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"Mystery Shopping" Scams Revealed:
From the desk of Scott Welch...... Earn $50/hour as a Mystery Shopper?.....The idea of mystery shopping jobs is becoming very popular with people looking for part time work with flexible hours. Mystery shopping jobs offer good pay, short hours, and a fun, interesting work environment. Most mystery shoppers only work 1-2 hours per job, and can accept or reject a job with just a day's notice. The work usually consists of visiting a store, making predetermined purchases, and evaluating the customer service. Of course there are variations, such as going to a restaurant or hotel, and evaluating the food, cleanliness, and overall attitude of the staff. In any case, the mystery shopper will fill out a report after their work is done, and turn it in to receive their pay. Sounds like a fun, legitimate job, right? Well unfortunately, if you want to participate, you are likely to find hundreds of fraudulent websites claiming to help you get daily work. But in most cases, these websites have one intent - making you pay to become a member of their website just so they can supposedly tell you where to go on the internet to find real mystery shopping jobs. But all they actually do is provide you with a list of useless links to companies that no longer exist, or more companies that want you to pay more money to join their website as well! These websites will charge you a $20-$50 fee for access to their directory of mystery shopping job sources. In reality, 99% of these websites offer you nothing more than the following:
Each of the sites we recommend below offer a 100% money-back guarantee for up to 45 days. And we have verified that these companies live up to this guarantee. After joining one of the sites below, you can expect to be offered up to 10 mystery shopping job offers the per day. You then have the option to accept or reject each one. Most mystery shopping jobs pay $25-$50/hour, but most jobs DO NOT last more than 2-4 hours. Therefore, you are typically going to earn $50-$200 per job, plus maybe a few free items from the store, or a free meal. But if you can line up more than 1 job per day, you can make well over $400 per day, for easy, fun work. Its all up to you, and how much you want to work. Take a look at what one woman has accomplished as a mystery shopper: Wall Street Journal, Online Edition June 9, 2004: "Cheers," she said, hoisting a frosty Corona with lime. Tanned and relaxed after playing a few holes, she finished up the beer and ate a cheeseburger. The golf and burgers were all part of the job, as were the strict instructions from her boss to 'consume at least one alcoholic beverage." That was her afternoon. Her morning was spent dress shopping, cashing a check at a bank, and looking at new cars. In the evening she ate dinner with a friend at a, "nice Italian restaurant." Everything she did was a paid job. She made about $300 that day. "Can you believe they call this work?" she asked. And what does this shopper make on a monthly basis? According to The Wall Street Journal, "she made nearly $7,000" the month before the article was written, i.e. in May, 2004. Also, due to popular demand from our readers, we have recently added a section reviewing some of the mystery shopping sites that are free to join, which you will find under the Free-to-Join Mystery Shopping and Paid Survey Sites category at the bottom of this page. Most of the free-to-join mystery shopping sites out there are simply scams that offer no real mystery shopping jobs; instead they wish to collect your email address so that they can deluge your email with spam. However, there are actually a few legitimate mystery shopping sites that are free to join, so we decided to add our recommendations & reviews for them here as well. Be aware however that it is not reasonable to expect to make anything close to a full-time income from these smaller sites. They can typically supply 3 - 5 mystery shopping jobs per month, and pay much less than the membership sites that require a fee to join. However, as it is extra money, we still recommend you join them, as they are free and there is no risk. Best Regards, - Scott Welch TopSiteReviews.info |
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*Please email us at staff@topsitereviews.com with your recommendations and reviews of these websites, as well as any other great sites you find. We'd love to share that information on our website, so that we can help everyone make informed decisions.  Paid Online Survey Blog
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Copyright 2004 ("As Seen On" logos and trademarks are owned by their respective companies. The "types" of websites we review have previously been written about or featured by those companies. We have no affiliation with these companies. Also, as we have no control over the content of the "recommended" websites above, we make no representation or guarantee of their quality, lawfulness, or safety. Any recommendations are based soley upon our opinion. |
