Category: Shoppers

Here at Confero, we get lots of questions from mystery shoppers asking how they can improve their shop ratings.  One easy way to improve your shop rating is to make sure you are providing a clean, concise mystery shop report every time.  Here is a list of the Top Six Mistakes to Avoid When Completing a Mystery Shop Report:

1. Copying and pasting shop information.   Each mystery shop is unique, so each mystery shop report should be unique to each individual shop.  Our clients do not accept reports with copied or “canned”comments, as they expect each unique mystery shop/audit visit’s conversation to be reported individually. That’s what they are paying for. Copied or canned comments imply that the mystery shopper did not make the required observations or give them full attention.  For more details about this, see Cathy Stucker’s blog about all the “Dangers of Copy and Paste.”

Our mystery shoppers may have noticed that over the past year, Confero has seen a big increase in clients requesting audits of their location.  Audits are usually used by large companies or corporations with multiple locations, often nationwide. Audits provide a simple way for companies to manage the image they are presenting to customers in all their locations. 

Audits usually require auditors to visit the assigned location and do any of the following items:

1. Take an inventory of particular products.  Companies want to ensure that their shelves are properly stocked at all times.  And sometimes, they are auditing their competitors, so they want to be able to compare what their competitors have in stock.  In a recent program, one of our clients had auditors visit grocery stores to take inventory particular brands of products.  They wanted to know how much shelf space was designated for their product, as well as their competitors.

Unfortunately, scam artists have targeted unsuspecting consumers under the disguise of mystery shopping companies for several years now.  Recently, there have been a couple of news stories involving a few of these scams.  Last year, the wire transfer company, MoneyGram had to pay $18 million to settle charges with the Federal Trade Commission because it was found that “MoneyGram agents helped fraudulent telemarketers and other con artists who tricked U.S. consumers into wiring more than $84 million within the United States and to Canada.”  Also, in early April of this year, a man was sentenced to six years in prison for running a $6 million job scam. 

Yesterday, Confero was alerted about several job postings on several job sites including pennlive.com, silive.com and masslive.com.  Confero has not posted any of these job postings.  The postings advertise positions as Customer Service Representatives, Administrative positions, and Call Center employees.  All the ads list the person to contact as Dave Miller.  Confero does not have any employees by this name.

Confero, Inc. does not advertise for full-time positions anywhere other than in Cary, North Carolina.  All legitimate job openings for Confero are announced on our company website on the Careers page. 

We would like to remind consumers about the fake check scams that have been attached to the mystery shopping industry for the past couple of years.

In this post, we are combining all the information and revelations from the past few months. Many consumers have received checks in the mail along with a letter on official-looking Confero letterhead. These checks are fake. The scam artists take the names of reputable companies in an attempt to fool unsuspecting consumers into cashing these fake checks. Always remember:

• Confero does not send checks to shoppers as payment to shoppers.
• Confero does not issue certified checks for shoppers to use during mystery shops.
• Confero does not shop Western Union or Moneygram.

• As the Fakecheck.org website states, “There is no legitimate reason why anyone would give you a check or money order and ask you to wire money in return.”

In recent months, the scam artists have also started to pose as Confero schedulers. The following names have been used by scammers: Melissa Cole, Timothy Reeds, Robert Preston, Michael Thomforde, James Clayton, Paula Moore, Carlos Burnett, Chris Jordan, Alexander Hopkins, Mark Dwane, Kevin Jones, Melissa Hillman, Jimmy Bruce, Michael Hislap, Ashley Coleman and Dwayne Fox. It is inevitable that the scammers will continue to change names, so please remember, any check sent to you by anyone claiming to represent Confero is a scam. None of these persons work for Confero, Inc. These are made-up names used in official looking email messages or regular postal mail.

Often times these scammers will use email addresses from public domains such as yahoo, gmail, msn or aol. Legitimate Confero staff members will only contact you via their @conferoinc.com email address.