Mystery shoppers needed. We need dedicated, hard-working mystery shoppers. We train hotel front desk agents on selling skills and then measure results through telephone calls. Hotel Shopping Network, a 20 year old business, works with the hospitality industry. If you want part time work, have a Microsoft based computer, a working cell or landline phone that can dial long-distance free of charge, can work from a home office and be available for various shifts throughout the month, please reply to this ad and you will be given an e-mail address to submit your resume. Customer service skills are valuable, but not required. Training is provided. Males are encouraged to apply because we need your voice. Visit our website www.hotelshoppingnetwork.com Serious applicants only please.

Background: I applied for this position, and heard back almost immediately. However, after doing further research, I question the legitimacy of this company. For instance, they have supposedly been around for 28 years, yet I was unable to find a single review of the company. And (please correct me if I'm wrong), they do not have a BBB page have any of you worked with this company? I have a interview scheduled with them this Thursday, but I am a little wary.
Josh

I have not previously heard of this company, but here is what I found.

The website looks legit and seems to have some history with it. The website was originally obtained in 2002 and would appear to have been continuously renewed since then. The user of record is a person named in the website as the founder of the company. There are proper street address and phone number given in the website registration.

Your typical scam is promising you lots of money per job ('too good to be true' type money) and is sending you a big fat fraudulent check for you to cash and send part of the money along to someone else (even if they paid you up front, why would they send you more than you were supposedly going to earn? But not to worry, shoppers don't get paid up front anyway.)

That you are going for an interview should be fine. I don't like that they wanted you to send a resume, but heck you need to do that for any job in the 9 to 5 world so there shouldn't be anything on your resume that could be used to steal your identity. There are many companies that are not covered by the BBB, so that is not necessarily a negative.

Overall I see nothing here to immediately shout "RUN!!!" It is good to be skeptical, however. Look at your surroundings, is this a rent-by-the-hour office? Their home office should be in Beulah, Colorado and the GoDaddy website registration does match to the contact information shown on the website.

Holy cow, Flash. It was incredibly nice of you to do all that research and report your findings.

Doesn't take long at all. And if it was a scam there needed to be a shout out. As it is, this may actually be a company that folks (including me) may wish to investigate further. I do hope that Josh will come back and let us know what he discovered.

I was hoping the Home Shopping Network was looking for shoppers. I haven't actually ever bought anything off of that channel (is it even still airing?) but could be tempted if the fee and reimbursement were right. Thanks for the info Flash! Perhaps Josh is on his way to a new job!

Ha! I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought the thread was about the Home Shopping Network before I opened it!

Flash-you are an asset to our board! I like reading your posts. Thanks for all that you give us!

I thought it was Home Shopping network too. I used to work there... they do use mystery shoppers but I have yet to run across the company they use for mystery shopping.

Wanted to give you all an update. Did the interview, had a follow-up call, and I am supposed to start training sometime this week. They're going to email me manual with guidelines. Don't know if I can talk about specifics regarding pay, but when I can tell you it is it's part-time work, and they pay you starting at $2.50 per call (as seen on the Craigslist advertisement). You do get raises in pay depending on how long you work for them. If you want to take a look at the type of work expected, you can Head over to their website, and under "client area", you will see a link that says "training". Here, There are sample calls that you can listen to. So far, this company is looking to be legitimate. Hope this helps.

But $2.50 per call is really low on the food chain as shop fees go.

But the $2.50 rate is only for a 2-5 minute call. Also, I'm not sure if the the rate is only for the call, or filling out the shop paperwork as well

@wakingupkk wrote:

I thought it was Home Shopping network too. I used to work there... they do use mystery shoppers but I have yet to run across the company they use for mystery shopping.

The HSN retail outlet stores are shopped monthly and it is self assigned with 90 day rotations.