Mystery Shopping Experiences

badaulname

Hey Guys...

Was looking for a thread on this but couldn't find one so apologies mods if there is one already!:o

Just wondering has anyone done any mystery shopping jobs?! If so, what was your experience like? Tough? Pay? Any info at all would be good. Applied for a couple of mystery shopping jobs today on Jobs.ie....more hopeful than expecting an outcome but god loves a trier!:D

mikemac

I've done it.

The best job was an afternoon I travelled all over North Dublin.
Portmanock, some place by Clarehall. Oh and Edenmore!
Had to sample Stella and Becks lager in different pubs and you fill up a report on price, presentation and if it was even in stock.
Class!
There was a list of pubs so you choose how many you could manage.

The worst was setting up displays for Duracell batteries. Took hooooours to do it! I'll never be a merchandiser.

And there were a few average jobs like checking stereo equipment in shops and just asking questions.


Was handy for a few quid, don't do it anymore.
However if Becks & Stella need my services, I won't say no

Gillo

I'd agree handy for a bit of cash, but actually a lot of work, the mystery shop part takes up to maybe half a hour then the report will easily take a hour if you do it properly. Maybe it was just the company I dealing were bad but took a long time to get paid also.

Fishtits

Fishtits has a mate who did a few of these, 20 bucks a pop IIRC, said mate felt very guilty about spoofing to car salesmen about willingness to buy, extracting lowest price, then walking away.

Said mate was made redundant from a nationwide Sales Mgr position so had interior take as well.

Lollipops23

We have em all the time in my shop!!usually my dept does quite well, we're all very friendly/chatty and professional.
but our last one went reeeally badly. i hate to say this,but i honestly believe it was racially motivated as the only staff on the floor at the time were Eastern European.Basically the shopper quoted one of them (our manager) as saying stuff that there's absoloutely no way she said. Needless to say,she was quite upset by this but did nothing as she was scared.

wmpdd3

I have done mystery shops and been on the receiving end of them.

We had one shop from very large and well respected company. It was really bad, I was able to prove from the report that the person hadn't been to the store at the time and date they said. Our next mystery shop was from a different company.

You have a lot of responcibility to be fair and precise in your shop report.

Gillo

Funny we had a similar experience a number of times, I remember once (I work of O2) we had launched a new product called imode, the second section on the mystery shops was about profiling the customer and asking a lot of questions. Anyway some guy comes in and walks straight up to the counter (they are meant to wait to be approached and time how long that takes) and announces to me "I'm on ready to go with vodafone, I want a billpay imode phone from you". It was obvious he was a mystery shopper, soon as he was gone I sent a complaint to my area manager and the customer experience manager complaining that I had been mystery shopped and was bound to fail since this guy had effectively wiped 25% of my score away by not letting me profile him.

That's the hard part, keeping and accurate and fair record of the "sale", especially when it effects someone's wages (there's a decent bonus when our staff score well). If you put the effect it, it's handy cash but it's only ever gonna be a relatively small amount as it's generally parttime.