We assign you a product. You buy it from a major online retailer on your own card. We refund every cent via PayPal within 48 hours of receiving your survey — and you keep the product.
No upfront fees. No membership. No catches. That's been our model since 2006.
Apply to Become a Mystery Shopper
Six steps from assignment to reimbursement. The whole process usually takes about a week, depending on shipping times.
We email you a specific product to buy from a major online retailer, chosen at random from our active research pool.
Purchase it through your own retailer account on your own card. Independence is what makes the research valid.
It ships to you like any other order. Most assignments arrive within 2–3 days.
A short questionnaire about packaging, condition, listing accuracy, and product quality. Takes about 10 minutes.
Email a screenshot of the completed survey and your order receipt to claims@hollowayconsumerresearch.com.
We send your full refund via PayPal within 48 hours of receiving your survey and receipt. You keep the product.
Holloway Consumer Research is a Utah-based market research firm. For nearly two decades, we've helped brands understand how their products actually arrive, look, and perform in the hands of real online shoppers — by hiring real online shoppers to tell us.
If you've been burned by mystery-shopping scams before, you should be skeptical. Here's what people ask us most often, and our straight answers.
Within 48 hours of us receiving both (a) your completed survey and (b) a screenshot of your order receipt. Reimbursement is sent by PayPal to whichever email address you registered with. We refund the full amount you spent on the order, including tax and shipping — not a partial credit, not a gift card, not a check.
The whole point of the research is to capture the experience a normal online shopper has — same listing, same checkout, same packaging, same delivery. If we sent the product to you, the listing would know it was being tested, and the data would be worthless to our clients.
Independence is also why we never collect any payment information from you. There's nothing for us to charge — money only flows in your direction.
Our 48-hour reimbursement is a written guarantee in our Terms of Service. In the rare event of a delay, call us at (801) 599-8973 and we'll resolve it the same business day. If we ever fail to reimburse on a valid claim, you have written contractual recourse — that's the difference between us and an offer that lives only in someone's DMs.
No. Anyone asking you to pay for a mystery-shopping job, training, certification, or membership is running a scam — that's explicitly called out by the FTC. We never charge you anything. The only money you spend is what the retailer charges for the product, and we refund every cent of it.
It's yours. You keep it. We don't ask you to ship anything back, and we don't resell anything. The product is effectively free to you in exchange for your time completing the survey.