“What are the best mystery shopping companies to work for?”
This was a question asked by a MoneyPantry fan on Facebook.
People love mystery shopping.
And who wouldn’t?
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Wouldn’t you love it if someone offered you a job that paid you to shop and dine?
The interesting thing is…
there are companies that pay you to do just that!
We have covered Mystery shopping many times here on MP. We talked about video game mystery shopping.
We’ve also shared a complete list of over 200 companies that offer mystery shopping jobs.
Today, we’re going to narrow it down and give a list of my favorite companies.
These are known as some of the best mystery shopping companies.
But before we get to the list, for those of you unfamiliar with this whole thing, let’s do a quick introduction.
What is Mystery Shopping anyway?
It’s a lot like online surveys and focus groups.
The goal is to gather data that can help companies improve their customer service, store display, and whatever else that impacts their bottom line.
These companies can be restaurants, hotels, department stores, movie theaters…
As an “agent,” you are assigned shopping jobs where your goal is to pose as a real customer and experience what a normal customer would.
You may be assigned to stay at a hotel, dine in a restaurant, shop at a mall…
Your assignment will have all the details.
Some assignments may require you to ask certain questions, buy certain products, talk with the customer service, etc.
Some may require you to observe the interaction between staff and other customers.
Whatever the assignment, the ultimate goal is to report back your experience so they can use that information to improve customer service, store’s appearance, product pricing/placement, etc.
How much money can you make?
The amount of money you are paid depends on many factors – the company you’re working with, the assignment itself, how long it takes, etc.
Normally, all expenses are paid by the research firm conducting the study. In some cases, they may have you pay the bill, but they reimburse you afterward.
Sometimes, your reward comes in the form of free stuff.
For example, if your assignment was to shop at a clothing store and spend $100, you get to keep what you bought without having to pay for it.
Or if you were assigned to stay at a hotel for 2 nights, the company pays for the hotel, meals, and all your travel expenses.
But in most cases, there is a monetary reward.
You get paid anywhere from $20 to $200 or more for your work.
Best secret shopping companies to shop for
Ok, now on to the list of my top 5 favorite companies that offer mystery shopping jobs.
These are all legitimate and trusted market research companies that offer shopping assignment spanning various industries, from hotel and hospitality to restaurants, clothing, entertainment, automobile, and more.
1. Best Mark
2. Experience Exchange
3. Market Force
4. Sinclair Customer Metrics
5. IntelliShop
Look out for scams
If you’re new to secret shopping, be very careful when joining a company/website claiming to be a legit mystery shopping company.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of scams out there.
The most famous of it all being the “western union mystery shopping” or “mystery shopping check” scam.
This is how it works:
Someone sends you a check pretending to be a legit market research firm wanting to hire you to do a secret shopping assignment for them.
They ask you to deposit the check in your bank account and immediately send back a small portion of it to them (or another person/company) via the Western Union.
You are told that the rest of the money is yours to keep as the payment for the assignment, the details of which will be emailed to you in a few days.
You happily deposit the check, withdraw the amount requested and send it to the person/company mentioned via western union.
Days go by and you don’t hear from them again.
But you do hear from your bank alerting you that the check you deposited a few days ago has bounced!
All of a sudden you realize what happened!
The check was bad, but that’s not the worst part!
The worst part is that you lost your own money.
The money that you wired via the Western Union came out of your own account.
Not only did you waste your time and had your hopes crushed, you also lost money.
That’s how a mystery shopping scam works. So please be careful.
Do not ever send money (especially wire it where it’s hard to trace and get it back) to anyone who pretends to be a representative of a mystery shopping company.
Don’t fall for legit-sounding names either. These scammers actually use the names of trusted companies to further lure you into trusting them.
Remember, legitimate secret shopping companies will never ever send you a check before you even start the assignment.
They will never ask you to wire money to them.
Be smart and use common sense.
Don’t get scammed!
Final thoughts
Again, there are many other legitimate and trusted companies that offer paid shopping assignments.
These are some of the best mystery shopping companies particularly because they seem to have more opportunities across a diverse range of industries.
Hi. Do any of these work through iphone apps? Was looking for best mystery shopping apps.
Thank you.
Hi Sharon,
As far as I know, none of these guys have an app for mystery shopping.
That said, there are apps out there that were made to reward people for doing mystery shopping. A few that come to mind are the Mobee App and iSecret Shop.
You can also find a bigger list of apps that reward you for doing all kinds of things by reading this post: 28 Money Making Apps.
True, but not entirely true. Intellishop, for example, posts a dozen times a day (I’m estimating) on Sassie’s conglomerate mobile app “Presto InstaShops” Another app you can get updates from – that’s a lot faster to load but has not as many postings – is “Shop Notifier”. So while these companies don’t have their own apps themselves (and that’s actually a good thing, IMO–when you’re contracting with 100 companies a month, it’d be a pain in the ass to have to check all 100 of their apps every day), they do get their assignments listed on these other apps that are made for the purpose of delivering us new listings, quickly and easily.
By the way and for the record, these are NOT all the “top 5 best” mystery shopping companies to work for. A couple of them may be up there, but there are dozens more I can think of that surpass at least a few of these. I wonder how the writer whittled it down to these particular five. He/she doesn’t seem like they have any special knowledge about mystery shopping; I’m guessing s/he just picked at random from a search engine results page.
