How to tell a mystery shopping report is real

If you are paying for information you cannot otherwise get, the only thing that matters is whether the visit happened as described. A report nobody verified is a story with a number attached.

What real verification checks

• GPS check-in and check-out inside a geofence around the address, with the distance recorded
• Photos captured in the app, with EXIF timestamp and coordinates retained — not chosen from a camera roll
• A receipt matched against the date, time and total
• Time on site measured against a minimum for that template
• Image hashing, so a photo reused from an earlier visit is caught automatically
• A human reviewer who reads the report before it is released

The questions to ask a provider

Ask whether photos can be uploaded from a gallery. Ask what happens when a shopper submits a report with no GPS fix. Ask how many reports were rejected last month — a provider that has never rejected one is not checking.

A provider that cannot tell you its rejection rate is not measuring quality, it is processing paperwork.