A Word of Warning - UK Mystery Shopping

This is a warning that has been passed to me from a very well-respected mystery shoppping agency....

We have been hearing a great deal about a company called the UK Mystery Shopper Employment Agency that have a sponsored link on Google. We suspect them to be a scam as they charge a registration fee of £29.95 which then gives you access to a list of mystery shopping companies. These are mostly American and Canandian companies, as well as a few UK ones. This information can be obtained from Google at no cost at all. They don’t have any contact information on the website, your only form of contact with them is by email but even then you are just sent automated responses back. Reputable mystery shopping companies do not charge a fee to register.

It highlights the dangers of scammers on the internet who are targeting mystery shoppers.

No reputable mystery shopping agency will ever demand a joining fee from you, so go to their individual websites and join direct (there will always be a link somewhere on their home page).

And what about the Mystery Shopping Guides that promise the details of hundreds of mystery shopping agencies if you buy their ebook? Well, personally I don't think there's anything wrong in buying a manual if it genuinely teaches you something you want to know - when I wanted to change a bath tap and didn't want to pay a plumber's exorbitant rates, I bought myself a DIY book that showed me how to do it, and when my wife wanted to try cooking Peking Duck she bought a cookbook with step-by-step instructions. In both cases we needed specific information and we were happy to pay for it.

HOWEVER (and it is a big "however") I have purchased some of these mystery shopping guides myself in the past (the sales pages are very persuasive!) and found each one a complete waste of money. Whilst they do indeed contain details of hundreds of companies, as mentioned in the warning above, most are in the USA and have little or no work in the UK, and many others are retail auditors or market research companies with no mystery shopping work at all. It looks to me as though these lists have been produced by simply googling "mystery shopping" and then taking the resulting agencies regardless of how relevant they may be. And the information isn't even current - the last one I bought did have some UK agancies listed but several of them had moved from the addresses shown in the guide several years previously (I know because I regularly work for the agencies in question). And in any event, no-one needs hundreds of mystery shopping agencies - it would be impossible to keep track of hundreds of applications, and a logistical nightmare trying to co-ordinate the resulting job offers.

To turn mystery shopping in to a profitable (and fun) job you only need half a dozen or so top quality contacts. I know, because I did it - and am still doing it.