The Mystery Shopper’s Manual

The Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA) is now offering the Gold Certification program on DVD. Instead of waiting for a workshop to come to your town, or spending time and money to travel to a workshop, you can get the most widely-recognized mystery shopper certification at home, on your schedule. You can even complete the certification while you are in your jammies!

Although certification is not required to be a mystery shopper, the MPSA’s Gold Certification is an effective way for new secret shoppers to get up to speed on how to be effective shoppers, and for more experienced shoppers to demonstrate to mystery shopping companies their qualification and commitment to being great secret shoppers. It can help you get more and better assignments, faster. …continue reading MSPA Gold Certification Now on DVD

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Two operators of an alleged counterfeit cashier’s check scam have been arrested in Canada. This secret shopper scam has cheated potential mystery shoppers out of hundreds or even thousands of dollars each. Variations of the scam have involved lotteries, eBay and CraigsList purchases and other scenarios, but the mystery shopper angle has gotten a lot of attention lately.
…continue reading Secret Shopper Scam Arrests in Canada

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My post on Reverse Auctions and Secret Shopper Pay drew this comment from the owner of a mystery shopping company:

We have noticed a substantial increase in the number of evaluations we must return to shoppers because they are incomplete, have poor explanations, or just don’t make sense. I think in most cases we pay well, but we can’t seem to figure out why the quality has gone down – other than the influence of text messaging.

Do you think this is an exaggeration? Judging by the email I sometimes receive, I do not believe that it is. …continue reading “I WANT TU B UR MSYTERY SHOPPR”

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A lot of shoppers lament the decreases in shopper pay that have occurred over the last few years. Many believe that mystery shopping companies are simply pocketing cash they are withholding from shoppers, but that does not take into account the pricing pressures that mystery shopping companies experience.

There is a lot of competition in the industry, and nowhere is this more evident than in the reverse auction. Reverse auctions are used by many large corporations to purchase products and services, including mystery shopping. Here is how they work, and how they affect how much you and I get paid to mystery shop. …continue reading Secret Shopper Pay and Reverse Auctions

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Market Force Information, Inc. announced that they have acquired Certified Marketing Services, Inc. (“CMS”), a full-service, national marketing and merchandising services organization. According to the press release from Market Force, this acquisition makes Market Force Information the only company in the industry to offer a truly full-service, integrated suite of mystery shopping, direct customer feedback, on-site merchandising and analytics services from a single provider.

So what does this mean to mystery shoppers? …continue reading Market Force Information Acquires Certified Marketing Services

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