You come to this site to confirm an opportunity too good to be true and are disappointed by what your eyes see that the “opportunity” is a scam. We feel the urge to direct you to the right opportunity but not just shut the door.

There’re indeed legitimate opportunities there, good and true. If you learn the skills of differentiating the true from the false, not only you won’t be victimized, but also you’re wise enough to make full use of the opportunities.

Today’s topic is about mystery shopping. Good news is that legitimate mystery shopping opportunities do exist, but you need to distinguish them from scams, moreover, you should be motivated to look out for and find them!

Mystery shopping is one of the effective marketing research tools to gather accurate feedbacks from trained mystery shoppers for companies to measure the quality of services, in order to improve the customer service experiences and excel competitors. Mystery shoppers are just like regular shoppers, but they get paid to report unbiased shopping experiences in great detail.

Unfortunately, scammers eventually targeted at this business.

How to spot a scam?

A scam uses a free email account, an email address of a domain different than the one of the company the scammer claims, or email spoofing or phishing. Scammers use e-mail spoofing to alter the email headers including the “From” field.

You can easily spot a scam by clicking on the “Reply” button (don’t send!) and checking the email address in “To” field.

• If the email address is not a free account, you can check out the domain.
• If the domain is not a mystery shopping company, then it’s a scam, and whatever email address shown in “From” field, whatever email address and / or company URL used in the message can be neglected.
• If the domain goes to a mystery shopping company, make sure it’s not just a misspelled URL to a fraudulent Website, and then you can check the company’s membership at Mystery Shopping Providers Association:
North America: http://www.mysteryshop.org
Search global provider: http://www.mspa-global.org/en/

Further Notes:

The essential fact in scams is that the money the scammers promised to send you doesn’t exist and instead they require you to send money through wire transfer service like Western Union or Money Gram, which reputable companies won’t do.

To avoid all the hassle, why not just look out for and find legitimate mystery shopping companies instead!

1.
Shoppers, Inc. provides mystery shopping, customer service training and customer survey services to help you take your current customer service to the next level. Company Highlights:
• Very prompt, fair and objective;
• Very professional company that is well-structured;
• Reports contain detailed information that is very useful to clients;
• Responsive, flexible, reasonable and friendly.

2.
Mystique Shopper evaluates the performance of employees, customer service and products for the retail and service industries utilizing anonymous Mystery Shoppers like you. Company Highlights:
• The company pays shoppers the fastest in the industry;
• The company implements mystery shopper rating system to reward high performers and meanwhile to provide clients with more valuable reports.

3.
Since 1991, Premier Service has grown from a mystery shopping provider to a full-service firm. Company Highlights:
• Someone is always available to help shoppers and/or give feedback, and generous with praise and tips to help shoppers become better shoppers and/or write better reports;
• Reports are comprehensive, in an easy to follow format;
• Shops are usually fun to do, and pay for the shops is great;
• Training is very thorough, and it prepares inexperienced shoppers to do the shop properly;
• Has a zero tolerance for slackers;
• Has a wide range of clients and many locations to choose from, and constantly has shops available for its shoppers. It is unusual for shoppers not to receive an email message every single day with opportunities.