Satrap asked:




Mystery shopping and getting paid for shopping sounds so good and desirable. I mean who wouldn’t like to get paid to shop? It’s a dream come true for many, specially those (ladies) who never get tired of shopping. But, is there really an indestry outthere that rewards you for shopping? Yes, there is, and it’s called “Mystery Shopping”. Most people have heard about mystery shopping or at least have seen an ad here and there for “secret shoppers” or “mystery shoppers”, that promises as much as $50 an hour and free merchandise. So, just what exactly is mystery shopping? Is it a scam or is it a legitimate money making opportunity? And most of all how can you make money with mystery shopping?

“Mystery shopping”, “integrity shopping” or “Mystery Consumer” started in the 1940’s, as a tool to measure the integrity and honesty of an employee. It is a simple yet affective method for market research companies to gather information about the quality of a specific product or service. Mystery shopping is most commonly used for retail stores, car dealership, movie theaters, restaurants, fast food chains, banks, gas stations and etc. It’s also used for collecting information about hospitals and other health care facilities. Mystery shopping and the result it produces is becoming a big part of success or failure of a business or even an employee or employees of a business. For example, customer/patient satisfaction is being incorporated more frequently into executive pay. One study by a U.S. firm found more than 55% of hospital chief executive officers surveyed in 2005 had “some compensation at risk,” based on patient satisfaction, up from only 8% to 20% a dozen years ago. The mystery shopping industry had an estimated value of nearly $800 million in the United States in 2008.

So, how does mystery shopping work? Well, it’s based on a simple yet result producing technique. A mystery shopper who is assigned for the specific store/business, poses as a real customer and does simple tasks like asking question, buying a product and maybe returning it later, all in order to gather information about the quality of service and product of that store/business. After the shopping is done, the shopper will report back his or her experience by filling out a questioner, by phone or even in person. In return for this service, of course the shopper receives a reward, which can be cash or gift certificate, plus the shopper gets to keep the product(service) which s(h)e just bought, for free. It could be a tv or a dinner at a restaurant or what have you.

As you can see, it’s a very simple and fun way to make extra cash while enjoying a shopping experience. So why is mystery shopping so mysteries and not so many people know what exactly it is, or don’t seem to be able to find genuine information about it? Well, unfortunately just like any other thing that becomes popular & productive, scammers find a way to cash in, and since mystery shopping industry doesn’t advertise much(they are very selective of their shoppers), scammers take advantage of already mysteries mystery shopping. Remember those ads for $50 an hr and….? Legitimate mystery shopping companies don’t usually advertise that way! That’s how scammers start taking advantage of the “hungry for making easy money” crowd (just like the paid survey scams). But what if you decide to become a mystery shopper and make some money this way? It could help you make some much needed cash. Specially in this economy it would be nice to get paid for shopping and get to keep the items for free as well. Luckily their are some legitimate mystery shopping companies that are known and trustworthy, if you know how to find them. You can use related forums and chat rooms to find out about legitimate mystery shopping companies. Here is a list of wellknown legitimate mystery shopping companies.

Remeber, like any other job, msytry shopping has its own dos and donts. Make sure you read and underestand what is exactly requierd of you for each spesific assignment. I a sure it wont be that hard any way. I mean, your going to shop and get paid for it!



Scott

Sam Parker asked:




According to conventional wisdom “There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”. That’s generally true BUT…

There is a way to really have a free lunch and also to get paid for it! This is so awesome that people hardly can believe it! They are skeptical at first - as you may be - but they are so glad after they give it a try.

It isn’t known by most of us but we can earn money for many activities we do everyday: eating in restaurants, shopping in stores, enjoying a movie at your local theater or playing golf!

In the US only over 700,000 people are paid every day for such “jobs”. It is called Mystery Shopping.

Secret shopper jobs give us the opportunity to earn an extra income just for shopping and filling out a questionnaire. You can work part time or full time and decide on what assignments you want to take. Shoppers are paid $10-$50 per hour just for having fun!

