Mystery Shopper Magazine

One of the most important questions that any mystery shopper will ask is this: When do I get paid? Some mystery shopping companies take a lot of time to pay, while others pay very quickly. Some mystery shoppers need to get paid right away, while other shoppers don’t mind waiting a few months for their money.

For this article, I looked at my records from 2011-2015 and averaged the time it took to be paid by all of my Sassie-based Mystery Shopping Companies. This chart reflects those companies  but I decided to add a few companies that are not on Sassie, such as Trendsource.

I decided to go from the slowest to the quickest paying mystery shopping companies. I stress that this was my experience and your experience might be different. I carefully went through every assignment and wanted to be fair by giving accurate pay times. My chart is based on those times.

There were a few companies that paid very slow in the beginning but then they picked up, paying quicker, so I did not rate them as slow, if they improved their pay times. The report is based on the longest paying time to the shortest paying time to be paid. Some of these companies may have improved over the years and you may say you were paid you sooner.

This information reflects my experience. I highly recommend that you also read this discussion on Mystery Shop Forum. It has a lot of information about expected payment times, compiled by the community.