It looks like it's new, but perhaps someone has done one. Interested to know how long it takes. It seems pretty easy and straightforward, but the grocery store shops say they can take 8 hours. I was interested in just doing the convenience stores. TIA!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/2024 02:36AM by Tiffany0921.

There are numerous threads about these kinds of price scan shops. I can't speak for others, but they're on my 10-foot pole list. I did one at a convenience store because I thought it would be easy. Wrong. The items aren't grouped in the app in the way that you'll encounter them in a store, so either you wander around aimlessly over and over inside a relatively small store where that behavior would be noticed, or else you stand there scrolling and scrolling and scrolling as you try to find all the items on the list that would be where you're standing in the store.

I wouldn't recommend this type of shop to anyone.

They are horrendous. Awful. Avoid at all costs! Every time I get an email asking if I'd like to earn $60 to spend 8 hours at a warehouse store checking the price of 600 items, I have to physically stop my fingers from typing a response with what I really think!!

They can get this exact same information off of the retailer's websites, so this whole thing just seems to ridiculous to me.

I've done a few at a local convenience store where there weren't that many items to check: 41 for one of them, and 21 items for the other. They were OK. Luckily the help at this store clearly doesn't care if I hang around, so that helps. Also, since the tobacco items at this store are behind the counter and there's no clear price signage, so I get to skip those.

Not many people in my town seem to know the MSC that handles this, so I was fortunate to get a bonused fee of $50 for the 41-item check and $20 for the 21-item check.

I wouldn't do one that involved hundreds of items, though.

I have completed a couple for decent bonuses only at convenience stores with fewer than 75 items to check. They both took longer than an hour, so the time estimate the MSC provides is way off, I've found. I had similar experiences to those mentioned above; 1) moving from aisle to aisle (or cooler) to find items in a category that are in fact all over the store and 2) fortunately having store staff let me do my thing (one asked if she could help me find something; I told her the brand, and luckily she answered, "We don't carry that" so I could tick that one off!). I would not do any with significant numbers of items to scan--and especially not the ones that pay by the item scanned.

I started one last week, 20 items, but I stopped. Items were all around the store. They want you to price check tobacco items, They were behind the counter and some did not have the prices under them. You had to ask the employee about all the prices. I gave up, not worth it.

I did one for 14 items. Never again unless it has a huge bonus attached!

No, you don't have to ask the employee about tobacco prices if they're behind a counter and unmarked. In fact, you're not supposed to. You hit "skip," then choose "behind counter/no assistance" as the reason.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2024 08:13PM by KokoBWare.

the way it is states it is not covert. If you spent several hours inside store I bet store manager will see on the cameras some one doing strange things.

@KokoBWare wrote:

No, you don't have to ask the employee about tobacco prices if they're behind a counter and unmarked. In fact, you're not supposed to. You hit "skip," then choose "behind counter/no assistance" as the reason.

"No price tag" is also acceptable.

Personally I don't mind the corporate convenience stores too much. I've been doing these for a bit though so I know what to look for. The non-corporate owned stores like 7 Something or "gas station" gas stations are a pain though as the managers get suspicious quickly and can be very rude to the point of agressive.

The drug stores though...yeah, not doing those anymore much less the huge lists for the German grocery store or the warehouse clubs.

I think all of us have fallen prey to this one. It's fine in the beginning. But the MSC keeps changing the rules and the payment, sometimes without telling anyone. They seem to randomly change the parameters sometimes with only minutes to spare. We signed up for some of the C-store checks, but there are so few items with actual prices on them, there is nothing to report. The first time we did them they paid us anyway for doing the job, even though we didn't get many prices. The second time they sent us to the same store they said we didn't get enough prices, and we could go back and do it again, or they wouldn't pay us. We told them to pound sand. My son and I tag teamed the stores, one of us would go inside, and get the prices, the other would do the input in the shop outside. And we would switch off a couple times while we were at a store.

That wasn't so bad though, it was the grocery stores that broke us. The first time we drove 2 hours to the store, we spent 2 days at the store, so that's 4 hours driving, x 2. Eight hours in the store, changing out phones and chargers several times so that we could keep working. We even bought our lunches from the deli in the store. Same story with the MSC, the prices we found were enough the first time, the second time though they wanted something different and refused to pay us.

We decided that the price check shops aren't worth our time or effort.

@gene wrote:

the way it is states it is not covert. If you spent several hours inside store I bet store manager will see on the cameras some one doing strange things.

I don't know if there is more than one MSC handling Shopping Scout but with the ones I did, it absolutely says it IS covert.

Covert, yes, as stated in boldface type on page 3! And the guidelines actually have a link to suggestions on how to handle questions from store staff if approached.

I now see scanning shops for 6 cents a scan. 100 items scanned is $6. Would not touch them will a 10ft pole.

I recommend starting with a smaller count, 50 items or so. This will give you a feel for the work.

Ive been doing them for over 3 months now inside Costco and Aldi full store scans. These at first did take me awhile but im scanning the whole store so i can just do lane by lane no bouncing around. They took me 8hrs at first now i can do a full costco in 5 hours and get paid $150 to do it every week. Not bad in my book.