While browsing the web, I found an offer to become a mystery shopper, where I would earn
\nmoney from shopping and reporting on the experience. I entered my zip code and discovered marketing info from my area is in great demand. I could shop at various large chains like Target and Home Depot, and get to keep what I bought with their money, as long as I filled out a comprehensive marketing research report.<\/p>\n
(I’ve done these before, but I was a copywriter<\/a> watching through one-way glass, as focus groups talked about their favorite deodorant.)<\/p>\n Anyway, the mystery shopper site listed my nearest stores to evaluate as several miles away. Then I read the terms and conditions. Whoops. My information, that is, my telephone number, street address and verified email address could all be given or sold to third parties. <\/p>\n So, as a mystery shopper, you are nothing but fresh meat for spammers.<\/p>\n I have been buried in spam before. In fact, in the recent book about the history of spam, Spam Kings,<\/a> I recognized every single “marketing” campaign mentioned, even the Banned CD, whatever that was.<\/p>\n I decided maybe my zip code hadn’t been singled out for special treatment. I chose a different zip code, 99685 , which as you may know, is for Unalakleet, Alaska<\/strong>, a village on Alaska’s western coast. It has 750 people, mainly Eskimo fishing people. Not a shopping mecca. Sure enough, Unalakleet is also in high demand for undercover shoppers, even though the nearest Lowe’s or Home Depot that I could report on is in Anchorage, 393 miles away.<\/p>\n That seemed a little close. Was there a more remote zip code? An American settlement farther from a shopping mall? Yes, 96599, McMurdo Station, Antarctica,<\/strong> which probably doesn’t get snail mail very quickly, given the rough winters. (If you send a package there, be careful with packing materials. A lot of the eco-hazardous waste is flown out, and at the South Pole<\/a> itself, styrofoam packing peanuts are banned from the landfill, as they produce gaseous waste.)<\/p>\n Sure enough, here too mystery shoppers are needed, but here the system failed as it could not calculate the distance to the nearest large retail store to evaluate.<\/p>\n Phooey. I would have loved to report on the first Home Depot at McMurdo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While browsing the web, I found an offer to become a mystery shopper, where I would earn money from shopping and reporting on the experience. I entered my zip code and discovered marketing info from my area is in great demand. I could shop at various large chains like Target and Home Depot, and get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myadportfolio.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}