Although the majority of mystery shopper companies in existence are reputable and honest, some are not. As customer demand has increased, the number of mystery shopper companies has skyrocketed. Today, you will find more than 400 just in the United States. A quality company will have the customer, as well as shopper at the forefront of concern, working hard to provide services that will improve customer satisfaction, reduce liability, and increase profit. To show the huge growth, from 2003 to 2004, mystery shopper companies increased by more than 11%. It is estimated that more than eight million shops were performed in the year 2004 alone, making this an industry with a value around $600 million.

While it may seem self explanatory of what factors you would want to take into consideration when choosing mystery shopper companies to partner with, we wanted to outline a few specific details to help you to make your selection. Unfortunately, just like in almost every business type today, there are a few bad businesses that make the rest of the industry look bad. So, when you are looking for mystery shopper companies to partner with, keep this in mind.

One of the main ways to tell fraudulent mystery shopper companies is through advertisements that are sent to you through the post or through email. They make mystery shopping sound too good to be true and they promise to make you a lot of money quickly. One of the main types of fraudulent mystery shopper companies are the ones which require you to cash checks. They will basically ask you to wire the money to an address which is usually in a different country. You should stay clear of any company which asks you to do this as you could get into serious trouble if you take part in it.

The potential mystery shopper is told that they will be able to keep some of the check, but when the check is cashed, it will bounce leaving potentially large financial issues for the person who cashed it. While efforts have been taken to educate people of this potential scam, there are still people out there trying to take advantage of innocent people; so be aware of this when you are searching for companies to work with.

If you are looking for one of the best mystery shopper companies then MSPA is one that you should contact. They aim to give businesses exactly what they need in order to improve and they are also constantly exposing various different fraudulent schemes.

In fact, MSPA give out tips to mystery shoppers to help them to avoid getting involved with fraudulent companies. They tell you to never pay a fee to join a company. Usually mystery shopper companies hire their shoppers for free. Also you should stay clear of companies who tell you that they will pay through money transfer or check cashing. If you follow those tips you should successfully avoid fraudulent companies.