ALERTS ONLY! - Mystery Shopping

Scaredy_Cat_3

Food on RE, but looks to be all at airports

TractorGirl327

Mobile phone and "cartoon" stores on GR .. in my area - Lakeside - but I'm on holiday that week, GRRRRR!!!!

Tesco_points_addict

Bristol Airport x 5 different jobs, but all airside, great if your going away today, tomorrow or over the weekend

On RE

TPAx

bumblebee23

Glasses visits on Tern - only for non spec wearers!

ukmonkey

Loads of glasses on TERN for non-glasses/contacts wearers.

Edit: Beaten to it!

superhez

telephone loan applications on Gfk

ukmonkey

Pub food and drinks on RE majority in the South it seems...

R4pture_2

Although Not An Alert for actual assignments I thought that this might be important enough to alert mystery shoppers about
I recieved this email from IMS and think it should be shared with you all

Please be aware that there is currently a scam which we’ve become aware of where fraudsters are sending emails which appear to have come from or on behalf of a mystery shopping company. Although only one mystery shopping company seems to have been targeted to date, the fraudsters are now starting to put references to other mystery shopping companies within the emails to try and lend them more authenticity (including images & logos from their websites and the registered details of legitimate companies).

Although the emails vary in content, the concept of the scam is that they ask you to carry out one or more mystery shopping assignments and say they will send you the funds in advance for you to pay for the purchase associated with the assignment. If you accept they then send you a money order to cover these costs (which often seems to be in the form of a Western Union cheque or traveller’s cheques).

One of two scenarios may then take place. Either they will have sent you a money order for more than the cost of you carrying out the mystery shopping assignments and so ask you to send them back the surplus monies. Or they will state that the mystery shopping assignment is for you to transfer some money using a money transfer agent (such as Western Union) in order to test the service of the money agent.

The scam is that after you have sent them the surplus money or have transferred them money as per the assignment, your bank then inform you that the money order you received was either fake or was not valid for some other reason and so it does not clear into your bank account. (Some of these money orders may appear on your statement immediately but may take up to 10 days for the funds to actually clear into your account). However, the money you have transferred will go through successfully as it has come from a valid source (your bank account) and so you will be left out of pocket.

Western Union money orders are often involved and a number of the emails we have seen which bear all the hallmarks of this type of fraud have carried the name ‘Ken Coker’. However other names and types of money order have also been used.

These scammers seem to be sending huge volumes of emails to random email addresses; however the danger is that some of these emails are reaching people who are actually mystery shoppers, so in these cases the scam may appear more believable.

If you receive any email where you are not sure of its authenticity then please contact the company concerned to check whether they did in fact send it, especially if the email is from a company who you have not registered with. (Be aware that it is possible for fraudsters to ‘spoof’ an email address so the email appears to have come from a legitimate source).

Kind regards,



I REALIZE THIS IS NOT A NEW JOB HOWEVER FEEL IT IS SUFFICIENTLY IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO ALERT ALL MYSTERY SHOPPERS ABOUT. SO BEFORE REMINDING ME ABOUT HOW THIS IS ONLY A NEW JOB ALERT ONLY THREAD PLEASE STOP TO CONSIDER THAT THIS INFO MAY ACTUALLY BE FOR YOUR BENEFIT

ukmonkey

Useful info, but.....

ukmonkey wrote: »

!! NEW JOB ALERTS ONLY !!

For chat/questions please post on the main thread which can be found here: http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1561597

ukmonkey

Energy Supplier stands (in shops and supermarkets) added to RE - looks national.