The Wall Street Journal has recently featured an article on earning huge money with mystery shopping assignments. It explains how Jennifer Voitle, a mystery shopper living in Baldwin - N.Y., makes about $7000 per months from her various assignments. We bring here an excerpt of this article:

“Jennifer Voitle has mastered the Freebie Economy. A former investment-bank employee who was laid off two years ago, Ms. Voitle has found a new career in the arcane world of dining deals, gift certificates and “mystery shopping,” where companies pay her to test their products and services. She gets paid to shop, eat at restaurants, drink at bars, travel and even play golf. Last month, she made nearly $7,000 from her various freebie adventures. By the end of the year, she could be making more than she did in investment banking, not counting her steady supply of handouts.

She gets free gas, free groceries and free clothes. When her car breaks down, she gets paid to have it repaired. She can make $75 for test-driving a Land Rover, $20 for drinking at a bar and $25 for playing arcade games (she keeps any winnings). Golfing is her latest passion, and in addition to playing on courses around the country free of charge, she gets free food and drinks and gifts from the pro shop.

Weekend trips to Hawaii and Mexico? “I don’t pay for anything except occasional meals,” she says. She does much of her work on a free hand-held computer.

“My friends tell me I should just get a job,” says Ms. Voitle, who is slim and blond and gives her age as “somewhere over 30.” But, she says, “most full-time jobs out there don’t make economic sense.”

Ms. Voitle never planned on becoming a freeloader. A trained engineer and financial expert, with four advanced degrees and a gift for numbers theory, Ms. Voitle worked for years as a number-cruncher for Detroit’s auto factories. Her real dream was to make it big on Wall Street. In 2000, she got her break when Lazard LLC, the storied investment bank, hired her to analyze fixed-income derivatives in the firm’s asset-management business.

Single, with a salary of more than $100,000, Ms. Voitle bought a house in leafy Baldwin, N.Y., complete with a pool and gym. She spent weekends golfing, traveling or playing with her cats — Continental and Northwest. In the fall of 2001, she was laid off. With thousands of other investment-bank workers losing their jobs, Ms. Voitle couldn’t find any financial work. Last summer, her unemployment checks ran out and both her electricity and phone were shut off.

“I woke up one morning and said, “That’s it. I have to start looking for money, wherever I can find it,” she says.

Trolling the Internet, she discovered an ad for mystery shopping. “I thought, ‘this looks too good to be true,’ ” she says. Mystery shoppers get paid to sample a company’s service or products and write a report on their experience. For companies, mystery shopping is popular way of checking on quality. For Ms. Voitle, it was a quick source of cash and freebies.

Her first assignment was a Pathmark grocery store, where she received free groceries and $10 for a quick report. She worked her way up to gas stations, clothing stores and restaurants. She quickly discovered that the best-paying mystery shopping jobs were for upscale businesses like banks and high-end car dealers. She earns $75 for test-driving a Land Rover, compared with about $30 for a Ford.

Volume is critical. On any given day, she will mystery shop gas stations, grocery stores, golf courses, clothing stores, casinos, hotels, insurance companies and restaurants. She even gets paid to shop for apartments and interview for jobs. She can make as much as $50 for applying for a job at a major company, and reporting back on the performance of the people who do the hiring.

…”I couldn’t believe there were all these opportunities out there,” says Gordon Stewart, a friend of Ms. Voitle’s who works in finance. “She’s discovered this whole other economy.”

Source: Wall Street Journal

Wow, can you believe that Jennifer makes up to $7,000 just for shopping and completing simple questionnaires? Do you think you can do it too?

You might not make $7,000 a month like Jennifer, but even if you only made $1,000 or $2,000, wouldn’t it help a lot?

Mystery shoppers are needed all the time and there are jobs all over the US, Canada, Australia and UK.

The best way to go is to subscribe to a professional resource for secret shopper jobs. You will get a step-by-step guide on how to get started successfully (a must for new shoppers) AND you’ll have access to an extensive database of shopping jobs in your country and in your state.



Lonnie

Sasha Mohammed asked:




If anyone has really ever had a fly in his soup, or been on the receiving end of a rude bellhop, David Lipton wants to know about it he just may ensure that it doesnt happen again. The Toronto native is in the business of helping corporations improve customer service and through Sensors Quality Management Inc., or SQM, the venture he founded in 1994 with his partner Craig Henry. Lipton advises service-sector industries on how to keep their patrons happy and coming back.

