Company Overview: The Shadow Agency is headquartered in North Richland Hills, Texas, part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. They were one of the pioneers in video mystery shopping, starting in 1995. The company specializes in new home, retail, automobile, apartments/property management, and restaurants.
Their website is www.theshadowagency.com. Registration is on an extremely easy form. They will notify you when they have shops available in your area.
Personal Experience: I’ve only recently started video shopping with this company and have completed around 20 shops with them. I find them to be great to work with, the schedulers are easy to communicate with, and any questions receive prompt answers. My experience is the company pays on time and as advertised.
What Others Have to Say: Shoppers on www.mysteryshopforum.com report nothing but positive experiences with this company. One shopper reported, “Four thumbs up, very easy to work with, very short reports on video shops.” Another shopper reports that they will, “happily work with them again!”
There are only two complaints with this company, and complaint is used relatively loosely here. The first is a reminder to shoppers to figure in the expense of bridge and tunnel tolls if you are doing shops for this company in the metro New York area. It’s more of a caveat to shoppers from outside the metro area to check the tolls before agreeing to a price for your work, make sure you’re getting your expenses covered.
The second complaint is slightly more serious. On occasion, payments have been known to slip through the cracks. The shoppers that this has happened to have reported that usually all it takes is a single e-mail to get your check. For shoppers who don’t like having to chase down payments, this is something to take into consideration, At the same time, the company has a track record of being reliable and prompt to pay when reminded.
Overall: As is true with most of the companies that have video shops, communications is good to excellent. There are no complaints as to the company paying on time. I rate The Shadow Agency an A-, mainly because of the occasional need to remind them of payments that are due.