I was employed by Measure Consumer Perspective LLC to do mystery shopping for them. They went me a check for $2300 to deposit into my bank account where I would have to wait for the check to clear. I was released the $320 for my payment and was then instructed to go to a store and buy 3 money orders in the amount of $620 then told not to make the checks out to anyone but was told to go to fed ex to send them to the company store where I purchased them from. The address given to me had an apartment number to where these money orders were going to. Monday I checked my statement and I am now $2300 in the hole because the check was a fraudulent check. BUYER BEWARE!!! DONT WORK FOE THIS COMPANY!!!!

Missy, red flags are waving all over the place. Anyone who pays you in advance to do a job is not legitimate. Getting money from a company that has not asked for your personal information or references is another red flag. The $320 is another red flag. Legitimate companies do not pay this much. The reason it sounded too good to be true is that is WAS too good to be true. Not collecting your social security number is another red flag. Since any money you earn requires you to pay taxes, a legitimate company would have to collect your social security number. There is a legitimate mystery shopping company called Measure Consumer Perspectives but this is not the legitimate company.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/25/2018 10:29PM by roflwofl.

Hi Missy2018! While that is a scam that all too many have fallen victim to, Measure Consumer Perspectives is actually a legit company. Sometimes the scammers use an actual mystery shop company's name for these scams. The first red flag should have been when they send you a check for work not completed yet. It is almost always a scam if a "company" is sending you a check before the work. They will never have you deposit it into your account and just take your pay. Also, it is extremely rare any mystery shop is going to pay $320 for a shop. I'm very sorry to hear you fell victim to this, but if it seems too good to be true, which $320 for almost no work sounds, then it probably is too good to be true.

job your applied for few days ago.To tell you a little more about our company and the part time position available, Measure Consumer Perspective LLC is a company that conducts surveys and evaluates other companies. We get hired to go to other companies and act like customers in order to know how the staffs are handling their services in relation to their customers. Once we have a contract to do you would be directed to the company, store or outlet and you would be given the funds you need to do the job.

The assignment is divided in two parts, you would make use of the walmart money center for your first assignment and for the second assignment you would shop at the same walmart store and we would provide you with the list of items to purchase and tell you what to do with these items,you would write a comment on the staffs activities and give a detailed record of your experience . Please note that you are to stay calm and confident throughout the period which you will be carrying out your assignment at the outlet in order not to arouse any suspicion. Your wages would be $320 and we would provide you with additional funds for you to carry out your assignment, for any work you carry out and you are to carry out at least 1-3 assignments per week. Since your application has been approved already you would receive your first assignment in the mail within 3 to 5 working days with instructions on what to do.

We have a major contact with Walmart and You would secretly evaluate any of the Walmart stores around you.You will send your report back to us and will have to use the following pointers to prepare your report:

1) How long it took you to get services.
2) Ambiance/Outlook of the Shop/Outlet
3) Smartness of the attendant
4) Customer service professionalism
5) Reaction of personnel under pressure
6) Information that you think would be helpful
7) Your comments and impressions.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Regards

Brian Daniel

This is what the correspondence said as to who and where to send the money orders to

You have done a great job, You would ship the money orders back to us with the money order receipts included in the package for our records. You should leave the money orders blank and you should not fill them out. It should be shipped over night express early morning delivery to the following address Roland Delon c/o reality based groups research 360 grand avenue apt 335 Oakland CA 94610 It's important you leave the money orders blank,ship them over night express early am delivery and also you must not include a signature upon delivery, so it should be "NO" required to deliver, it's our mailI room so the mail person would be there to receive it.

Mail room person is addressed to an apartment number.

I am posting this because I don’t want this happening to another person. And the same company that you said is legit is not really legit.

Thanks for posting the details. However the company is indeed legit. The scammers use real companies and simply pose as them. If you check you will find Measure Consumer Perspective is not at the Oakland address you were given. They are located in Kentucky. Notify you local PD. Maybe with this guys address and apartment number they can at least do something. However I’m afraid your money is sadly gone.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/25/2018 11:46PM by kenasch.

OP, do some research online. You were scammed by a con artist impersonating a real entity. Their email address and mailing address are a good clue to this. This is no different than the emails from a "heir to royal riches" needing you to pay a few hundred dollars to release millions of dollars which you get to keep most of.

Missy, I personally do work for this company. The highest paying shop they have that I am aware of is a senior apartment shop for $100, and a hotel shop for that same pay pus reimbursement. They are based in KY, not CA. Unfortunately, you fell victim to a scam that an individual pulled on you using their name.

If you copied and pasted that "post" from them, that is also a red flag. Several grammatical errors.

If you are new to mystery shopping, there are plenty of pointers and lists of legit companies (which Measure is listed as part of and has been for years). There are also posts about scams, and this one is a classic case of one.

