One way to earn a little extra income is to perform mystery shopping. Read our evaluation of the Intelli-Shop mystery shopping service provider. Want to try it? If you can follow instructions and have strong attention to detail, then this might be for you.
Service provider company:
Intelli-Shop
www.intelli-shop.com
Intelli-Shop was founded in 1999. Their headquarters is in Perrysburg, Ohio. They work across a large variety of industries and they currently operate in the USA and Canada.
In addition to standard mystery shopping, they also work in video mystery shopping, compliance auditing, and social media monitoring.
Mystery Shopping Professionals Association (MSPA):
Intelli-Shop is a member of the MSPA. In 2018, Intelli-Shop received the MSPA Shoppers Choice Award.
Better Business Bureau (BBB):
Intelli-Shop mystery shopping has been listed with the Better Business Bureau since 2000. They were accredited in 2001 and have received an A+ rating.
They have five reviews listed on the site and also 34 complaints. But only four of the complaints were from the last 12 months.
Pay range:
Intelli-Shop pays in the range of $8.00 USD to $35.00 USD plus expenses. Just be careful that you only purchase what was required or it will not be reimbursed.
They do sometimes have more premium shopping missions which pay you higher rates. But you’ll have to earn those by proving your reliability first.
Payment method:
Intelli-Shop only pays through PayPal. To ensure you can receive payment:
- When registering as a Mystery Shopper, ensure the email used for registration is the same email you use for PayPal
- If you registered with a different email, then ensure you add that email to your PayPal account
Payment frequency:
Intelli-Shop is similar to most other mystery shopping service providers and pays in the month after you performed the shops. Specifically, they pay on the 20th of the following month.
For example, if you performed shops in August, you would be paid on the 20th of September. Unfortunately, we have not yet performed any shops with Intelli-Shop so we cannot confirm payment.
Report submission:
After every shopping mission, you must submit a report with your observations. Intelli-Shop requires you to submit your report within 12 hours of finishing the shop. This is a bit more restrictive than other service providers which often require you to submit within 24 hours.
Website usability:
Intelli-Shop is another service provider using the SASSIE platform. If you’re already familiar with that platform then you’ll find all the same elements: your profile section, a job board, and two shopper dashboards. One dashboard has the applications you’ve submitted (requests to be assigned a shop) and the other has the missions confirmed to be assigned to you.
You’ll also be able to filter the job board listings based on location with a map view.
Social media:
Intelli-Shop is available on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
Shopping mission availability:
Intelli-Shop has a decent range of mystery shopping types. But, like most mystery shopping service providers, it all depends on where you live. If you live in a larger urban area then you’ll usually have more shops available. And you’ll also be competing with other mystery shoppers.
In our experience, shop availability seems heavily in favour of the USA locations. For example, at the time this post was written there were less than 20 shops available in the Toronto area. This could be partly due to timing – often, there are fewer shops available toward the end of a month.
Shopper support:
With Intelli-Shop your support team consists of the field staff coordinators. These are the people who coordinate the scheduling of the shopping missions.
From the shopper website, all your shopping missions are listed within your Shop Log. If you have any questions before you perform the shop you can contact your field staff coordinator. From the Shop Log, you click on the “Help/Contact” button within that shop listing.
If you have problems during the shop it will be extremely difficult to reach your coordinator quickly. They’re handling a lot of other shops at the same time.
How does it work?
Registration:
- You register on their website, www.intelli-shop.com. From the main navigation menu, hover over “SHOPPER AREA” and select “BECOME A SHOPPER.”
- From the new page displayed, select your language and click “GO”
- Enter your email address and click “GO”, then your country and click “GO” again
- Fill out the form with the usual details: name, address, and phone number. But then enter the additional profile information: gender, birthdate, etc. NOTE: Only those fields with asterisks are mandatory.
- Ensure you select PayPal as your payment method
- You’ll also fill in the area codes of the regions in which you might perform shops
- Then there’s a section for SSN/EIN information. This information is for USA residents only.
- Finally, accept the Independent Contractor Agreement and the Privacy Policy and click “Sign me up!”
- Once submitted, you’ll need to confirm your email address from the email they send you
- After you confirm your email then you’ll have access to the shopper site. You should complete the extended profile to improve your chances of getting more shops.
- When you’ve finished that, the “Extended Shopper Profile” section on the “Shop Log” homepage will display “Current” in green
- Now you can view available shops on the “Job Board”
Want More?
Would you like to learn more about this topic? Or perhaps explore some other topics? Choose from one of the categories below to see more:
Subscribe to our newsletter to have information delivered right to your inbox.
Recommendation:
There are so few shops available in our area that we have not been able to perform any mystery shopping for Intelli-Shop yet. And that’s a factor in our evaluation:
- Shopping mission availability – we don’t see a lot of shops available in our area but you may have better luck in your own region
- Pay range – generally, the pay range is within industry standards. If you’re performing shops in Canada then you might enjoy getting paid in USD with the current exchange rate.
- Report submission – we don’t like the 12 hour submission deadline, it’s pretty tight
Like this post? Put a Pin on it!
Have you worked with this service provider?
What were your experiences?
Do you agree with this evaluation or have some suggestions of your own?
Click [Submit Comment] below to let us know!
