Company Overview
Consumer@Site is a Mystery Shopping Company (MSC) located in Puerto Rico; operating primarily in the territory, but also in the Caribbean region and Central America. They’re the only member of the Mystery Shopping Provider’s Association (MSPA) in Puerto Rico, or the entire Caribbean region.
You can check out their website here: http://www.consumeratsite.com/index.html
They have links to several articles providing a “behind the scenes” look at mystery shopping. A button in the upper right quickly and neatly toggles the page between English and Spanish.
Types & Locations of Shops
To complement mystery shopping, Consumer@Site also conducts distribution and audit reports and market research for their clients. They partner with two other companies —MAAS, which provides merchandising, sales, and human resources services; and Vice Versa, which is an advertising agency. Both of these companies are located and operate in the same region as Consumer@Site.
Consumer@Site provides mystery shopping for the following industries: quick service and casual dining restaurants, gas stations, auto sales and services, telecommunications companies (including wireless), financial institutions, hotels and hospitality, and both general and specialized retailers. However, they will design a program for and work with clients in any industry.
Most of Consumer@Site’s shops are in Puerto Rico, but they also serve the Caribbean region and Central America. When I checked the sign-up page, you can register if you’re located in the United States; but I imagine it would only do any good if you’re planning on visiting the MSC’s territory.
Getting & Completing Shops
Consumer@Site uses ShopMetrics as the platform for their shopper portal, where you can search and apply for available shops, track current shops, report shops, and access pay records. ShopMetrics doesn’t provide a way for shoppers to save copies of their reports, but a workaround is easy enough by simply “printing” the report page to PDF. It’s a good idea to do the same with the report confirmation number page. In ShopMetrics, once a specific shop is complete, there’s no way for a shopper to access the report for review.
I couldn’t find any information on the MSC’s website regarding self vs. scheduler assign, shop guidelines/questionnaires, or report turnaround times. Neither could I find any information on Mystery Shop Forum (MSF) detailing shoppers’ experience with any of those things, or: shop notification emails, availability and responsiveness of schedulers, ease of reading and thoroughness of shop guidelines, complexity of shops and reports, or editing/grading of reports and shop feedback.
When I signed up as a shopper (see last section) and gained access to the shopper portal, I noticed that listed in the upper left-hand part of the “Home” section, is “Certifications”. When you click, there are nineteen different certifications available covering general shopper qualifications and specific shop qualifications. These are in Spanish, so I couldn’t discern many details — but it did look like some were for health services and supermarkets; along with other industries as mentioned earlier.
What About Getting Paid?
No information about shopper pay is given on Consumer@Site’s main page, and no information and/or shopper experience was found from searching Mystery Shop Forum, either. Even once I signed up with this MSC (see last section), I couldn’t find any information in the Independent Contractor Agreement (ICA) or via the Shopper Portal after logging in.
So it’s currently unknown what payment method(s) the company makes available, or how soon shoppers are paid after a shop is completed. Neither is there anything about who to contact with payment issues/questions.
What Other Shoppers Think
There’s only one thread about Consumer@Site on MSF, and it only consists of one post from someone looking for more information and others’ experience with the company. However, since May 31st 2015, no one has responded to the inquiry. Given their location and service area, I have no personal experience to share, either.
Getting Signed Up
If you’re interested in shopping for Consumer@Site, and live in Puerto Rico or one of their other areas served; or are perhaps planning a vacation there; their sign-up process starts here: https://consumersite.shopmetrics.com/shopperSignup.asp.
Even though I’m in the United States, I went through the steps to see what all it entailed.
The standard basic information is all that’s required, including your SSN or tax ID number; and it’s pretty quick and easy to complete the process. There’s five tabs to proceed through, but the ‘More’ tab simply says, “No additional information is currently collected. Please click ‘Next’ to continue.” No writing sample is required.
The final tab is the ICA, and it’s in Spanish by default. There’s a button in the upper right that is supposed to easily translate it to English or Portuguese. However, when I tried it, unlike the company’s main website; the page simply kept reloading in Spanish. It’s a rather short ICA, and since it wouldn’t translate to English, and I can only make out a few Spanish words; I couldn’t really tell what was included. (I was primarily interested to see if I could find any shopper payment information.) You accept the ICA and complete the sign-up process by typing the last two digits of your birth year in the box and clicking ‘Submit’. Despite not knowing what I was agreeing to, I did — just to see what would happen. 🙂
The next page said I would soon receive a confirmation email. Ten to fifteen minutes later, I did. The email was primarily in Spanish, with only a few key phrases also in English. A user name and temporary password is provided, and you click on the link to complete your registration. However, the link didn’t work just by clicking on it; and had to be copied/pasted into a new tab. It takes you to the shopper sign-in page. Once you arrive at the shopper portal on the ShopMetrics platform, some things are in English and some in Spanish.
Conclusion
Although little information could be found about Consumer@Site, if you live in their area of operation, I see no reason why you wouldn’t want to give them a try.