Hellobee Boards

I used to do these pre baby! It was a lot of fun and it was nice to get free meals and I am really into providing feedback at restaurants anyway. I also did some pizza delivery and drug stores. I didnt do a ton because I ended up moving out of the city.

I signed up to secret shop but haven't done any jobs. I probably should!

I remember doing them with my Mum when I was 10 or so. They were fun!

i do it! i haven't had one with a reimbursement that high for a meal though, wow!

THat's cool! How did you find these type of things??

I didn't know pp actually did this! I always thought it was some kind of scam when I see the advertisements.

I also did national shopper association (or something like that) and there was a local firm also worked with when I was on the east coast.

@Boogs: I would go to a restaurant with a friend and order a meal according to the budget. Then I would make mental notes on the food, service, etc using the guidelines given. Then I would write up a detailed report of the experience and include names of the servers, and highlight specific things that the company had asked about. Sometimes they had follow up questions and I would answer those. Then scan and submit receipts for reimbursement.

I would LOVE to do this!

@Mrs. Pen: yeah I should look into if there are any agencies for the burbs where I live now.. I heard that the most awesome jobs are for hotels but you have to be really good to get those and it's kind of a niche.

There are so many random varieties of things that companies want to know. For pizza company a few times I ordered a pizza and then had to take a picture of the box, then the whole pie, then flip it over and take a pic and then hold up a slice and take a cross section picture LOL! DH was like I'm hungry hurry up! I was like stop, it's free you can wait!

Another time I had to go to CVS and copy these little codes off as many bottles of a specific brand of hair product as I could . That one was totally too much effort for not enough pay to be worth it.

@Mrs. Pen: I know right? I think the hotels hire people from a special agency who may have hotel backgrounds already. They have to pretend to be very difficult questions and ask for outrageous things :-). I don't think I could keep my cover.

@mrs. bird: you are probably right! Here is an interesting article about it (haven't read it all yet) in case anyone is curious. http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/23/travel/confessions-hotel-mystery-shopper/index.html

My sister does this and gets free dry cleaning, oil changes, meals, etc. She has to be very, very detailed with her reports though and it gives requirements like must be two people, it at the bar for 20 minutes and order 3 drinks, go to table and order an appetizer, 1 steak meal, 1 chicken meal, and so on. I don't think I would be good at it because I would forget something on the list. She usually types notes in her phone to reference later. The more jobs she does the more she qualifies for and gets the better/higher paying gigs.