Hotel Mystery Shops

It's summer time again and time for me to catch up on some mystery shops. I love this time of year!! This is the great thing about a teacher schedule that makes all of the stress of beginning and end of the year worth it. So right to the good stuff now: I have come across an awesome site that lets you mystery shop hotels! I had known about hotel shops for a couple of years but had not had the opportunity to do one myself. Finally, last week I went out of town about four hours away from my house to Alabama. We had only planned to stay in a hotel for one night, so it occurred that we could stay for free instead of having to pay. You can't really beat that can you?

I read up on the requirements and signed up for the hotel shop. The payment will cover the cost of the room, and even pay $20. Woo hoo! Just like any other shop there are certain requirements. The actual requirements start with making the reservation and ends with check-out. The total time requirement to conduct the shop for me was about an hour I would guess. It took probably an additional hour to an hour and a half to complete the questionnaire about the shop. So for 2 1/2 hours of work, I got to stay in a hotel for free plus got $20.

Added bonus: The hotel also had breakfast. I guess it is called the continental breakfast- but don't quote me on that. It had the hot waffle maker, muffins, bagels, toast, cereal, juice, etc. Did I mention that at the service desk there were free cookies? I could hardly remember the things I needed to be observing when I saw those out of the corner of my eye. They were good too. mmm cookies. Oh, where was I? Ah yes, the hotel shop. We ended up checking in at around 8:00 p.m. and left at 7:45 a.m. Not requirements of the shop, we just hadda get a move on.

So check out hotel shops to get reimbursed for a mini vacay. From what I've seen you only get to stay one night per hotel, but what's to stop you from going from one hotel to another? In my opinion it's worth consideration. Say you take a little three night vacation in Orlando. You can get reservations at three different hotels for each night of your stay within a close proximity of each other. Here's a tip to get good hotels: before you sign up at a specific hotel do a search of that hotel on google or yahoo to see what past guests think about it. That way you don't end up at some roach motel in a bad neighborhood or something. Now for the link to the mystery shopping company that I used click here to fill out an application. Has anyone else ever done a hotel shop? What other companies are out there for hotel shops?

Free movie rentals

If you are like me you love being able to rent movies for free. There are trials to Netflix and Blockbuster where you are able to make a list of the movies you want to rent and they are shipped to your home with a postage paid envelope. When you finish the movie, however long it takes, you send it back. I love these trials! Lately we have been watching season one of Fringe, since we missed about half of the first season we have had a marathon going at our house thanks to Blockbuster. There are many different shows available to rent, and the dvds are sent to you in the order that they aired. Once your trial is over you can continue and get charged a reasonable fee, or you can cancel before the trial ends to avoid a charge. Click here for a chance to win a year of Netflix rentals.

If you have already done the Netflix and Blockbuster trials and you want something more, try Redbox. I like Redbox because I have rented probably 10-15 movies for free. I never pay to rent movies anymore. Every now and then Redbox will come out with a code and when you go to a Redbox, you can pick out one free one night rental per credit card with the code. *Hint, hint* You can get one free rental for each promo code on each credit or debit card. Hopefully you got that hint. As long as you return the movie the next day before 9:00, you don't have to pay anything. If you are late then you have to pay one dollar per day, so even if you end up being one day late you are only out a dollar. Anyway, in the spirit of sharing, here is a new promo code for March: RBXLUV4U
Let me know how it works out for you. I know I will probably be renting about 8 free movies from Redbox over the next couple of weeks. Yay Redbox!

A yummy and inexpensive breakfast- Free coupon!

The new year is off to a great start and since I’ve had some changes over the past year, I have resolved to start eating breakfast. I had a baby in November, so during the time that I was pregnant, I ate breakfast daily. Now that I am the mother of an almost three month old, I really have to start the day off with breakfast! I have to start the day off right so I have the energy to get up and do what I need. Lately I have been really into General Mills cereals. Myblogspark gave me some coupons to try out a couple of boxes. I have tried Honey Nut Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch so far and I love them both!

