Mystery Shopping

[Broletariat]

Anyone got any experience with this? I just got an e-mail (my university e-mail) being offered a job about this, I hear a lot of that stuff is a scam, but I'm fairly desperate for cash right now. The e-mail's domain was "nextrecruitment.info"

[thefinalmarch]

nextrecruitment.info doesn't even load, and doesn't turn up any google search results.

looks to be run by some shady dude from bulgaria: http://dawhois.com/domain/nextrecruitment.info.html

[Broletariat]

nextrecruitment.info doesn't even load, and doesn't turn up any google search results.

looks to be run by some shady dude from bulgaria: http://dawhois.com/domain/nextrecruitment.info.html

Uhh that link says USA Los Angeles?

[Broletariat]

Oooooh now I see, nevermind.

Well, back to being poor AND hopeless.

[Ocean Seal]

What is mystery shopping?

[Mitja]

What is mystery shopping?

probably an global scam

[Nox]

Mystery Shopping is where you are paid to buy stuff from a supermarket/shop, and you give detailed feedback on the service you receive.

Restaurants often do something similar to this.

[eyedrop]

No, nay, never... pretty much sums up my thoughts about mystery-shopping.

Besides for being hated by all the retail workers they generally force you to write the reports on your own spare time.

I know some people that have tried it.

[Veovis]

I've worked retail and I can tell you I have no love for mystery shoppers.

Expecting minimum wage retail employees to put on a bullshit smile for every cranky customer they come across is bad enough. Management spying on them takes the cake.

One more reason why work under this system is a dictatorship.

[Sentinel]

'Mystery shopping' is despicable espionage of workers by their employers, conducted by hired people trained for the purpose. I'd say that most large service sector companies such as supermarket, restaurant etc chains do this nowadays.

Basically, the result is that workers in customer service can never know which customer is just a customer, and which one is an agent watching your every move. Thus one has to constantly try to deliver ones 'best' -- one could have been nice to a hundred customers but it won't matter if the 101th is the agent.

There was once a radio show in Sweden in which they interviewed the CEO of the main mystery shopping company here. They asked her how what they do really is different from the kind of espionage of citizens that went on in East Germany, and a bunch of other good questions.

When she was stuttering out her 'replies', they always put on the East German anthem in the background. That was fun. :lol:

Basically she had no proper answers, so apparently to these people a '1984esque' development isn't that scary after all -- as long as it comes with 'free enterprise'. Especially combined with the increased video camera surveillance we are seeing today, this development is a really worrying one.

In this brave new world basic personal integrity is more and more becoming a privilege of the ruling class.

[Comrade J]

Whilst I completely agree with Sentinel, it's probably not so bad for a leftist to become a mystery shopper.

Just don't even bother going (unless they drop you off or whatever) and write a bullshit report about how friendly and helpful everyone was apart from the boss, who was a miserable sack of shit and punched your mother. Or if you have to go in order to get someone's name for the report, just do the same thing even if they seemed bored and unsurprisingly didn't give the slightest shit about whatever inane issue you had been told to complain about.

[PC LOAD LETTER]

Mystery Shoppers are why I'm glad I work for a mom-and-pop restaurant and not national retail giants anymore ... like CD stores

One mystery shopper intentionally caused a problem at one of the CD stores to see how we would react. This was several years back, he bought the edited version of a CD then came in to yell about not getting the real version. It was even in the report they sent in a week or so later confirming it ...

[IndependentCitizen]

I've had the misfortune of being a victim to this, luckily I had an excuse for my rude response. But the agent was an absolute prick, and made some very nasty comments which made me flip.

Got a tip from the next genuine customer though for being helpful when choosing a helmet for his son.