Hello from Atlantic Canada. New to Secret Shopping and have only just joined ISS this week. I am only aware of 2 MSP in Atlantic Canada, Intouch Insight (which is on ISS) and WeCheck (which is not). Once I get started with shopping I would like to broaden my horizons with other Canadian MSPs. If it is allowed on this forum, is anyone aware of other MSP to connect with?

Thank you Ivan. As a new shopper, this (and most of this forum) is very informative. I haven't done any shops yet; there are a limited number of opportunities in my area, and this whole Covid19 thing seems to be putting a damper on the few opportunities that would otherwise be there. So I am taking the time now to educate myself and hopefully can jump right in when (if) things get back to normal.

There are sites that store passwords for you, such as TrueKey by McAfee. The benefit of these sites is that you only need to remember one password, to log in to that site, then you can access all your other password-protected sites simply by clicking on the site name. I use TrueKey, and have over 130 passwords saved, including all my MSC logins.

My first shop was a phone shop. (not a shop on this platform so I didn't have the luxury of using their built in recording system). I put my phone on speaker phone and had a digital audio recorder beside it. When the call was done I listened to it again as I was doing up my report.

Do what ever free courses are available, on this platform as well as others you sign up with. The first couple of shops will be nerve-racking but once you realize no one is going to figure out who you are, it gets easier. I've done one phone shop, one shop and reveal, and several price audit shops. My first shop and reveal I forgot to take a selfie outside the store, but because everything else was as required, the MSC let it slide because it was my first shop with that company. Errors or omissions like that you will most likely remember the next time around. Don't wait to do more shops. I'm very new at this too, but it will only get easier by doing them and learning from your mistakes. I was very selective in the shops I applied for, so if they didn't accept my survey/report, I wouldn't have wasted a lot of time or money. As I get more comfortable, I am applying for bigger paying shops that require more detail in the surveys.

Can someone tell me how I can import address data from an XLSX spreadsheet into google maps. I have a list of 40+ assignments that I want to organize into routes in Google Maps but I'm not sure if that is possible. Obviously one of the column headings is "address" and this is what I want to sort on. Any help is appreciated.

Thank You,

Russell

I have only started this in April, but am making decent beer money (I don't drink much beer). I started out with small shops that required very little time or investment (eg purchase for reimbursements). The shop fees were pretty small but I didn't want to lose time/money if the shops got declined. I am in this for the money, but some MSP's routinely only offer reimbursement for purchases. I only do those if it is a company I haven't worked with yet, to get my foot in the door and see how they operate. Once that is done, then I will only apply for money-paying jobs with or without purchase/ reimbursements. I have a couple of MSP's now that contact me before shops or projects are posted to see if I am interested. So, start out small to get your feet wet, then slowly progress to bigger and better opportunities.

I'm fairly new, only been doing this since May, but can offer some advice on how I approached it. I signed up for as many companies as I could find (not just on this platform) that said they have shops in Canada, but of course with Covid there wasn't much of anything. I started out doing small shops (small pay, reimbursement only, short surveys) with every company that would give them to me, just to get my foot in the door with those companies. Once I got a feel for how these shops go and what to expect, I started only looking for better paying shops, and no reimbursement only shops - I'm in this for beer money. Now I have a couple of companies that contact me direct to see if I am interested in particular shops, and now I have more beer than I can drink.

I have a company I have done a number of shops for and they are asking me to do a route of 30+ shops. The problem is the shops themselves only pay $5 each, but they are spread out in remote communities that would take a 4 hour round trip drive to complete. The scheduler said she will consider mileage but is asking me what I think is reasonable I DON'T KNOW! This MSC has been good to me so i don't want to scare them away by being greedy. Anyone (ideally in Eastern Canada) have any experience with this and can suggest a 'reasonable' mileage rate?

Thanks.

Thanks Linda. Normally this is how I would do these as well, but in Newfoundland there are a lot of remote communities and very few gas (or other) shops along the way to offset the travel costs.