The Mystery Shopping thread - VII

katnap8

Has anyone noticed that the pub and sport shops have no fee on RE only reimbursement

paulherts

katnap

I was just going to post that.

I did one of the sports shops in the last round and got a £5 fee as well as the current spend, RE appear to be squeezing all of the time.

Cheers Paul

tigergold

I'd say give it a few more months and none of the jobs where you get to buy something will have fees, they are doing it slowly, first they decreased the fee on a few jobs and now they are doing away with them all together, client by client. What I am thinking is what about our accounts - most of the jobs will incur losses....hows that going to look to the taxman

katnap8

paulherts wrote: »

katnap

I was just going to post that.

I did one of the sports shops in the last round and got a £5 fee as well as the current spend, RE appear to be squeezing all of the time.

Cheers Paul

Yeah, the one I did had the fee as well as the reimbursement. Perhaps that is why these aren't flying off the shelf as quickly as they normally do. Also in the pub there is no fee only reimbursement for food that they pick for you to eat, what is that all about?

Scaredy_Cat_3

It also says you cannot get a refund. Curiously it says if you do this will be reported and you won't be paid - which rather suggests that the staff will somehow know who the mystery shopper is???

Basically, these jobs are no good at all unless you would be buying something from there anyway. Not being familiar with the stock, I'm not prepared to risk it - having to buy something I probably won't want, and can't return!

IlonaRN

Scaredy_Cat wrote: »

It also says you cannot get a refund. Curiously it says if you do this will be reported and you won't be paid - which rather suggests that the staff will somehow know who the mystery shopper is???

Basically, these jobs are no good at all unless you would be buying something from there anyway. Not being familiar with the stock, I'm not prepared to risk it - having to buy something I probably won't want, and can't return!

I did notice the no refund bit. I expect that the staff will know exactly which day I've picked to go, and that my report will be glowing, rather than an accurate description of what normally happens in that shop :rolleyes:

I have taken one of these jobs. I didn't see them last time (at least not the one in my home town). It was a little annoying as once I'd accepted it, THEN it showed that I couldn't do the shop on a Friday or Saturday, which is what I had been expecting to do. I've therefore set it for Thursday, and will do it after my exam that day. I did have a look on the website first to make sure that there IS something that can be bought within the spending limit. To be honest there isn't much that fits that category. It's also really annoying that I can't buy accessories, as I'm actually looking for a bag at the moment :rolleyes:

I noticed that once I had taken one of them, all the others disappeared.

pebblespop

Scaredy_Cat wrote: »

It also says you cannot get a refund. Curiously it says if you do this will be reported and you won't be paid - which rather suggests that the staff will somehow know who the mystery shopper is???

Basically, these jobs are no good at all unless you would be buying something from there anyway. Not being familiar with the stock, I'm not prepared to risk it - having to buy something I probably won't want, and can't return!

I was wondering how they managed to suss out who was a mystery shopper when you returned something. i thought it might be they can see the reciept/transaction number when we send our reciepts in so they could trace it from that - seems a bit wierd though. i once took something back to a different store and still got paid. perhaps you could take it back without the reciept for an exchange if you don't need what you had to buy.

MikeLB

If you can't return it, Ebay it .......!

tigergold

MikeLB wrote: »

If you can't return it, Ebay it .......!

You could but is it really worth the effort, there is no fee and you will probably lose money selling it on ebay. I've not seen any sports shops yet.

scorgeous

Morning all,

I'm on whine mode today please forgive me, but I'm mad at the golden arches burger chain. Gap rang me last week asking me to do a premium visit there as I had been specifically requested by golden arches and they had increased the fee for me.

So, I agreed to do it. So, off I pop last Friday to the place and just as I was getting there mynext door neighbours husband was also going there, so I entered the place at the same time. He asked me to sit with him, as normal people do, and to try being shown as a mystery shopper I agreed, as there were staff in earshot and it would raise suspicion if I said sorry, gotta do this one alone.

So anyway, golden arches have now come back and said they wont pay cause I didn't do it on my own.:mad: