The area in which I live has much MS work and few people working it. I have
had all the work I can handle for quite some time. I am now to the point in
my life that I must consider settling down some. So I wanted to find out
some information about starting a sort of co-op in my area to assist others
to get started.

I don't know if anyone out there has ever done this, but I am willing to be
the guinea pig. I am a retired business teacher, the daughter of two retired
teachers. I live in a very rural area and feel I can make a very real
contribution to the area with this type of service.

I have seen days when a person could spend a day in their car, drive around
just doing mystery shopping and:
1. buy their gas,
2. feed a family of 4 to 6 on their fast food shops,
3. take food home on their grocery store shops, and
4. still bring in cash at the end of the month.

It really hurts me when I see people on a minimum wage who cannot feed and clothe their family, when this is out there if they knew where to find it.

I know I would have to either receive some money from somewhere to fund the
training for them or charge a small fee for paper, ink, etc.

Please, tell me what you think. I just want someone who knows the business
to tell me I am not crazy! (Don’t be shy! Speak your mind whatever it is, be it good or bad.)

I think you sound like a kind and caring person who is trying to help others. Maybe you could get a small business grant? Or maybe you could work out something with a local adult education program, or work training program?

I understand your interest/concern. There are several things I would mention. First, many of the folks you would consider helping may or may not have regular access to the internet, a reasonable computer to do the work and the basic computer skills to do it (not that any of the skills are rocket science, but you do need to learn it somehow). Second, you are obviously organized with some business skills to see how this can work for you. Many in the precise population you would like to help are in minimum wage work because they don't have those organizational and business skills. Third, and by far the most important, is the personal incentive to explore and find opportunities for oneself.

With this forum, a real attempt has been made to address these issues. There is nothing we can do about access to computers and the internet, but once folks are here, there is a collection of free software listed in the New Mystery Shopper section to try to get needed tools into shopper hands. There are other tools and information in that section to try to get folks organized and encouraged to handle their shopping in a business like fashion. What we cannot and will not do is do it FOR people. Ultimately it is the initiative of the individual to use the tools to get signed up with companies, read and understand what is expected of them, accept the work, perform the work with adequate competence to get paid, and follow up on requests for further information and payment.

Making people aware that mystery shopping exists is a good thing. Directing them to resources is a good thing. Cheering them on is a good thing. Helping them when they get stuck is a good thing. But pushing them into something they are unprepared for when they do not have the initiative to discover and explore it for themselves is a recipe for disaster. Every so often we have a shopper bitterly complain about helping a friend/acquaintance get started shopping and somehow when they fail the new shopper does not take responsibility for themselves but rather is unpleasant with the person "who got them into this mess".

As for what you would 'train' them in, even the professional organization of mystery shopping companies, the MSPA, seems so unclear about what is universally needed that their "Silver Certification" a common sense exhortation to be ethical from the best I can tell. You could train people for specific jobs by specific companies. You could train them in how to use a stopwatch for timings, but there aren't even common parameters among shops/companies of when the stopwatch starts and stops. Probably the most valuable education for most shoppers would be writing skills, typing skills and a modicum of accounting. Adult education on precisely those skills (and many others) is available low cost or no cost in many communities and drastically underutilized.

So while I respect highly your desire to help, I suspect that encouraging utilization of adult education in basic skills in your community so that minimum wage folks could aspire to more--not just mystery shopping--would help those who are willing to help themselves a lot more. And I don't question that for you mystery shopping has been easy, fun and a productive endeavor. It is for me, as well. I am retired and find that shopping enhances the life style. But I sure wouldn't want to try to support a family on it!

Back to the basics of where I am coming from. I am located in the Eastern Kentucky Appalachian Mountains. Now most, if not all, of what you have seen on television and heard by “shock jocks” about this region is NOT TRUE. During all my years of teaching, and come to think of it, I never heard my parents mention it either, never did I have a student nor one of their parents come to my school or classroom barefoot. They don’t all start smoking a corncob pipe at age ten nor start making and transporting moonshine at sixteen.

Contrary to what some of you may have heard on “The Bob and Tom Show” this morning, it is not a usual occurrence for a father to get so stoned on marijuana and whiskey that he puts his 5 month old son in the oven, even if it is not turned on, and then forget where he put it.

