Being an Undercover Customer Evaluator (a.k.a “Mystery Shopper”) is truly the most challenging, fun, diverse, exciting, and unbelievable way I’ve ever made money. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t think, “I can’t believe somebody is paying me to do this.”

Drink free when observing what bartenders do with cash payments.

As an independent Undercover Customer Evaluator, I get hired to complete “Undercover Boss” types of assignments, where I pose as a customer, observe the operation, partake of the products and services, and report my findings back to the hiring businesses.

In the five years, I’ve been doing these Undercover Customer Evaluator jobs, I’ve literally been paid to take airplane flights and stay in 5-star hotels; drink coffee, do breakfast, brunch, lunch, Happy Hour, dinner, and order takeout; purchase makeup, clothes, shoes, groceries, and electronics; get massages, haircuts, and brow waxings; wash my car, repair my car, get oil changes and test drive new cars.

Some people are familiar with “mystery shopping,” but today’s Undercover Customer Evaluations are more comprehensive in scope than that. Today undercover evaluators are also contracted to complete brand image reviews, compliance audits, website, and app testing, as well as health and safety evaluations. Some of these broader reaching auditor assignments are undercover, but some of them are revealed.

To get started it took a lot of research to find the companies that were willing to pay me to do this kind of undercover work. Additionally, it took a lot of time to make sure the work would be legit and I would actually get paid. Successful Undercover Customer Evaluators are keen observation, have excellent memories, are consummate liars, and excellent report writers in equal parts.

This is not always the highest paid work in the world, but it’s worth it to me whenever I’m being paid to get a massage, munch popcorn in a movie theater, or have a Happy Hour glass of wine and I’m thinking, “It’s a tough job, but somebody’s gotta do it,” Since I started doing Undercover Customer Evaluations, I have that thought almost every day of my life.

Undercover evaluations are not all glitter and glamour when you’re exposing the underbelly of the operations.

Pros

• There are no obligations or expectations about when or how much I will work.
• I can pick and choose only the assignments that are the highest paying, the easiest to complete, or the most fun. I am never forced to do tasks that I don’t want to do.
• Sometimes I don’t even have to get dressed or leave the house because my assignments are remote phone or computer jobs.
• As an independent contractor, I have complete flexibility and, therefore, complete control over my schedule every single day.
• Fun and freedom!

No prior experience is necessary for undercover brunch assignments.

Cons

• You have to be an excellent actor to believably execute the customer scenario that you are assigned.
• You have to be able to credibly “lie on the fly” when conversations and situations take an unexpected turn.
• There is no guaranteed number of assignments, which sometimes creates feast-or-famine income.
• You’re an independent contractor, so even though you get reimbursed meals, transportation, products, and services, you don’t get healthcare or retirement benefits.
• Sometimes there are strict requirements about what you’ll get paid to eat, drink, purchase or request, which wouldn’t have been your first choice in the “real world.”. Darn!