Pros
you might make money to shop
Cons
- you will spend way more time than its worth
- You will regret it
- underpaid severely to the point you lose money
- you'll never see your family again
- surveys are 40-100 questions for no reason
- basically writing essays of information
- confusing guidelines
- not worth the pay
Just wanted to share my experience with CXG because I thought secret shopping would be a fun way to get beer money so I found CXG where you can secret shop luxury stores. It was fun enough to do the mystery shopping part, but the surveys they require and the standards they set were so exacting it was awful. It felt like more time and effort than my full-time job and not worth it. If you want the full details of my review read below:
My experience with CXG mystery shopping has been overwhelmingly frustrating due to the disproportionate amount of time required compared to the compensation offered. The process demands adherence to over 15 strict guidelines, which can be quite confusing and difficult to keep track of and they threaten no pay if you don't follow them, even though you did the work already. These guidelines include things like only using past tense and not referencing the sales associate's gender, even though in their examples that they give you of a good answer they reference gender (very confusing). Oh also you can't call them sales associates, but "Client Advisor". Not adhering to these rules could result in no pay. Before each assignment, you must complete an online training which is basically a confusing multiple choice quiz that I failed 3 times despite having the correct answer. Then I had to email the coordinator to reset it and they told me the answers I got wrong, which were answers that I initially had correct and changed because they system said they were wrong. I literally tried all 3 options of the multiple choice and then the coordinator had to basically just pass me. Annoying.
But that is nothing compared to what comes after. The survey is daunting—typically consisting of around 75 questions covering every conceivable detail imaginable. You are expected to remember all these specifics during a brief 20-minute store visit and then complete the survey afterward. In my case, the shopping visit took about 2 hours when factoring in preparation and actual time spent, while completing the survey took an additional 4 hours. This total time commitment is simply not worth the pay.
Every question requires multiple-choice answers, followed by additional detailed written responses that must be at least 15 characters long, with many questions suggesting 3-4 sentence comments. The level of detail expected feels more akin to academic writing in APA format than a typical customer experience survey. Overall, this experience felt like being back in school, and the compensation does not fairly reflect the workload.
Let's say this when I first told my husband I was going to make some extra cash he was excited, then after I spent the entire Sunday completing just two surveys for which I was to be paid a total of $100 he begged me never to do it again, and I couldn't agree more. Oh by the way you have 24 hours after shopping to do the survey, so if you shop on Saturday you will HAVE to spend your entire Sunday surveying. Good bye weekend and life. You can't try to rush these surveys either because again small errors means no pay, and they require multiple choice with multiple answers PLUS comments underneath and it won't let you move forward without the comments. Sometimes it's a simple yes or no question and then you have to write 3 sentences about why you said "yes the store clerk said goodbye to me." Like how can I make 3 sentences from that?
In summary, CXG’s mystery shopping program is extremely underpaid for the time and effort required, making it impractical for most people, especially those who want to provide any kind of high-quality feedback or even just decent feedback.
