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Mystery Shopper > Mystery Shopping
Stories > Stay Away
Stay Away and
Mystery Shop
My wife and I have been mystery shopping for quite some time. In fact, we
are part of 6 different secret shopper networks and we take part in each
of them to one extent or another. One thing that is nice about being a
part of these networks is that you get to see what kind of secret
shopping is going on in various areas near you, not only your specific
area. Since we live in a very busy area in South Florida, we have to grab
jobs when they first become available. There isn't much room for waiting
for the jobs to mature.
One day, my wife was looking through the different networks, seeing what
was available for us to get into. She noticed that there were several
jobs that were available on the West coast of Florida. These jobs ranged
from donut shops to grocery stores and they were desperate for shoppers.
In fact, many of the jobs were paying triple the price because the
deadline was either approaching or had already passed. So we did what any
adventurous mystery shoppers would do, we started planning our trip.
The first thing that we did was to accept a lot of the shops that were in
the area. For each day that we were going to be away we took 2 donut
shops and a grocery store shop, this would take care of all of our meals.
Then we planned a route across the state, choosing gas station secret
shops on the way. In fact, we had so many to choose from that we had to
let some go! According to our estimation, we would need 3 shops on the
way over and 3 on the way back to cover our gas expenses.
We made a good decision and called the mystery shop companies before we
left. There were actually 2 different hotel shops available in the area
where we were going to be staying. So not only were we able to eat for
free, we also ended up staying for free. The hotel shops did require us
to keep a good record of certain things, such as how we were treated by
the staff and the cleanliness of the rooms, but it was a small thing
compared to the money that we saved on our hotel bill.
Once we were in the area, it really only took about 2 hours per day in
order for us to take care of everything. We already had our routes mapped
out so we could do it in the least amount of time possible. Once we were
back at the hotel in the evening it took another hour to fill out all of
the online evaluation forms. Thankfully, the hotels that we stayed at
offered free Internet service.
All in all, it was a great trip out of town. We got to stay in a couple
of nice hotels and everything was covered, from our food expenses to our
gas expenses. It took a bit of preparation, but you can believe that we
will be looking for the opportunity to do it again.
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