Love to shop? You can get paid to do it — and report about what you liked or hated about the experience — through a company called Jancyn.
What is Jancyn?
Jancyn is a 45-year-old mystery shopping company that contracts with property managers, retailers, restaurants, financial services concerns and a wide array of other companies to evaluate and improve customer experience. The site enlists freelance mystery shoppers to carry out its mission.
How it works
If you want to mystery shop with Jancyn, you must be over the age of 16, have a PayPal (or, in some cases, Venmo) account, a valid phone number and email address.
A smart phone is strongly advised, though not required.
Got that? Then you can sign up through ShopMetrics here by answering a handful of basic questions. Before you’re able to see available shops, you’ll need to Geolocate your home address, however.
The site will automatically look for shops within 15 miles of your home. But, if you want, you can choose a larger geographic area to potentially get more shops. Each listed gig shows what it pays and what you need to do.
You request the shops you want and ignore the rest.
Jancyn Review:
Like most mystery shopping companies, Jancyn enlists freelance shoppers to conduct consumer experience audits on a wide array of businesses. These audits could involve making sure that a gas station prominently displays safety warnings, customer experience at a restaurant or shopping experiences at a retail store.
The opportunities that are available will vary based on your location and how far you’re willing to travel. Some jobs also require you to be “certified.”
Certifications
What does it mean to be certified? It means that you read through a litany of instructions on how a shop should be handled and understand the rules well enough to pass a test. Passing grade? 100%. If you don’t do too poorly the first time you take the test, you’ll be able to take it up to 10 times until you get a perfect score.
Notably the reason you need a perfect score is because these shops are detail-oriented and if you don’t do them right, you could have your job rejected. And that means you don’t get paid at all.
Sizing audit
For instance, when we tested the site, there were several “sizing audits.”
To request any of those jobs, you’d need to go through a certification process, which meant you needed to read through a host of guidelines that say how these audits are conducted. This goes into what to photograph; what to write down; what constitutes a mis-sized item; how many items you’d need to review to complete a shop and other details.
How detailed are these instructions? Very. The short version of what we learned taking the test is that you need to go to the targetted store; take some photos of the outside; then go inside, acting like a shopper. But, while you’re there, you’d need to look at 500 products in five different parts of the store to make sure that each of those 500 items were in the right place. If they’re not, you need to document what was where. Then to complete the audit, you’d go home, file a multi-page report and upload your photos.
The store visit needs to take at least a half hour (and would likely take longer given the volume of products you’re reviewing). And your report must be filed within 12 hours of visiting the store. For that, you’ll be paid $20.
That’s a lot of work for $20.
Other gigs
To be sure, size audits just happened to be what was prevalent in our area when we tested the site. Jancyn also audits restaurants for service and ambiance. It audits property managers to see if they appropriately describe the community and comply with fair housing regulations. And it sends mystery shoppers to banks and other financial institutions to see if they are complying with regulations and adequately providing needed information to customers.
You could also score theater, gas station, hotel and in-home service audits through this company. The site even sometimes offers phone and web audits. So, if one type of mystery shop doesn’t appeal to you, you may be able to find a gig that does.
Overall
That said, mystery shopping is not a highly paid profession. Most gigs that you’ll find here are likely to pay anywhere from $10 – $25. Given the detail that every gig requires, you’ll probably spend at least two hours on any given job — even the relatively straight forward ones like restaurant reviews. That makes the pay just a touch over minimum wage in most areas and well below it in high-cost states like California and New York.
What kind of detail?
Among the more popular secret shopping gigs are restaurant reviews. But, you don’t just go to the restaurant and come back saying that everything was nice. Jancyn explains that vague statements — such as “the service was friendly and good” — don’t cut it.
What the site expects: “The server greeted us after we took a seat at the table. We had been there for only 30 seconds. He smiled and welcomed us to the restaurant and asked if he could get us something to drink to start, maybe a margarita or a beer. He made good eye contact with each of us and answered questions about the tequila available at the bar.”
Naturally, you need to truly pay attention to every aspect of the meal and take notes to meet the site’s requirements. And, then, of course, you’ve got to write it all up. So, in addition to the time you spend at the restaurant, you’re likely to spend at least an hour summarizing the visit. So, it’s not a cake walk.
Independent contractors
Notably, mystery shoppers are “independent contractors,” who are able to accept or reject any given gig. As an independent contractor, you work for yourself, so minimum wage rules don’t apply.
Pay
Shoppers generally are paid through PayPal. However, in some rare instances, you can get paid through Venmo.
The site pays the amount listed on the assignment and, occasionally, will also reimburse a small amount of expenses. (We saw a few gigs that reimbursed up to $5.) However, payments are slow. You’ll generally be compensated 5 to 6 weeks following completion on a job.
Overall
You know what you’re getting into when you shop for Jancyn. The assignments are highly detailed and the company is very transparent about the pay. Unlike other mystery shopping firms that appear anxious to find ways to invalidate shops to avoid paying, we didn’t see many complaints about mystery shopping with this company.
That said, the jobs we saw required a lot of work for pretty sorry pay. This is par for the course in the secret shopping field, however. So we consider this an average opportunity for someone who enjoys this kind of work. Do be judicious about what you accept, however.
Recommendations
If you love mystery shopping, you can sign up with Jancyn here. You may also want to check out Service Evaluation Concepts and EyeSpy. (EyeSpy pays in meals and experiences, but they’re likely to be nice meals…so, it could be worth it for a foodie.)
What their users say: From Glassdoor
Frequently available new stores to shop. Really easy application. Once you complete a few audits successfully, they typically reach out via text to offer you higher paying gigs than they show in job apps. But you pay for the gas, wear and tear on your car, etc. And if you don’t live near the stores they’re auditing then you’re out of luck.
I have enjoyed Jancyn as a Secret Shopper for quite a while. I like that I choose where I shop and determine if the pay is sufficient. They are very specific as to what the requirements are and easy to work with. If you follow their instructions, there are no cons. The directions are painfully clear and easy to meet.
Flexible, but low pay
The hours are very flexible. And submitting assignments is easy. Assignments can sometimes take only an hour or so. But the pay varries per assignment and pay for most assignments is very low. Sometimes they want you to drive more than 40 minutes out of your way for just $15.00. And the pay comes after a 4 to 5 week waiting period.
