Mystery shopping: Fairy godmother or evil stepmother?

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: NICOLETAIONESCU / ISTOCK / THINKSTOCK
Mystery shopping is a tool that organizations use to guarantee shopper satisfaction, but beware, job postings can easily be a scam.

Mystery shopping is an opportunity to go Sherlock Holmes on a business outlet to get free stuff in return. This sounds like a win-win, especially for students who have some time to conduct research and fill out a survey answering detailed questions regarding their experience at the outlet in order to get free stuff or money in return.

In such a competitive environment, where customers have all the power to decide the future of a business, organizations seek more and more customers who would be willing to mystery shop. Today, mystery shopping is not only used as a feedback or evaluation tool, but is also used as a marketing tool.

Organizations send out mystery shopping invitations to the shoppers and they in return get free stuff for answering a few questions. This sometimes ties these customers to the organization, making them brand loyal.

However, with every fairy godmother, there is always an evil stepmother as well. With mystery shopping comes the scams that are designed to cheat the mystery shoppers.

One Fanshawe student, who wishes to remain anonymous, got an email to participate in a mystery shopping assignment for Moneygram. The mystery shopper was drawn in with the promise of being paid $400 when they were usually only paid around $20 for other mystery shopping jobs.

“I got excited and took it. I received a check worth $1600 from them… my instructions were that I was supposed to deduct my $400 in my account, and send the rest of the money via MoneyGram to another mystery shopper. I did all of that, and submitted my report.”

A week later, the mystery shopper got a call from the bank informing them that their check bounced.

“I was suddenly out of $1100… being a student, it was very difficult to recover that loss. I informed the authorities here, but there was little they could do, because the mystery shopper I sent money to was out of country and they had already picked up the cash.”

Another Fanshawe mystery shopper, who also wishes to remain anonymous, said they received a text message from an unknown number reading ‘Become a mystery shopper and earn $400 a week. This will not affect your current job. To apply, email your name to hr@sunlifesurvey.com’.

“I was obviously tempted. I didn’t even want to verify, lest it turns out to be fake. And that thought struck me. I realised, this sounds too good to be true,” they said.

A little bit of Googling uncovered the fact that there was no website called sunlifesurvey.com, and when they researched the email address they found a website full of comments from people who had been scammed by the same trap.

“They all had received similar messages and gotten scammed. I was so relieved I decided to verify before going ahead,” said the mystery shopper.

Sometimes students don’t lose money in mystery shopping deals; in fact, they may even receive their money or whatever else was promised to them. In trade, their personal information is stolen, and they have no idea how it will be used.

Does this mean that mystery shopping should be stopped altogether? It is an important tool required by organizations to survive in the current economy.

Therefore, to avoid such scams most companies post their mystery shopping jobs on certain websites that are verified by Google, and other shoppers as well. On the part of mystery shoppers, they can spread the scams they have come across on social media to warn other mystery shoppers.

In the moment when you have that email in your inbox and you are contemplating whether to take it or not, the key is to trust your gut. If you think, it’s too good to be true, it probably is.