Shop Opinions
Complaint 35790 Details

Was in the midst of a job search a few months back when I came across an ad on Craiglist looking for "mystery shoppers".

Upon emailing back with interest, I was given a local Toronto number I could contact to reach "Jonathan Johnson (sounded like an Indian guy on the phone). He had conducted an initial "interview" simply giving me a brief overview of what the "job" entailed (namely, to conduct customer service evaluations based on walking into a retail department store, purchasing any item up to $100 for the purpose of evaluating the quality of the store's sales personnel. Jonathan had ensured me that I was the type of person they were looking for and "hired" me for a "shopping campaign."

Sure enough, a couple of days later, by mail, I received what I thought was a CIBC money order written in the amount of almost $2k. I was asked to correspond with jonathan via telephone before every step (when planning to go to the bank to cash this cheque, upon leaving the bank, upon going to the assigned "territory" that I was supposed to "work" in. He said he would time me and, based on that, would see what type of worker I was (dedicated, hustler, lazy, etc.).

Long story short, upon attempting to cash this money order for the job at hand, I ran up against an issue with the bank not being able to issue me this large amount (as my typical paycheques only total about half of this every 2 weeks). The bank had told me they would have to issue a "hold" - I had contacted Jonathan by phone telling him about this matter and he played it off rather well saying "that's ok, we'll just wait till the funds clear first" and, being in need of a job, I offered to use my own money to do these projects with. He agreed, and I asked him how much I needed for the first two tasks, he said $1k will do it.

Anyway, I proceeded to these stores, paying close attention to all the customer service related things he metioned, taking full reports of my "shopping experience".

I would, of course, call him at the end of each job, telling him some of the pros and cons of the sales staff. My second job was to do with a money transfer by Moneygram thru Moneymart. We had created a pretend name for someone in the UK (a random place we had agreed upon) when filling out the moneywire form, using a phone number we had both created and agreed upon together. I had purchased a moneywire amount of around $900. We had come up with a storyline blah blah blah. Anyway, when contacting him by phone afterwards, he had asked for certain transaction numbers on the form (i inadvertantly provided him all the details for him to successfully rob me)

I was continuing with this until a few days later, I had checked my bank balance online by web and found the cheque to have bounced. I then contacted jonathan (who was still available by phone) and ensured me that he would reissue me another cheque. never heard back again and the phone went dead a few days later.