Friday, May 29, 2009

My Mystery Shopping Paying Off!

I had the most amusing Mystery Shopping trip yesterday. I got an "emergency" email from one of the companies I shop for saying that they needed a mystery shop done that day. Normally they pay $10 with a $1 reimbursement for this particular store, but because of the immediate need, they would pay an extra $5 if I could complete it that day. The last few weeks I've spent the majority of my lunch hour walking, but it was pretty rainy yesterday so I said I would be happy to run over and do the shop then.

The store to be shopped was a local pharmacy* that I have used in the past. The job was to observe the pharmacy, talk to a pharmacist and either make a small purchase or refill a prescription. It just so happened that this store has been running a special on transferring prescriptions, and I had a prescription that needed to be filled...

The special was a coupon that gave you a $10 gift card if you transferred a prescription. So, I did the shop, transferred and filled the prescription and gave them my coupon. In turn, they gave me a coupon for $2.50 off of their store brand items, another $10 transfer coupon for another prescription, and my gift card! This meant that for a half hour mystery shopping trip and another half hour typing up the report, I got the following:

- $15.00 pay for the mystery shopping trip

- $1.00 reimbursement for my purchase

- $10.00 gift card

- A coupon for $2.50

- Another $10.00 gift card offer

Since I plan on using both of the coupons - this means I will get $38.50 for one trip! Normally I think mystery shopping is more of a way to have fun and try new things than a way to make money, but this was certainly a fabulous trip!




* I can't tell you more than that because of mystery shopping privacy rules, in fact, I have deliberately obfuscated some of the details to keep the mystery!

Photo by: Joanna Young

5 comments:

Miss M said...

I do the online surveys but I've never mystery shopped, I think my schedule isn't flexible enough. You did make out well for pretty easy work, interesting how the job stacked with other promos to make it worth your while.

Simplelivin' said...

Wow that's an awesome deal! All for something you had to do anyways! Very sweet :-)

Dawn said...

Miss M - Yeah, I wouldn't call them a great way to make money, but they are kind of fun. I like the restaurant ones as an inexpensive way to go out with friends. This trip worked out surprisingly well!

Dawn said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dawn said...

Simplelivin' - I thought that was a great deal too! I could hardly believe how well it turned out.