See how a quick mystery shopping trip ended up with a winning bet!

It's a blog today after a short trip to a local town to carry out three mystery shop assignments. It's the usual shop, lunch, shop scenario that has come to typify my mystery shopping activities at this time of the year.

This will quieten down soon so I'm just making the most of the last of the opportunities.

The first assignment is a home improvement store and this one is very similar to one I did last week I browsed the shop floor for literally 9 minutes and 50 seconds of the allowed 10 minutes before a team member came over and asked if I needed help. For the sale of 10 seconds I could hdve left without going through an enquiry and still earned the same fee!

Fee = £5.00

Reimbursement = £1.00

Spend = £0.71

Profit/Loss = +£5.29

The second assignment was to a national pub chain to assess service times and levels. The timing was about measuring how long to be served at the bar, brought food and plates cleared. The service was about staff knowledge and friendliness. There's very, very rarely a reason to mark these pubs down and this assignment isn't any different.

Fee = £3.25

Reimbursement = £9.75

Spend = £11.18

Profit/Loss = +£1.82

The third assignment is to a bookmakers and this gives me the opportunity to share a little insight of the type of overviews we have to produce for mystery shop reports-

"I entered the shop and I was greeted straight away by a team member from behind the counter. I then browsed the floor for approximately five minutes before a team member approached and asked if I was okay.The team member offered me a cup of coffee. I then looked at the betting football coupons before going to the counter to seek help. The team member was helpful and friendly and made conversation about the upcoming England match."

This is what is called an overview, and it's where the report wants a commentary on your visit. It's best to keep details fairly vague here, as you'll go into more detail in the full report.

Fee = £2.75

Reimbursement = £5.00

Spend = £5.00

Profit/Loss = +£2.75

TOTAL = +£9.86 + a tile, lunch for 2 and a free bet (which actually won and made a further £15.50!!!!)

If you are interested in mystery shopping and want to make a little money, get a free lunch or gamble with someone else's money then you can find out how with my book.