One mystery shopping company I am with, Secret Customer, keeps sending me e-mails alerting me of jobs, but when I go to click on it, even if I do it straight away, it is always gone.

I am yet to do a job for them.

This has happened around 70 times now.

Just now, they had a job to go to a shopping centre and visit 6 stores for a total of $175 plus $25 reimbursement (but you don't actually have to buy anything but if you do they will pay you back up to $25). The shopping centre is hours away from me, but I had a look, and within 10 seconds the job was taken by someone else.

Another one from 10 minutes earlier, paying $125 plus $25 reimbursement for 3 shops at a different shopping centre had also disappeared within a minute.

I mean, I know that this one pays more than most others, but can't they give me one? Who is sniping all of these jobs?

Is this normal? Do other people have this issue?

The problem is that I've been with this company for almost 4 months now and I am yet to do a job, and I know that once you do your first job you typically get given better jobs and it's easier.

I just want my 1 job.

Why do they keep getting sniped?

It's almost like someone has it set up so that when the e-mail comes they auto-accept them with some trigger or program they have written.

It's quite frustrating, as I'd like my share of those big amounts, but it looks like someone else is getting every last one of them, and I wonder if it might even be the same person.

This used to happen to me with a certain MSC - as well as some other shoppers here - we know because we've shared notes on it.
It turned out that the scheduler was shady somehow. We think she gave someone - friends or family a heads up, then posted them and they took them immediately.
One day, that scheduler suddenly disappeared and new schedulers were brought onto the project.
Immediately after, me and my MS friends were able to start taking those jobs and it's been that way ever since.
So my vote is on a shady scheduler lol.

Ah okay thanks. I guess we will see once I finally get a job with them. It's been that way for 4 months now. And the funny thing is that these jobs are not all in the same area. They're like 4 or 5 hours' drive from each other. So it's probably more than 1 person taking them surely.

It could also be the email is sent later than the job is posted. Some people may check the site regularly rather than waiting for notifications so by the time the email went out, it was already assigned.

We have a company here that sends out an email telling folks they have open shops, but it's once each day with no correlation with the times or dates the shops are actually posted. The shops I do for them are typically posted every 28 days at 10:00, and the shops are 80 - 90% taken before Noon.

You may just need to check their website more often instead of waiting for an email to tell you what is available.

Mor--by noon? Those shops vanish on my screen by 10:15! What's left are locations I don't consider safe for me to drive around.

LOL Rho, there are actually some shops in my area still left today.. stores that no one likes to go to. All of the "marketplace" stores disappear faster than I can grab them normally. I don't know what happened this time, I got every shop I wanted and on all of the days that I wanted to do them. But we're down to the same 6 that no one wants to do now.