Hello there fellow shoppers!

Is anyone else overwhelmed and annoyed by how frequently you receive emails from companies? Any given day I can have 15 emails and that's just from one company alone. I also find it unfortunate for most companies, to be considered active you have to subscribe to recieve emails. Many jobs may be outside of your jurisdiction or you just aren't interested, versus login in and just select jobs which suits you. I have grown to ignore my inbox which also contains important information such as payments or shop reminders. For the month of May alone I have deleted 700 emails

Hi Tanisha

I feel your pain. I do a lot of shops so I can't really turn my notifications off. However, I haven't come across a company where there isn't a control on emails somewhere. Usually in your profile, there will be an option to receive emails or not. Some platforms, like ISS offer a choice of what you want to receive such as notifications of available shops and notifications of declined shops, etc. If all else fails, if you only want to go on the website, turn the radius down on how far you are willing to travel to say 5 miles in your profile and you should only get notifications for that area. It is a compromise though - you will have to change the radius when you go in to look for jobs but at least you won't get all those emails!

I get over 200 emails a day....I completely ignore 95% of them after reading the subject line. However, the other 5% can have job offers (often with bonuses) that are very worthwhile. It's just the nature of the business.

I can't stand some companies that send me 30+ emails a day. It's ridiculous and in my opinion rude. A lot of them aren't necessary and could be combined.

Hello, I am new to this and I was just wondering if any one has been contacted via email about an assignment offering good pay and compensation for costs with details to be mailed via snail mail? Is this ligget? This was before I got the app.

Hello Crystale, there are such things but iSecretShop does not participate in that. All shops via iSS are legitimate and trustworthy. And they are only available on the iSS portal, not thru snail mail, etc. Whatever the shop instructions say about pay and compensation you will definitely receive if your shop is approved by the MSP.

Those other things you are speaking of are not part of iSS, and would probably be a scam and/or illegal, so if you get any of those, stay away from them. Best advice that can be offered.

Crystale -

What you describe is a a scam. The check they send you is fraudulent and will bounce - but not until after you have withdrawn the required funds and sent it to the scam artist. In this industry, you will not be pre-paid for work - especially in large amounts.

Hi Crystale,

Without knowing who emailed you and about what exactly, I wouldn't be able to say with absolute certainty, but it does sound like a scam. iSecretShop does not use Snail mail, nor do any of the MSPs which posts shops on iSecretShop.

Here are a few pointers to help you determine of the opportunities you get emailed about are legitimate, and originating from MSPs on iSecretShop:

• The email address of the sender should always be a corporate email (like for example ivan@prismintelligence.com) - private emails like @gmail, @yahoo, @icloud, etc. should always raise suspicions (and are not authorized to be sent via iSecretShop).
• The emails themselves that are being sent through iSecretShop should always contain reference to the iSecretShop platform (whether by directing you to login to iSecretShop, or informing you that you are receiving the email because you're registered at iSecretShop, or something similar)
• The emails should, in most cases, contain the exact location/locations (and/or the specific address) that's being shopped, and you should be able to login to iSecretShop and look it up under Available Shops.
• The company which is offering the opportunity must be one of the companies listed on the iSecretShop Provider Contracts & Policies page - all MSPs which operate under the iSecretShop platform are listed there.
• All detailed information about legitimate mystery shopping opportunities on iSecretShop can be found on the iSecretShop website - the overview can be seen on the Available Shops page, and the full details on your Assigned Shops page once the shop is assigned to you - that's where the form is filled out, and that's where the instructions and guidelines are.

One of the surest ways to check if you are still in doubt is to ask the person who emailed you to give you the Shop ID number for the shop in question. If they do - you can look it up on the iSecretShop website, and find that it's a legitimate shop. If they refuse to, you should be very careful as it could be a scam.

These are just some of the tell-tell signs of a possible scam, so always be sure to check, and you can even open a support ticket for iSecretShop, to check if the person that sent you an email is registered as a scheduler for any MSP.

I hope this helps!

I have to add something ; I've never received any email from isecretshop unless it was an alert for an upcoming shop or an alert for something needed on a shop I completed. The emails I receive in excess are from other companies who don't participate with isecretshop.

TThank you all for your help. I did a ton of research on the email. It was fraudulent and a total scam. I received a letter with a check. The letter miss spelled research in the heading (dead give away). I would up being contacted by prism intelligence who verified all my questions. So just wanted to let everyone know there is a scam out there and they do use the prism intelligence name