MYSTERY SHOPPING THREAD XI ** New people make sure you read the first 2 Posts **

matsmum wrote: »

Hi, I have been mystery shopping for a while now and did everything by the book and registered myself as self-employed. I have now been given the opportunity to return to my old job where I will obviously be employed by a company . Please could someone tell me whether I have to do anything regarding tax? Do I need to let the Inland Revenue know that I will now be paying tax as an employee. I know many of you do MS in addition to your own jobs so hopefully someone can kindly shed some light on whether I need to do anything.

Thanks in advance for any info.

Carolx

Carol,

You don't need to do anything in advance, just when you come round to filling in a Tax Return for the current year you'll need to fill in an employment page:

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/forms/sa102.pdf (for 2009)

For which the majority/all information will come from your P60 issued at the end of the tax year. The additional tax payable should be zero as it will have already been paid via PAYE, but it still needs to be declared.

To any shoppers thinking of working for GAPbuster - I will share my experience.

For a start they make you fill in a whole list of questions to assess suitability before you can even see the available dates for a mystery shop, these can take 1/2 hour to do because you have to watch the videos and then answer up to 18 questions. Then you may find that you can't do those days because of work or other commitments anyway.

I had completed one of these already, but something went wrong with the system and I needed to complete it again, I got 1 question wrong and that was it I was barred from that client in future.

I emailed GAPbuster to see if this could be reset and to politely provide some feedback about not being able to see the assignment dates until you have completed the whole assessment.

Well I'm shocked - for a company who have built their reputation on providing customer service excellence they have little time / respect for their own shoppers and don't want to help.

They refuse to reset the test

The won't acknowledge that any improvements could be made to the system

They didn't appreciate my feedback

and I found them to be very rude and unhelpful.

I was disappointed by the response from the team so I emailed a manager at the company days ago who hasn't bothered to reply.

I have asked them to delete my account as I no longer wish to work on behalf of them but they have not got back.

I would say AVOID - try a professional company like Retail Eyes who have pleasant and helpful staff and a much better portal. They even invited feedback to help design a really useful and functional portal for us shoppers.

I have done such a nice shop this morning, I have come home with a full make over and it it such a nice change to be writing a really good report.

I was starting to get worried I was only getting bad shops, like where the member of staff told me the features on a phone were crap and told me she wouldn't recommend the focus brand as they always break, or where I was ignored while the member of staff stood less than 5 foot away from me leaning on tv's.

I spent more than the reinbursment and the fee, but never mind I have come home feeling really good about myself, and I will probably go in that shop alot more.