It’s hard to get a group of mystery shoppers in a room together, but if you visit online forums, you can often catch some interesting and often very useful chatter. When mystery shoppers get together, even in a virtual environment like a forum, the topics of conversation inevitably focus on their recent assignments and their providers. Some have wonderful things to say about their time on the job, and others have some shockingly negative comments about their experiences. You may read such comments as stories, but you should also be reading them as lessons to learn from, too. Here are a few of the things you can learn about mystery shopping providers that you will want to take notes on:
Compensation. Compensation is a hot topic for mystery shoppers. Everyone loves to gripe about how little they get paid, and they love to brag about those ridiculously cushy assignments that fall into from time to time, too. As you read through the posts and comments on mystery shopping forums, keep a little notebook handy and jot down notes. When you are ready to make a change with the providers you work with, as you will want to do from time to time, your notes on the highest and lowest paying providers will definitely come in handy
Easy to Work With. You will also certainly hear some horror stories about providers and their thoughtless and sometimes even unethical treatment of providers. Now, you will want to take some of these stories with a grain of salt. After all, you are only hearing one side of the story. However, if the responses from other mystery shoppers indicate that this experience has been one that has been repeated over and over, this may be a good thing to jot down notes on. Such providers are likely those who you will want to stay away from in the future.
Speed of Payment. How much you get paid is one thing, but how quickly you paid is just as important. What good is a $50 assignment after all if it takes you weeks and weeks, not to mention hours of your time asking the provider where the payment is at, before you can get it sent to you. As you read through the various comments made by other mystery shoppers online, jot down some notes when you run across comments about how slowly or how quickly a provider pays.
There really is quite a bit of very valuable information that is passed between mystery shoppers on the online forums. This information is there not just for your entertainment but also for you to learn from. You may not need the information now, but you will find that by jotting down a few notes about providers here and there, you will accumulate some incredibly valuable information that eventually can be used to make you a more profitable mystery shopper. So take some time today to get out a notebook and pen, and hop onto the online forums today to see what information you can learn about your trade. Check out MysteryShopForum.com