New Mystery Shopper Scam
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email updates. ----> Thanks for visiting!
Although mystery shopping is a completely legitimate industry, the scammers have come up with lots of ways to exploit the popularity of mystery shopping and take advantage of the unsuspecting. Just when I thought I had seen all of the mystery shopper scams, I found a new one today.
This site (and, no, I am not going to name it) looks like it could be a legitimate mystery shopping company. However, if you sign up with them you will be buried in spam email, and you may find yourself with lots of unexpected charges on your credit cards. Here is how it works:
You sign up with basic info (your name, address, email, etc.) and are taken to a “profile page.” The profile page is actually a place where you will be asked a series of questions that will sign you up for various email lists. The scammer gets paid for every one you check. The payment comes from companies looking for leads. So, for example, if you check yes, that you would like to receive information about getting a free electric scooter, the scooter company pays the scammer.
The companies paying for these leads are often legitimate companies; however, the methods the scammers use to provide leads is not legitimate.
Once you run the gauntlet of pages of “profile” information, you get the opportunity to sign up for secret shopper jobs. Except they are not secret shopper jobs. The scammer claims they will pay you for evaluating the service of the listed companies. Each so-called job lists an amount you will be paid for completing it. Will they actually pay you? Who knows? But it is clear that these are not mystery shops.
Some of the “mystery shopper jobs” they list require you to sign up for a trial of a service and pay a shipping and handling fee. If you read the fine print, you will learn that if you do not cancel within 30 days, your card will be charged $29.95, $49.95 or more every month. Or you will sign up for satellite television service, apply for a credit card or something else that could end up costing you money.
There are lots of sites that promise you rewards (usually a laptop computer, iPod, iPhone, Xbox or other desirable item) when you complete “offers.” They make it very hard to complete all of the required offers, and most people give up before they qualify for the prize. But they generally will give you the item if you complete all of the offers they throw at you. If you want to do this, more power to you. But be aware that you will be spammed beyond what you can imagine, and you had better read all of the fine print on every page very carefully.
There is no way this can be considered “mystery shopping,” though. This is just an old scheme in new clothes. Here are a few things you can do to protect yourself:
Get a “throwaway” email address you can use with an unknown company. That way if they spam you or sell your email address, you can dump it and move on. Of course, if you are an MSPA certified shopper signing up with an MSPA member company, you will need to use the email address associated with your certification number. But MSPA companies are not going to spam or scam you. You can verify if a company is an MSPA member at http://www.mysteryshop.org/shoppers
If part of the profile you are asked to complete includes questions such as, “Would you like to receive information about . . .?” chances are you are not signing up to mystery shop. Your email address is going to get hit hard with a lot of garbage.
If the site claiming to be a mystery shopping company says you will have to sign up for “offers,” run. Signing up for offers usually means giving your credit card number to a bunch of companies, and perhaps getting charges you do not expect.
These sites succeed because there are people who want to be mystery shoppers and do not know how it works. It is easy to be tricked by these schemes, so educate yourself and do not get scammed.
Related articles:
Post a comment