I say try out at least a couple dozen on your own, and at random (but pick from the Sassie site/collection so you know the companies are legit), and then you’ll start to get a feel for what you like or don’t like out of a company. I’ve followed the advice of an article or two in the past, which claimed that such-and-such company was “the best”… I signed up and was incredibly confused because the company/companies sucked ass. (That may be the case for a couple of them here–I don’t know–but yeah, my suggestion is don’t just go with these, or what anyone tells you. Try them all out, see what you like.
Thanks for sharing what you know, Anna.
As far as the “Top” issue goes, these are always subjective. What you and I may consider to be the best, somebody else may not. From the research I have done (which doesn’t mean I contacted every single person out there who does mystery shopping), these companies seem to be some of the best ones out there.
I work for numbers 1, 3, and 5. Make some good money shooping for them.
I am glad its working out good for you, Trish.
How long have you been doing mystery shopping?
I work for 1, 3, & 5 and I have made some money working for them. There is a site called Volition that a shopper can go on and it gives you a list of company’s to work for from A-Z. Then there is a site called JobSlinger where you can go and put what type of shops you want to do and they will hook you up with the company. The only down side to JobSlinger is the first 30 days is free. Then after the 30 days you have to pay a fee under 5 bucks to be on the site. You do not have to pay for the service if you do not want to. JobSlinger has it set up where you can use the site for free but not very many options for companies to work for on the free site.
Thanks for sharing your experience and the sites, Sheri.
How has been your experience with the ones that you have worked with so far? Do you get a decent amount of assignments?
I doubt that lady is going to come back and answer, so I will answer on her behalf. (I can’t claim to know what she’d say, but I’ll answer as if you asked me that question and as if I were doing what she said, is what I mean.)
If she’s only working with those three companies, she’s probably getting s#$# for assignments. I personally work about 6 days a week – I won’t say how many assignments I complete per day, but – if I only worked for those three companies specifically, I’d be making pennies.
Intellishop is actually one of my top favorites. I also recently signed up with BestMark, and that one isn’t really for me (it’s not a good fit for the particular assignments that I like to do and/or the locations are inconvenient–I don’t remember which, but it’s something). Still, regardless of whether I like the company or not, working with only three period is not enough to make a good living. And I do it to make as much money as possible, personally. It’s not what I want to do with the rest of my life, but it’s something to tide me over for right now.
One thing I don’t understand are those people that do it only for the freebies (free dinners, free hotel stays, etc.). Yes, those types of things are available… Those are the jobs I myself, interestingly, stay away from. I don’t want a free meal–I want cash. If I could not afford the quality of meal I wanted – or the fanciness of the hotel I wanted to stay at while on vacation – I wouldn’t try to get it free, I would just work harder at my job to make more money to be able to afford the things I want. (Not seek out free stuff. That’s less logical to me, but whatever; I suppose if you work at Mickey D’s there’s only so far up you can go.)
Where does Confero, Inc. fall on your list for top shops? Just curious. I work for them, and always surprised they never make the cut.
Hi Aileen, I am actually working on creating a much more updated and complete version of this list with more sites. I will make sure to include Confero as well. How has been your experience working with them so far?
have you heard of lazer hair for a company to so secret shopper for
No I have not.
Do you have to have a computer? I have a tablet.
As long as you have internet connection, I think you are good.
Has something happened to Experience Exchange? I can’t log into their site and there’s no mention of them anywhere as being active on Google.
Seems like they are having some technical issues. I haven’t heard anything about them going out of business. I am sure it’s just some server issues and they will be back up.
I have been secret shopping for about 3.5 years now, and I am obsessed. However, I think you are missing the best secret shopping company, “A Closer Look.”
From my experience, they offer the most variety of shops (anything from movie theatres/casual dining to upscale hotels). Most of the shops involve reimbursement, not a shopper payment, but I see it as an opportunity to have fun experiences I wouldn’t normally get to enjoy.
A Closer Look is flexible with scheduling, so I can pick up the shops I want when I’m able to do them. I am a recent college graduate, and there are some shops (specifically age compliance shops) that I actually get paid to do because I am young.
Overall, great list, but you should definitely check-out A Closer Look if you haven’t shopped with them before!
Thanks for sharing your experience, Melissa. I actually added A Closer Look to our ultimate list of mystery shopping companies. (You may actually be interested in the list – contains over 200 companies.)
I have been hearing about them a lot lately. I am truly thankful for readers like you who share their own experiences so we can give a better overall picture of the industry and companies that offer paid shopping jobs.
I have enjoyed reading your website. Sometimes I have trouble getting back to it if I asked a question. Could you email me an answer?….would greatly appreciate it. My question is about an email I received that looked good but I am a little weary. It was from someone with Sites On Service and I checked with BBB and they had an A+ rating but at the end it said they also were from Premeir Shopping Co….which had an F rating. I trust your opinion. Thanks so much for your help.
Charles, thanks for the kind words. I wouldn’t read too much into the BBB rating of a company. It’s a good thing to keep an eye out, but just because a company has a good rating doesn’t mean it’s actually a good company and vice versa. There are ways these ratings can be manipulated.
I searched for the name of the company you mentioned and didn’t find anything. Are you sure that’s the name? Also, what did they offer – a mystery shopping job or?
If you like, forward the email to me and I’ll take a look and let you know. You can find my email address in our contact page. I receive a lot of emails, so please mention this conversion and also be patient. I’ll try to get back to you as fast as possible, but it can take a while.