When you drive down the roads in Eastern Kentucky you can usually tell what families are either on disability, workman’s compensation, or simply put ‘on the draw’ or State Assistance. The number one clue is a large satellite dish, or two, in their yard. The second is the presence of two or three ‘four-wheelers’ parked somewhere around the house. When they come out of their house every person down to the 10 year old has a cell phone and if asked they will tell you they have several computers.

The one thing our great United States government has funded our education system with is computer literacy programs from Kindergarten thru 12th grade. This is especially true if you are underprivileged or an underachiever. So there is no worry about anyone not being able to use the computer.

The people I have spoken to in my travels over our area during my merchandising work are the ones that ARE working. But they are often single parent families attempting to live on a minimum wage income. I would never, ever allude to anyone that they could make a ‘living’ doing MS. But they could afford some of the little extras that they don’t have now.

I would just like to show them what it is. How to find it. (We get lots of advertising in this area for MS in the newspaper and on the radio that guarantees that there are X number of shops available at this very minute in time and if you sign up with them for only $X you will earn that and much more back within a week.) I want to let as many people as possible know that is not true. That you never have to pay to shop. There are too many companies looking for shoppers for free.

Okay, if you are sort of shooting that theory down, how about a newspaper column? In it I could go into detail, of course without naming names of companies, about how to land jobs, what to do when you get them, etc. Sort of like the advice a person can get from you web site, but make it easier to find. We have a newspaper called “The Medical Leader” that is free to a five county area. It can be picked up in stores, at the hospital, or read on line. It has almost all the same news our regular paper has, just most of it is a couple of days late. The Pikeville Medical Center funds it. What do you think of that idea?

Something like that could work. I would certainly encourage you from time to time to alert folks to the mystery shopping scams that are causing misery to those who fail to recognize them as 'too good to be true'. But beyond that, a realistic presentation of what it is, how to get started, even the suggestion that folks sign up with forums (and there are a few out there, not just this one) to keep up with what is happening in the business, wouldn't hurt. On the other hand, just how many shoppers do you think your area could support? 5? 25? 150? Certainly oversaturation of shoppers doesn't help anybody much. And in more rural areas shoppers report 30-50 mile trips as not being unusual in order to find work. And I know Eastern Kentucky pretty well--I was born and raised in Tennessee.

Right now I have MS companies begging me to work for them. Monday and Tuesday I am going to VA to shop. True, in those two days I will cover about 150 miles each day round trip, but the pay is $92 and 3 meals one day and $96 and 4 meals the next day. For a person who has children in school, they could work their two days off each week and make lots of money. One city is 44 miles away and I am getting paid $44, because no one else will go there. I don't know why. When I do this I usually round me up two or three service station shops each day just to pay for my gas (I drive a Toyota).

Since you are from Tennessee, you know Eastern KY borders on South West West Virginia and the western part of Virginia. I don't know why, but a couple of companies I work for cannot get anyone to work for them in those areas. That is why when I do they pay larger amounts.

I don't know that I have run into any shoppers from WVa but I know there are a lot of them in VA but mostly on the eastern side. And I do understand the opportunities you are seeing but realize as well that you are seeing them because you are in a totally unsaturated area and ready/willing and able to travel. But are you seeing 5-10 times as much work as you could handle? If you got 25 folks in your area interested in shopping, would they see more than a job or two per month without travelling into WVA or VA? That was my point. If you were having companies begging you to work within 25-30 miles of your house, it would be a different story. For a newbie shopper to go 44 miles for a $44 shop that got rejected because they messed up and forgot a receipt would be devastating and not helpful at all. Even with prompting and hand holding new shoppers need a way to get their feet wet before they commit a lot of time/money/miles to this.

I know I am one of the ones that bad mouths that one company that you and I both know pays the least of any company out there. Most newbies use that one to get their feet wet. Left still in the month of March within a 20 mile radius of my home I counted today there were 30 shops. That was just on that one site. It required 5 photos and $1 purchase inside & $3 gas purchase. They have even added a photo resizer to their web site since I got a new camera that I can change to any size I want.

There is even one shoe shop that says, "Bring any child of any age with you to do your shop. Just come and do it!"

The last response is the same spam tn=hey posted under hiiii in the introductions section. Ignore.

I need to come further East. lol Maybe take a week and travel to Eastern KY and VA and WV ,... I pull together routes all the time and add a ton of gas shops to it. Maybe if I xan get someone to help pay for transport or lodging? Hmmmmmmmm