One of the most frustrating things about mystery shopping is having to wait weeks to get paid on an assignment. It is common for payment processing to take between four and six weeks, but some mystery shoppers may not receive income from an assignment for seven or eight weeks, if not longer. Once you do get paid, you then have to wait for funds to transfer to your account or checks to clear. If you have been growing frustrated with how long it takes to get your mystery shopping paychecks, you are not alone. However, there are a few steps that you can follow to get paid more quickly.
Complete Your Assignments Quickly – and Fully
Mystery shopping providers will not begin processing your paycheck until the assignment has been reviewed and approved. Some mystery shoppers believe that the processing timeframe begins when they submit their report, but this isn’t true. If your reports normally come back to you for revisions or you often have issues submitting receipts or other documentation, this may be resulting in a delay for the paychecks. You can make an effort to ensure that your assignments are fully completed as quickly as possible, including minimizing the need for revisions and responding to the revision requests quickly.
Online Payment Process
If you are one of the mystery shoppers who have continued to hold out on moving to online payment processing, you may be shooting yourself in the foot. Online payments, such as those through PayPal, are faster for mystery shopping providers to process, and they are faster for you to receive. In fact, some providers may tell you that online payments are received up to one or two weeks faster than check payments are received. In addition, you can download an app for financial processors or your financial institution to begin the funds transfer process right away. For example, with a PayPal app on your phone, you don’t have to wait until you get home to transfer funds. Instead, you can begin the transfer process as soon as you receive notification that your funds are available.
The Right Providers
While your efforts in the areas mentioned above can help you to get paid more quickly, the bottom line is that your providers will have a huge role in how quickly you get paid. You can do your best to get the report submitted quickly and can have the online payment process set up too. However, a portion of the payment process will be completed internally at your providers’ offices. If they are too picky about reports, and you seem to get revision requests that are unfounded or unreasonable, this ultimately is delaying your payment processing. Some providers also just have a slower processing timeline. If this is a source of stress for you, you can consider switching providers.
As you can see, there are several steps that you can take to get your paycheck faster. It is common to blame providers for slow payments, and they do have a lot to do with it. However, from choosing to work with different providers to accepting online payments and more, there are steps that you can take to get paid more quickly.