Its an idea fit for the modern, competitive corporate environment. Todays consumers have an unprecedented number of options and they tend to take their business to establishments that make them feel most comfortable. Thats where SQM steps in. Combining current marketing research and computer technology, SQM designs customized programs that determine, among other things, how well a company is adhering to its own standards of service and efficiency. For Lipton, its all based on the simple philosophy that a happy customer is a returning customer, and returning customers make for greater profitability.

It should come as no surprise that in only eight years Lipton and his partner have grown SQM into a $2 million a year enterprise. The entrepreneurial 40-year old began showing his business acumen as early as the second grade. After getting his first newspaper route at the age of seven, the savvy youngster scouted out, eventually took over, all the nearby vacant routes. Before long, he was delivering 500-600 papers daily to the tune of a fair bit of spending money. As a teen, Lipton was at it again, running a lucrative valet parking service with a few friends. The business did so well that they were able to sell it several years later.

Today, Lipton spends his time developing cutting-edge marketing research techniques to help other companies succeed. Among his innovations is Comments Caf, an online, interactive forum for customers to commend or complain about the service they have received from SQM clients. SQMs specialty, however, is mystery shopping, and it is here that Lipton has carved a niche for himself in the field of management services.

Used by a growing number of consumer-orientated businesses, mystery shopping provides a third-party evaluation of service from a customers perspective. Businesses hire SQM to send mystery shoppers SQM employees pretending to be ordinary customers into their establishments to evaluate all aspects of their visit, from the courtesy with which they have been treated by unsuspecting staff, to the promptness of their acknowledgement, the selling behaviors of personnel, and the general appearance of the environment. Shoppers then file reports, which are shared with SQMs clients and used as the basis for improving customer relations.

While SQMs database now contains 5,000 active and 50,000 prospective shoppers in Canada and English-speaking countries throughout the world, Lipton and Henry had to do all the inspections themselves when the company first started out. A local restaurant franchise was one of our first clients, says Lipton, and wed always have to do the inspections on Friday and Saturday night. Sometimes wed double up on dinners so that we could finish our assignments on time, laughs Lipton, who admits to having put on a few extra pounds in SQMs infancy.

As SQM grew, Lipton began to recruit mystery shoppers through his college and community networks, by word of mouth, and eventually, with the help of human resource agencies. Shoppers come from a broad demographic base of ages and racial and ethnic backgrounds. Explains Lipton, We have to send different kinds of people to different establishments to see how theyre treated. In Liptons mystery shopping days, he and Henry were known to have gone into exclusive mens clothing stores clad in ripped T-shirts and three-day old beards, and to have disguised their voices on telephone surveys. By pushing the limits of staff tolerance, Lipton and Henry can gain a clearer sense of the extent to which personnel adhere to the companys customer service policies. Now that theyve retired from mystery shopping, theyll send women into garages, men into lingerie stores or other unusual shoppers into unlikely scenarios.

Mystery shopping is especially popular with women, adds Lipton. Women like to shop, he quips. In exchange for their labor, shoppers are paid directly by SQM or receive discounts on purchases. Either way, its a win-win situation, as shoppers earn benefits in their spare time and businesses gain a valuable edge in improving customer satisfaction.

SQMs client list reads like a whos who of the retail and service industry, including many well-known stores, hotels, banks, auto manufacturers, airlines and even such plum locales as Club Med. Not everyone gets an assignment like that, says Lipton, sensing a sudden interest in mystery shopping by this interviewer. Shoppers have to work their way up and pass an evaluation at each level.

In the early days, communication between SQM and mystery shoppers was handled the old-fashioned way by mail, fax and phone. Now, through an innovative Internet website created by Lipton and his team o talented webmasters, most communications is conducted on-line. Shoppers log on to retrieve their assignments to download orientation manuals and company newsletters, and to file their reports electronically. Clients can then retrieve their individualized evaluations through the site in the privacy of their own offices.

For Lipton and his partner, making customers happy is familiar territory. Both have degrees in hospitality and tourism management, and both worked extensively in hotels and restaurants before launching SQM. They know what makes for satisfies patrons, and over the years they have developed a wealth of ideas to share with their clients.

