Website: [www.personallyrecommended.com.au]
This was my first mystery shopping place, which I joined about 6 or 7 months back. While I did help my wife with some mystery shopping a few years ago, and basically had to do the whole thing, this was my first place I did by myself.
At the time, I was not impressed. My first job required me to pay $26.10 out of pocket and only offered a measly $10 pay, but that was before I found out that some other places offer less pay than that, and some offer none. At least this place offers to compensate you for what you've actually bought - some other places offer $10 compensation but the minimum spend is $15, and I had one place that had a mandatory purchase worth $7.50 but they refused to pay for it.
Their website keeps crashing while doing your report, meaning that you can spend 30 minutes typing it up only to have to do it all over again. I found that it wasn't worth even starting it unless I was on my home computer, as it's basically impossible to do it on your phone. Or at least it was on my phone.
Pay for non-purchase shops varies between $17 and $19, and they usually pay about $10 for shops that have a purchase component, but the good thing is that they usually pay for the whole of what you buy, which some others don't do.
They did have poor instructions, for example one place said that all I needed to do was to take a photo of the place only once I got to make my report it said it wanted a geolocator that they hadn't asked for, and the instructions for the jobs regularly don't match the report.
The assigners are wonderful, and the only problem I had with an evaluator was when I had a customer service operator that was completely clueless and the company came back to say that she was their best salesperson. I had to provide a word for word account, from memory, of our entire 45-minute interaction before they were satisfied that she was simply trying to make sales from flirting rather than from product knowledge.
I used to refer to them as "the bad one" but that was just compared to the other one I had to start with, as early on I had 2. Now that I've seen a few other ones, these ones aren't too bad, though they're not the best either.
Pros: Actually compensate what you buy, nice assigners and evaluators.
Cons: Low pay, system breaks down all of the time, ambiguous requirements that don't always match the report requirements.
This was my first mystery shopping place, which I joined about 6 or 7 months back. While I did help my wife with some mystery shopping a few years ago, and basically had to do the whole thing, this was my first place I did by myself.
At the time, I was not impressed. My first job required me to pay $26.10 out of pocket and only offered a measly $10 pay, but that was before I found out that some other places offer less pay than that, and some offer none. At least this place offers to compensate you for what you've actually bought - some other places offer $10 compensation but the minimum spend is $15, and I had one place that had a mandatory purchase worth $7.50 but they refused to pay for it.
Their website keeps crashing while doing your report, meaning that you can spend 30 minutes typing it up only to have to do it all over again. I found that it wasn't worth even starting it unless I was on my home computer, as it's basically impossible to do it on your phone. Or at least it was on my phone.
Pay for non-purchase shops varies between $17 and $19, and they usually pay about $10 for shops that have a purchase component, but the good thing is that they usually pay for the whole of what you buy, which some others don't do.
They did have poor instructions, for example one place said that all I needed to do was to take a photo of the place only once I got to make my report it said it wanted a geolocator that they hadn't asked for, and the instructions for the jobs regularly don't match the report.
The assigners are wonderful, and the only problem I had with an evaluator was when I had a customer service operator that was completely clueless and the company came back to say that she was their best salesperson. I had to provide a word for word account, from memory, of our entire 45-minute interaction before they were satisfied that she was simply trying to make sales from flirting rather than from product knowledge.
I used to refer to them as "the bad one" but that was just compared to the other one I had to start with, as early on I had 2. Now that I've seen a few other ones, these ones aren't too bad, though they're not the best either.
Pros: Actually compensate what you buy, nice assigners and evaluators.
Cons: Low pay, system breaks down all of the time, ambiguous requirements that don't always match the report requirements.