Mystery shops generally pay between $0 (only reimbursement) to around $100. Anything over that needs to be looked at a lot more carefully, especially if they are sending you money before performing any work.

Aw - sorry that happened to you. No one likes being duped.

@Missy2018 wrote:

I am posting this because I don’t want this happening to another person. And the same company that you said is legit is not really legit.

The company we are telling you about IS legitimate. The person that scammed you is a "pretender" who is using the name of the real company. The scammer is not a legitimate company and they are not a registered LLC. They are merely a scammer who is grabbing as much money as he can. Next week he will probably pick out another company and pretend to be that company.

Most times when someone promises big money it is because they are not actually going to pay it. The majority of mystery shops pay between $5 and $20, not $320. The interaction you had with this scammer was not mystery shopping. You did not work for the "company" and the scammer does not have a contract with WalMart. There is big money for these scammers. He made $2300 with almost no work.

The address they gave you in Oakland Ca is actually for a UPS store. I’m guessing the apartment number they gave you is actually their drop box. Not sure if the PD can find out the owner of the box. You definitely should report this to the PD.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/26/2018 01:27AM by kenasch.

@kenasch wrote:

The address they gave you in Oakland Ca is actually for a UPS store. I’m guessing the apartment number they gave you is actually their drop box. Not sure if the PD can find out the owner of the box. You definitely should report this to the PD.

She won't be back.

I'm sorry that this happened to you. As a mystery shopper, we are not considered as an employee of any MSC but as an independent contractor. When we sign up with any mystery shopping company, we must provide a social security number, bank account number or paypal account in order to be paid for WORK COMPLETED and sign an agreement that states we agreed to be an independent contractor. As the others have commented, many scammers use legitimate names of mystery shopping companies and let the legitimate mystery shopping companies to take the blame.

I've done work for the real MCP.

I'm so sorry this happened to you!

Sorry this happened to you but geez, isn't this scam well known? All the big retailers have signs up alerting people to know big money orders or gift cards requests are scammers. Did you really think that depositing a check then getting a few money orders was worth hundreds of dollars in pay?

Apparently she did. These scams would not be around if people did not fall for them.

So sad that people are still falling for this well known scam that has been around for years.

This made sense to you? That out of the blue you received thousands of dollars and to send money orders to a company you had never done business with? Wasn't the language used in the emails you received a big enough red flag?

@SoCalMama wrote:

@kenasch wrote:

The address they gave you in Oakland Ca is actually for a UPS store. I’m guessing the apartment number they gave you is actually their drop box. Not sure if the PD can find out the owner of the box. You definitely should report this to the PD.

She won't be back.

She never did come back. Last activity was 9/25/18.
Case closed.

What amazes me is people manage to find this forum only after they've fallen for the scam.
A little research beforehand would sure eliminate a lot of grief.

It is also a possibility that "missy" is the MS scammer and was using this forum to gather information to improve upon their scammy scammer tactics. By asking us to point out the flaws/inconsistencies in the fake mystery shop assignment we could be helping the scammer A-hole do a better job at manipulating the next target. I could be totally wrong, but it's not outside the realm of possibilities...

By advertising how they pull a scam? Unlikely way to get people to fall for a scam, advertising about it on the internet.

On the facebook group someone else got the same scam using Intellishop's company name.

@SoCalMama wrote:

@SoCalMama wrote:

@kenasch wrote:

The address they gave you in Oakland Ca is actually for a UPS store. I’m guessing the apartment number they gave you is actually their drop box. Not sure if the PD can find out the owner of the box. You definitely should report this to the PD.

She won't be back.

She never did come back. Last activity was 9/25/18.
Case closed.

\
Her last post was 9/25/2018. Last activity was actually 9/28/2018 at 12:33 AM, so she did continue to log in and read the responses to her final post. At this point, SoCalMama is probably right that she will not be back. She got caught by this because she was looking for easy work and big money. Now that she knows that mystery shopping is not big easy money, she will likely leave it alone.

This definitely sounds like a scam. Isn’t there a moderator to prevent posts like this from getting up on the forum?

"in order to know how the staffs are handling their services." The MSC would never say "how the staffs are handling their services" That's scammer speak.

This person has a right to post here about how she was duped and scammed. Hopefully other people will see it and read what happened to her so they do not fall for it too.

@mophies wrote:

This definitely sounds like a scam. Isn’t there a moderator to prevent posts like this from getting up on the forum?

Being able to post/ask questions like this is exactly why this forum is important. The OP might have been caught. However, there are almost certainly other folks who prevented themselves from being scammed by reading her post and the responses.

@mophies wrote:

This definitely sounds like a scam. Isn’t there a moderator to prevent posts like this from getting up on the forum?

Everything important has been said, but let's also use our heads and know we don't receive funds for work not done...please think about depositing that check, you are responsible for making up the money...just report it.
How many times is greed going to take over, and I am sorry for your loss, lesson learned (the hard way).