Mystery Shopping: How It Works and What the Scams Look Like

Real mystery shopping exists, but the fake check scams wearing its costume are louder. Here is how the job works, what it pays, and which offers to walk away from.

Getting paid to shop sounds like the best side gig ever invented, which is exactly why scammers use it as bait. Real mystery shopping exists, but a lot of what floods texts, emails and job boards under that name is fake. Here is what the legitimate version involves, what it actually pays, and how to tell the two apart.

What Mystery Shopping Is (and What It Isn’t)

Retailers and restaurants hire mystery shoppers to visit their businesses, try a product or service, and report on the experience. Shoppers typically pay for the purchase themselves and then get reimbursed by the retailer, sometimes with a little extra as pay. People who work in the field treat it as part-time or occasional work, not a replacement for a full-time job. The FTC is blunt about the rest: only scammers guarantee you will make a lot of money or get to quit your day job.

What It Actually Pays

There is no standard rate, and honest companies don’t promise one. Compensation is usually reimbursement of what you spent on the assignment plus a small additional fee, and both vary by assignment. The big numbers you see attached to mystery shopping tend to come from scammers. In one case the FTC brought, a telemarketing operation promised people $200 to $500 a week and said they would earn their money back within one to two weeks. People paid a $99.95 fee for a year of service and got a worthless certification plus re-postings of other companies’ low-paying jobs that anyone could find free. The FTC called the income claims deceptive.

How to Find Legitimate Companies

Real opportunities come from mystery shopping providers, not from random offers that find you. The Mystery Shopping Providers Association (MSPA Americas) keeps a database of mystery shopping companies, and assignments come from member provider companies after you register with them or they find you through its independent contractor database. MSPA Americas does not recruit shoppers itself, so any job notice claiming to come from MSPA is fake. Before you sign up with any company, search its name along with words like “review,” “complaint” and “scam” and see what turns up. Mystery shopping is one of several ways to get paid for consumer research; paid focus groups and interviews work differently and have scam patterns of their own.

The Classic Scams: Fake Checks, Upfront Fees and Doctored Ads

Three patterns cover most of it:

• Upfront fees. If you have to pay to become a mystery shopper, the FTC says that is always a scam, even when the fee is framed as certification, training or a guaranteed job. Paying for a list of jobs is pointless too, because that information is available free.
• Fake checks. A scammer posing as a well-known company “hires” you and sends a check, in one fake grocery store offer the FTC flagged, for more than $2,000. You are told to deposit it, then buy gift cards and send the numbers on the back, or to wire some of the money for “taxes” or “fees.” Fake checks look real even to bank employees and can take weeks to detect. By then, the money you withdrew was your own, and the bank wants it back.
• Doctored job ads. Scammers post on job boards and social media under fake names and titles, impersonating real provider companies and MSPA itself. The checks bounce and the victim is left covering the bill and the bank fees.

Watch out

Never deposit a check and send money back, whether by wire transfer, gift card numbers or anything else, as part of a job. There is no legitimate version of that arrangement.

What a Real Assignment Actually Asks of You

You register with a provider company, and when a shop is available near you, you accept it and get instructions on what to evaluate: the buying or returning experience, or the overall customer experience. You pay for any purchase yourself and are reimbursed after submitting your report. Some shops involve no purchase at all; at least one provider states publicly that it never asks shoppers to buy anything and only asks questions about the service received. What no real assignment includes: depositing a check and sending money back, wiring money, or buying gift cards and sharing the numbers. If you would rather evaluate products than stores, at-home product testing is a related arrangement with its own terms to read first.

If You Deposit a Bad Check or Already Paid, Do This Next

First, stop all contact with the “employer” and stop sending money. Contact your bank right away; it will want the withdrawn funds repaid regardless, so hear your options from it directly. If you bought gift cards, report it to the company that issued them. If you wired money or bought a money order, the FTC advises reporting to those businesses too. Then report the scam to the FTC and to your state attorney general’s office. If you paid a fee for a certification, expect little back; the FTC describes those certifications as worthless.

If your inbox already has offers that sound too good, our guide to spotting survey scams covers the texts, emails and ads that aren’t what they say. The same skepticism that serves you in surveys serves you here: track the hourly rate, and walk away from anything that asks for money first.

Survey takers ask