Who doesn’t like to shop? The idea of shopping with other people’s money and getting PAID to do it is a big temptation. You would really like to pick armloads of that plant, wouldn’t you? Wait!
Secret shopper ‘jobs’ come in two varieties. There is the legitimate variety and the illegal variety…or the scam. It is very difficult to tell the varieties apart. They can appear side by side in the classified ad pages of a newspaper or on work-at-home job websites.
One very certain way to tell some of the illegal plants are that legitimate secret shopper jobs will never require you to purchase training supplies or courses to teach you have to do the job. The problem is that some of the illegal ones don’t require that you make purchases either but knowing that the legal ones NEVER do will help to eliminate at least some of the wrong choices.
The better of the bogus secret shopper job offers are only out to sell you useless training supplies or courses with no job attached. The worst of the secret shopper job offers are to get you to make illegal purchases or to ship illegal goods or to act as a middle man for illegal fund transfers…..all of which can get you into some very serious legal difficulties.
The advertisements for secret shopper jobs are made to sound very enticing. They promise that you can make large sums of money by working only a very few hours each week. They assure you that there are no educational requirements and no experience that will be required. These promises make these advertisements look like answered prayers to those who are desperate for a job and have little or no experience and a limited educational background.
Those who answer these advertisements will often receive a check in the amount of several thousand dollars with instructions to get the check cashed either at their personal bank or at a bank that is designated. Then they are to purchase a money order for the amount of the check less the cost of the money order and a hundred dollars or so that they can keep. The money order is to be made payable to a person that they have never heard of but whom they must say is a relative. The money order then must be mailed to an address (usually a Post Office Box) in Canada or some other country.
It is what is called money laundering…and the secret shopper who participates in the scheme is now part of the illegal act. Not only will they have committed an illegal act but they may well have paid for that privilege.
Here is the free advice that is offered to those seeking secret shopper jobs by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC):
“The truth is that it is unnecessary to pay money to anyone to get into the mystery shopper business. The shopping certification offered in advertising or unsolicited email is almost always worthless. A list of companies that hire mystery shoppers is available for free; and legitimate mystery shopper jobs are on the Internet for free. Consumers who try to get a refund from promoters of mystery shopping jobs usually are out of luck. Either the business doesn’t return the phone calls, or if it does, it’s to try another pitch.”
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