Maximising income - Mystery Shopping? Surveys? (Part Three)

nickik1970

f1re_cr4cker wrote: »

yeh its cold calling and u only get paid per survey completed not per call.

You are only asking the customer if they are happy with the service or product they received, you are not selling them anything. The people I have called have been quite happy to tell you what they think of the companies, especially the holiday ones.
You get paid for EACH phonecall not the survey, so if you have the right phone package and call them at the right time, you can actually make a good sum. When you get more used to asking the questions you can also get quicker at asking them, making more time for other calls.
Just remember though, the higher the money for the call, usually means the longer the survey, so you may be better of doing the shorter ones.

nickik1970

mimi1234 wrote: »

""I have been accepted by BARE, however, it states I need to obtain a Certificate. Has anyone else had to do this, and do you have to pay? Thanks x""

I am with Bare, I had to do some kind of test before they allowed me to do visits for them. I did not have to pay anything.

Anyone got any experience of AMBER ARCH? Are they a good company to work for? Thanks in advance.

I have done quite a few jobs for Amber Arch, and have never had any problems. They have good communication with you if you need to speak to them and payments usually take a couple of weeks (if you work self employed and have sent in your invoice)
You have to have microsoft excel to fill in the forms at the moment, but they are starting to change this format soon by having a useable website to input the data.
They send a list of all available jobs around the end of the month before, you choose what you can do and let them know.

mimi1234

Thanks for that info Nicki. I've already emailed Ilean who allocates the jobs, and she is going to get back to me. I can't wait! I quit GAP and GR because I was bored of them, and RE/Retail Maxim/TNS/Bare do not have that many visits going in total. Hopefully Amber Arch will have more. ** A bit of a dumb question, I already have a PC at home which we all use to check email, surf the web etc, I was thinking of getting a LAPTOP for MS purposes so I can have it with me wherever I am at home. Would I be able to take this off as an expense when doing tax or am I just being thick?

Paul_Varjak

josie wrote: »

Do you have to be able to record the conversations for Optimum Contact? I've been asked whether I have this equipment by one of the MS sites.

I have done a couple of telephone surveys for TNS this year.

No, recording equipment is not used.

Paul_Varjak

D4WNO wrote: »

These telephone surveys, are you calling people at home (ie cold calling?)

I suppose it is cold-calling but I am calling customers who already own a certain make of vehicle and have recently had that vehicle serviced. I ask for their comments on that service.

Paul_Varjak

nickik1970 wrote: »

You are only asking the customer if they are happy with the service or product they received, you are not selling them anything. The people I have called have been quite happy to tell you what they think of the companies, especially the holiday ones.
You get paid for EACH phonecall not the survey, so if you have the right phone package and call them at the right time, you can actually make a good sum. When you get more used to asking the questions you can also get quicker at asking them, making more time for other calls.
Just remember though, the higher the money for the call, usually means the longer the survey, so you may be better of doing the shorter ones.

I have an unlimited called package with BT (Option 3) but will change to the Talk Talk package (unlimited calls and broadband) for £20.49p/month as a soon as a I can.

I use 18185 (or SMSDiscount) when I call mobiles to reduce costs even more.

I am not sure if I agree that the shorter surveys are more profitable as most of the time is spent trying to find someone to do the survey (rather than doing the survey itself).

In the past week I have earned around £212 doing surveys plus another £30 on mystery shops - probably around the minimum wage but, being a disabled 57 year-old, the chance of me finding other employment is virtually nil.

Candy0107

Hi,

Apologies if this is in the wrong place, or has already been answered, but can I claim back (through the government) any of the following as part of job related expenses:

• Stationary filing cabinets/dividers/envelopes (receipts posted to shopping agencies) etc
• broadband connection

Any advice would be greatfully received.

burnoutbabe

I claimed £5 for a ream of paper and £5 for printer cartridges, i assume cost on envelopes and stamps would be fine.

I also claimed for the scanner i use only for MS jobs (only £30).

but a laptop or pc would be hard to claim - a) its probably worth far more than the pay we get and b) its probably not used wholly and exclusivly for the MS work. you'd also surf for other reasons, so the broadband would not be claimable.

hayley50

Hi I wonder if anybody could help. I have done mystery shopping work for grassroots and RE in the past but stopped when my work hours increased. I am now looking at starting up again but in the meantime I have had a fall out with freeserve/orange internet meaning that they have frozen the email account i registered with. I do not know my password and the forgot password option sends a reminder to a dead email account, any suggestions or does anyone know of a way to contact them as I can't get through to the main mystery shopping site?

D4WNO

Hiya Hayley,

I've just logged in and here are some contact details for them both..

RE - Shopper support: 01908 328004 or support@retaileyes.co.uk
Grassroots - 0800 515 832

Hope that helps