A few days back, I wrote about mystery shopping as a potential income generating freelance task that one would be interested to join. I never mentioned at that time regarding the mystery shopping site I registered into. Well, for the information of everyone, there are several mystery shopping sites that you might like to try. They are everywhere and they give mystery shoppers some tasks to shop or just survey regarding a specific company.
Anyway, the only mystery shopping site that I joined in is Bare International Inc. This site was established in 1987 in Virginia. At that time, there were only limited mystery shop companies. I joined Bare International site just last year. At first, I was really excited and signed up immediately as a mystery shopper. However, my excitement was only short-lived when I read several negative feedback about this site such as not making payments to their members once they finished their assigned tasks. Well, it would be alright to get rejected with a certain task but once it involves some money, it is another story. You see, there are some assigned tasks that you really have to purchase and use your personal money. Later on, once you submitted your report to the company regarding the shop there is a tendency that they might disapprove your report. In the end, you will not get paid and get a refund of your purchases which is really disheartening.
As for my personal experience with this mystery shop site, I receive email notifications from them from time to time whenever there are available tasks close to my area. Most of the tasks need to shell out extra cash. I never tried to do any of these tasks since I am hesitant that I may not get a refund in return which actually happened to my friend. Another thing, I do not have enough time to do the assigned tasks during my office hours. Usually the tasks they assigned need to be done during office hours.
So, there you go, I cannot really simply say that Bare International Inc. is a fraud or a legitimate site. There may be a few individuals who were unfortunate for not getting paid for their tasks. Still, there are some individuals who are happy to share about their wonderful experiences with this company. I guess if you got extra time, you love to explore around different shops, and got keen eyes on important details, then mystery shopping would be right for you. Remember, the pay may vary depending on your assigned task.
Anyway, why don't you tell me your experience regarding any mystery shopping site that you have joined? It would be great to share your ideas.
As the Business Development Manager at BARE International I would like to respond to your blog regarding BARE. We appreciate you signing up with BARE and we hope that we can work with you in the near future. Unfortunately one concept that we have learned from this industry is that “we” are all very quick to document negative experiences we have and don’t spend time to praise companies when they deserve it. We understand that there are some negative comments on the web, however we have over 500,000 evaluators who work for us worldwide so we can’t look specifically at the negative comments.
ReplyDeleteFrom our studies about 95% of the time evaluators don’t receive their payments is due to evaluator errors (typing their address or bank information incorrectly, not updating their mailing address when they move, not completing reports or confirming we received their reports, etc.) The other 5% is the transportation of the check therefore we strongly recommend evaluators sign up for direct deposit after they have received their first check from BARE.
Should you or anyone have any questions, concerns, issues, etc. please don’t hesitate to contact Jason Bare at 800-296-6699 x3158 or jbare@bareinternational.com
My question is how do you resolve in-house issues?
ReplyDeleteI recently read this Blog that covers all sorts of topics and although it is a paid subscription the blog gives a variety of real important researched information. They have an upcoming issue about Mystery Shopper Scams. I read this particular blog because they have over 200,000 readers and allow comments (No restrictions). The synopsis of this new article does mention Bare - in fact it appears to be a bank payment issue. The 'teaser' of every article usually enhances the outcome of what you learn and can personally research with indications where to go to do this.
I just noticed you mentioned Mr. Bare, in your response about the 95% studies and the outcome of why shoppers have problems receiving pay et al. My question was simple, if when reading further in this blog it shows that an employee created the issue with this shopper what does Bare do about this? Thanks so much.
Loved your blog.....hopefully Mr. Bare will be able to review my response and answer my question. Again, such an interesting insight.
ReplyDeleteGeez, sent a response on this and you did not post! Want to explain why?
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous, I am sorry that I was not able to post your comments right away. I was just so busy these past few months that I did not have enough time to check this blog. I will activate it soon and post more interesting topics for the readers.
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