General Mills is also in the process of producing cereals that are lower in sugar than traditional cereals. They are working on getting grams of sugar under single digits for each serving. As a teacher I think this is great for children. There is nothing worse than a child scarfing down a bowl of sugary cereal before school, especially if it happens to be the day of an important test. These cereals are also an excellent source of whole grain, and we could all use more of those in our diets. I appreciate the effort that the company is making to make a healthier product for children.

I also like that breakfast doesn't have to be an expensive meal. When you compare the cost for a bowl of cereal to the cost of just about anything else, cereal is a bargain! For a coupon for a dollar off of a box of General Mills cereals, click here. Enjoy!

Winner of Breakfast giveaway

Hello everyone, I'm just doing a quick post to announce the winner of the breakfast giveaway. Drumroll please.... Rasheeda! I have notified the winner via email and will get her goodies out to her in a snap. I love giving things away! How fun! I have a runner up in mind, too, in case I don't hear back from this winner. I plan on hosting another giveaway in the very near future, probably just after the holidays. Stick around for your chance to win some more good stuff!

Breakfast giveaway

Who doesn't like freebies? Here is your chance to grab something good. I recently tried out some Pillsbury Honey Butter Biscuits for free. I received two coupons for a free can of the biscuits as well as a butter dish and butter knife...the butter was my addition. The biscuits are flaky and sweet and make the perfect breakfast! You can't go wrong with these yummy biscuits, especially when you have the chance to get them for free. These coupons are valid only in the United States so for my readers from other countries, I apologize but these will not work for you. Here's the best part: myblogspark and Pillsbury have given me a prize pack to give away to one of my readers. Here is how you enter:

1. Subscribe to my blog with a valid email address. Make sure that you activate your subscription with the follow-up email. Sometimes the activation email goes to your spam folder so make sure to check there! If you already subscribe to my blog you are automatically entered.


2. If you want an additional opportunity to win, tweet about this on twitter and email me a link. My address is mysteryshoppingteacher@yahoo.com.

Number two is optional. You can do number one and number two (and have two chances to win) or you can just do number one (and have one chance to win). You must sign up for a subscription to be entered into the drawing.

Tell your friends about this and maybe one of you will win! I will draw one name to win this awesome breakfast pack on Sunday, December 20th. I will contact the winner via email to get a mailing address to ship the package. Thank you readers!

Jewelry auction site

I just wanted to share this site with my readers because I don't think a lot of people know about it. There is huge potential here to make cash on ebay with this site if you are into that kind of thing. I just shop occasionally on here to purchase things for myself and inexpensive gifts for others.

This site is an auction site that starts off with all auctions starting at $1.oo! I have to be careful that I don't get addicted to this site, especially during time when I'm off from work and have more free time to be online and buy things! You can get real gold, silver, and even platinum jewelry for a fraction of the price that you would pay in a jewelry store. You should always check this site before you spend your hard earned cash in a jewelry store. I haven't bought jewelry from a jewelry store since I've discovered this site.

Click here to sign up and start bidding. You might be able to buy some inexpensive but nice gifts to stock up. Check it out!

Yummy dinner shop for two + bonus

Hi there mystery shoppers! I don't know about you but to me, getting a free dinner for two is awesome. I got to eat at one of my favorite BBQ places with my husband for free. This shop usually becomes available about 0nce a month for me. However, sometimes they are reveal shops and I don't do reveal shops here because I live here and I want to remain anonymous in my small town!

Here was what we had to do. I say we, but I was the one doing the shop and my husband was just reaping the benefits! We had to order a meal off of the favorites menu and get two drinks. We went online ahead of time to look at the favorites menu to pick out what we would want so we would know when we got to the restaurant. The only catch was that we weren't allowed to order fried food (except french fries), because fried food takes longer to prepare and would not give an accurate food prep time. I ordered sliced porks, french fries, and green beans. My husband ordered sliced beef, french fries, and green beans. We just happened to want similar meals on this night! There were many more options.

