the next shop.

The best part was the take-out shops. You could get away with spending $20 or maybe slightly less and still get a $40 cheesecake GC as payment.

If someone has seen Cheesecake Factory shops around, maybe they will post, but I'm not aware of it, if they are.

IMO, most of what is left for us now concerns brand compliance where corporations are looking to know if specific company policies and practices are being followed. As far a customer experiences and perceptions, there is no need for companies to pay us for that. The general public writes Google
and Yelp reviews all day long for free.

I've always thought that the best "mystery shoppers" for a lot of the restaurant shops would be employees for other restaurants in the chain. Like, just for example, if there is a specific order in which the 4 syrup bottles are supposed to be arranged on the tables at an IHOP, a woman who is a waitress at another IHOP across town could probably spot that in a second if she was doing a mystery shop at a different IHOP. She would know "how clean" something is supposed to be when it isn't, the timing conventions, if the coffee is hot enough, etc...

You're right in one way...people get on Yelp and Google all day long and talk about places but seldom do you see positive reviews that are truly in depth...if it's negative...you'll get the phone book...LOL. One thing you don't see on Yelp and Google is the "adspeak" that you're supposed to hear when you go to a store. I remember I did a mattress shop once and the sales person was supposed to use a specific term...I think it was "white glove service". Few on Yelp or Google are going to mention, "Well, Joe stressed the white glove service....". So there is some value to what we do. Whether that value is worth monetizing is a question for the customers hiring the MSCs.

@sestrahelena wrote:

IMO, most of what is left for us now concerns brand compliance where corporations are looking to know if specific company policies and practices are being followed. As far a customer experiences and perceptions, there is no need for companies to pay us for that. The general public writes Google
and Yelp reviews all day long for free.

@sestrahelena wrote:

IMO, most of what is left for us now concerns brand compliance where corporations are looking to know if specific company policies and practices are being followed. As far a customer experiences and perceptions, there is no need for companies to pay us for that. The general public writes Google
and Yelp reviews all day long for free.

I think this is true in some cases.

The first time I did a JIB shop, I wondered why they have a MS program and also gave out a receipt asking customer's to provide feedback via a survey to get XX$ off their next visit. Of course not every customer is a mystery shopper, but it seemed redundant. Not sure if they still do that as I haven't been to a JIB in a long time, but other fast food and retail places still do this type of thing.

Everytime I complete a Whole Foods shop I get a "how well did we do?" text for feedback.

The one that puzzled me the most was a gas shop with a former MSC who had a question in the report "are you be willing to provide feedback to our client regarding your experience?" Click yes, the MSC sent a email to complete the survey. I never said yes as in my mind I already submitted a report for my time and what I was going to get paid for.

On the other hand, I've been doing several banks shops that do hone in on the customer experience. Not specific to any bank regulation, policy, the marketing or other materials you may or may not get. They are all about the experience via the bankers attitude and behavior.

unless they have a program like Five Guys where multiple shoppers are going every week, i agree that the standard mystery shop is not that helpful to a restaurant since it’s just one shopper every few weeks…

We are supposed to be professional in our jobs but I am pretty sure there are sloppy shoppers as well as great shoppers. And our task is to be objective. The task of someone filling out a survey to get $1 or2 off their next order is to fill it out as quickly as possible and just make sure all the boxes are checked with no reason to check them correctly. They are also not trained as to what exactly to look for. So I got great service to someone filling out a receipt to get a code might mean anything. To some it might mean.. wow that person who waited on me sure had a nice smile. I highly doubt for anyone it means they got on the line with a stop watch and got their order within x number of minutes which was wrapped correctly with two ketchups. Unfortunately we are not getting paid what we are worth and the filling in the receipt does not replace what we do unless there is some minimum standard the company must do that they are meeting by having that survey.

Really miss the Publix shops I have noticed the service there is significantly worse. T

@38380 wrote:

Really miss the Publix shops I have noticed the service there is significantly worse. T

Same with Mcdonald's!

A lot of shops in my area pay less than minimum wage if you count time spent doing the shop, writing the report, and driving to and from the location. With the gas prices so high, the pay is almost nothing. I used to do a lot of restaurant shops, but now it’s not worth it either. I keep going over budget even when I order the cheapest items on the menu.
So no more MS for me.

@AZwolfman wrote:

@rmkeith wrote:

@olympia tennenbaum wrote:

I'm guilty of some "will work for food" jobs but reimbursements for groceries and some fast food shops can be worth my while if they are something I'd be doing anyway..

Same! I do this for fun and free food!

It is not free if it cost you time, equipment, training, fuel for your car, or filling out a report.

If I have to earn the money to buy groceries, I have to earn $120 to buy $100 worth of groceries after I pay the tax man, maybe more. If I can do a grocery job that pays in food, there's no SE tax on the reimbursement only jobs. So $100 in reimbursements is worth more than getting paid that much.

We all just have to do what makes the most sense to all of us.

@guysmom wrote:

@Olympia, sounds like you are learning which MS jobs are a good fit for you, and which are not. We have ALL been there. Some of us have particular niches, others do many different types of MSing. What works for you may not work for me, and vice versa. It's an interesting and sometimes frustrating road to travel. Hope you do well.

Thank you very much! It is a learning experience. Sadly, you sometimes don't know until you've accepted and done the job just what it is about. Some of them seem to be bad value for your time and some are surprisingly easy. What doesn't seem easy is piecing together enough work to make it a full time gig. Still working on filling in the gaps.

@olympia tennenbaum wrote:

Thank you very much! It is a learning experience. Sadly, you sometimes don't know until you've accepted and done the job just what it is about. Some of them seem to be bad value for your time and some are surprisingly easy. What doesn't seem easy is piecing together enough work to make it a full time gig. Still working on filling in the gaps.

The groove I personally fell into was restaurant and fast food shops. I've done a little of everything, the shops that really got me into MS were gas station/petroleum shops with a revealed audit, which I haven't done in quite a while.

@olympia tennenbaum wrote:

@AZwolfman wrote:

@rmkeith wrote:

@olympia tennenbaum wrote:

I'm guilty of some "will work for food" jobs but reimbursements for groceries and some fast food shops can be worth my while if they are something I'd be doing anyway..

Same! I do this for fun and free food!

It is not free if it cost you time, equipment, training, fuel for your car, or filling out a report.

If I have to earn the money to buy groceries, I have to earn $120 to buy $100 worth of groceries after I pay the tax man, maybe more. If I can do a grocery job that pays in food, there's no SE tax on the reimbursement only jobs. So $100 in reimbursements is worth more than getting paid that much.

We all just have to do what makes the most sense to all of us.

Agree. If we would normally go out to eat and spend $100, I might as well spend a half hour of my time completely a report to get the meal free and no SE tax!

As cheesy as it sounds, I also like providing feedback to business in my area because I want them to be better and stay around.