Ok, you're gonna love this one....so make some coffee and enjoy the saga.
My fiance found this ad in a local job listing website for "Mystery Shoppers Needed". The ad included a bunch of additional keywords not normally associated with a standard job posting. This surely improved SEO but didn't lend a lot of credibility for being a "real" job listing.
Excited at the possiblity of having found a job, my fiance beamed as she relayed the details to me. For a mere $ 2.95 "testing fee", she could quickly become qualified to be a mystery shopper in the Indianapolis area. In fact, she was told there are several jobs available right now ! All that was needed was a credit/debit card to pay for the $ 2.95.
Being the caution one I am, I handed her the smallest debit card I had - maybe $ 100 in the account so no major deal if it's a scam.
Together we made the call to provide the credit card info. The answering woman was professional and quickly told my fiance she could make up to $ 50 per mystery shopper job. Then she immediately wanted to confirm my fiance has a valid credit/debit card. It sounded pretty scripted to me.
My suspicions were aroused further at the background sounds on the other end of the line - definitely a high volume call center and not the quiet, relaxed office enviroment I expected. The lady quickly confirmed that no additional charges would be made to the card and proceeded to establish my fiances login information to www.shoppersystems.com. The really weird part was when we waited on hold no less than 35 minutes for a "4 digit security confirmation for our credit card transaction". I'm still not sure what that was all about but eventually a recorded voice came back stating the transaction was approved. We hung up at that point.
Having listened to the entire experience first hand myself, I didnt have the warm-fuzzy from a place that charges money to accept an application for employment. Once the call ended I decided to Google this shoppersystems company and see what comes up. Sure enough, post after post of scam alerts and warnings came up. According to most of the posts I saw, there's a $ 49.95 fee that shows up a week or so after the $ 2.95. Then it becomes very difficult if not impossible to reach someone to cancel/discuss the unknown charge.
Obviously after reading so many other negative experiences and not a single positive one, I called my bank and cancelled the card. The $ 2.95 charge had already hit the account. Fortunately the card is now dead and no further monies can be drawn from the account.
Who knows if this was completely legit or not, but I have to stand by the idea that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
We both found it an amazing coincidence that the VERY NEXT DAY my fiance receives a call stating she had won a sweepstakes and wanted to confirm she had a valid debit/credit card. Sound familiar? Yeah, we thought the same thing ourselves - SCAM ! :)