Some of the things I had to check were the names of the hostess and waitress, what the salad bar looked like, if the bathroom was clean, if the waitress mentioned the special barbeque sauces, how long it took to get our drinks and food after ordering them, and a few other things. I find it is easier to make sure that I don't forget things if I take notes, especially for longer questionnaires.

We were in an out in about 45 minutes from beginning to end. The total time to do the shop and enter the report was about an hour and 15 minutes. Plus, we got enough pay to cover our meal and the tip. Oh, and did I mention earlier that I got paid a 20 dollar bonus to do the shop? No I don't think I did... but YES I got $40 bucks total for that shop. The shop normally only pays $20, but for me they paid 100 percent more. It pays to learn how to get more money for shops. To learn more about how I do that, click here and check out my book. You won't be sorry! You can make your money back from one shop once you know how to get more money to do the shops you are going to do anyway. Here is the link of the company to sign up with for the BBQ joint mystery shops, plus many others I'm sure. This company pays via paypal and boy are they fast! Happy shopping!

Free food!

This is a short and quick post because I didn't want any one to miss out on this freebie. About a week ago I signed up for $10 worth of free food from Schwan's, the company that delivers frozen food to your door. It is an offer for new customers only. Guess what? I got the burgers today without a sales pitch and without having to pay a dime. I gave the driver a tip. I figured a few dollars for 8 hamburgers was worth it. He didn't try to give us a sales pitch or anything. He just gave us a magazine and said that we could order any time, and then he told us which day he is in our area. And these were 90/10 frozen hamburger patties not the standard 70/30. I am actually eating one right now as I type this and it is really good. Anyway, without further ado, here is the link. If you are interested you might want to check it out now cause it is limited to the first 500,000 new customers. Happy eating! Oh, and let me know what you think of your food when it comes in! Gonna finish my burger now :)

Cash in during your summer!

Have you been able to cash in on your summer? I guess this really applies to me since I have much more time off from my "day job" during the summer. For me, mystery shopping during the summer is much easier to do. The weather is beautiful and it just seems that there are an abundance of shops available during the summer.


If you are brand new to the mystery shopping experience, first of all welcome, and second of all, it is a great idea to get a new email address set aside only for mystery shopping opportunities. I wish I had done that to begin with. Now all of my mystery shopping emails mix together with every other email that I get. Sometimes I might miss out on opportunities because I don't realize that I have an email from a mystery shopping company until it is already filled. If you are just starting out I highly recommend you sign up for a free, seperate email address to direct all your mystery shopping companies to.

The best way to make plenty of mystery shopping cash is to sign up for a lot of mystery shopping companies. If you only sign up for three or four companies you miss out on a lot of opportunities. I recommend signing up for at least ten, maybe more. Past posts have included links to mystery shopping companies to start you off. I recommend that you read up on some of the past posts and find some companies that you feel comfortable with shopping for and start applying! I try not to be long-winded so just pick a couple to start with and start reading. The benefit to starting off with companies that others have tried is that you know you're not getting scammed (who doesn't feel a little nervous about giving out their social security number?!?) and if I was successful than you know you can be also.

Here's another idea: I would apply to a lot of jobs and maybe not pick out only the best (those with $20 dollar fees for 15 minutes of work) because those tend to fill up the fastest. If you only pick one of your favorites then more than likely a few other people have applied for that one as well. If you apply for like your top 5 most wanted shops you have a better chance of getting at least one of them. Also, don't shy away from shops that require you to drive out of town if you can coincide a trip out of town with a shop, than it is a win-win situation. My book tells you how you can really capitalize on out of towner shops, among other things.

So apply to a lot of companies and vary your shops a little to cash in with your shopping. And if you are just starting out or have yet to start signing up for mystery shopping companies- make a seperate email address specifically for shopping. Have fun and good luck! Ahhh good to be back.

:)