Still, their experience and creativity didnt make for a smooth start to their joint enterprise. Sitting in his newly expanded, spacious north Toronto office, and surrounded by 25 full-time employees, Lipton recalls the bumpy road SQM took to get to where it is today.

In 1993, after the recession left them unemployed, Lipton and Henry decided the time was right to start a business of their own, even if they didnt have the money to do so. We couldnt afford a real office, says Lipton, so we each put about $100 into a bank account and SQM was born.

The pair started up in Craig Henrys house. Our first boardroom was Craigs bedroom, Lipton recalls. Soon, they opened a post office box at Torontos Sheraton Hotel. We chose the Sheraton because we liked the address, 123 Queen Street, says Lipton. Coincidently or not, the hotel later became one of SQMs first clients.

Armed with only a few dollars worth of business cards, letterhead and a phone line, Lipton and Henry began by cold calling local business to offer their services. Unable to afford postage, they delivered all of their correspondence themselves at night. Lipton does recall one advantage to SQMs shoestring budget since they couldnt afford daycare, they minded Henrys two-year old son while his wife was at work. Sometimes potential clients would hear the baby in the background when we were on the phone with them, he says. It worked well with the women.

While business was slow in coming, friends and family often questioned Liptons judgment in starting his own company, especially in a period of economic instability. People were pessimistic, says Lipton. They told me to find a job that would pay the bills. That kind of talk can wear you down. Still, Lipton persisted, even as he saw his friends settle into stable jobs, get married and buy their first homes, all the while he was living with his parents and devoting most of this time and energy to his nascent company.

You cant compare yourself to others, says Lipton, and I like to think I did the right thing by not following the mold.

It took about six months before companies showed any interest in SQM, but word got out about the unique service SQM was providing. And as it did, SQM expanded first to Craig Henrys living room and then to his dining room. Eventually, his wife decided that the company had sprawled a bit too much into her living space, and booted her husband and his partner out, forcing them to rent a real office in the Toronto suburb of Richmond Hill. In its new home, SQM continued to grow and Lipton began to hire staff. Business has doubled every year since, and so too has Liptons excitement and enthusiasm for his venture.

Now, despite a wealth of glossy public relations materials and write-ups in newspapers and business journals, SQMs growth continues to depend on Liptons aggressive campaign to recruit new clients and to ensure a steady supply of mystery shoppers. But for the company mouthpiece, as Lipton calls himself, its all part of the fun. A natural schmoozer, Lipton has an easygoing, affable style that puts people at ease. His regular office attire is jeans and sneakers in keeping with his laid back persona. Everyone knows they can talk to me, he says.

He likes meeting people and maintains a wide circle of friends the guest list of his annual end-of-summer barbecue is never less than 200 and includes many of his elementary school peers with whom he has managed to stay in touch over the years. He also enjoys being involved in his community. He is active in his synagogue and in several charities and runs a hockey league in his spare time. By his own admission, hell try just about anything. He scuba dives and is currently looking into getting his helicopter license. He even ran for municipal office last year. His campaign started off as a joke, but ended up being an eye-opener. They dont pay public officials enough, observes Lipton, and that keeps many capable people away from politics.

As for his own political future, Lipton keeps a wait and see approach, and in the meantime prefers to focus on growing his business. That means developing and improving their marketing research techniques, accumulating more clients in Canada and expanding into international markets. With the global economy, companies have to think about customer service, explains Lipton. Everyone is fighting for consumer dollars. That bodes well for businesses like ours.

Even the current recession doesnt frighten Lipton, who is loath to decline a challenge. In times of recession, companies need to provide even better customer service than before.

A self-proclaimed ideas person, Lipton has a binder with over 100 business proposals that he hopes to develop some day. There are a lot of good people out there with good ideas, but they dont ever start their own businesses, he says. Some cant take the risk of having no income. Ive been very fortunate because I could do that. Still, Lipton has now turned at least some thoughts to settling down a bit, getting married now that the right person has come along, and starting a family.

And what does the expert say about the state of customer service in Canada? Canadian companies need a wake-up call. Service here isnt nearly as good as it is in the U.S. As more American firms enter the Canadian market, says Lipton, local companies will have to meet the challenge to survive.



Walter