Service Evaluation Concepts Review

Monday, December 2nd

2024 Mystery Shopping Company Reviews

Service Evaluation Concepts

• Pay from $65 to $95 per job
• Payment through direct deposit or check
• Make a free account by answering quick questions
• High-payment opportunities

Service Evaluation Concepts (SEC) is a site that takes mystery shopping in a different direction. Rather than calling their contractors mystery shoppers, Service Evaluation Concepts calls you a Brand Agent. Aside from making you feel a bit like the marketing version of James Bond, what's the difference? Certification. A Brand Agent at Service Evaluation Concepts is tested to make sure they understand all of SEC's guidelines and procedures. You can also become a Certified Brand Agent, which means you have an additional certification in client engagement (for a particular brand only, so this is a repeating process). Don't worry, these aren't certifications you need to pay for; you just complete them in-house, but there will be an exam at the end.

Not a lot of jobs to get started

Like most mystery shoppers, Brand Agents at SEC can't see jobs until they're onboarded. But, don't freak out. For getting on as a basic Brand Agent, you don't really have to worry about a test. We went through the onboarding so you can hear about our first-hand experience. You submit your personal information in an application (including your Tax ID number or SSN) and then answer a few self-explanatory questions about the process. It's worded like a test, but only requires common sense, and the right answers are extremely obvious. However, after going through the sign-up process, there were zero assignments available in our state. A few other states had some options, but there weren't a lot of them. Most states had around 6 or 7 jobs listed total.

Extra certifications for some jobs

There are a lot of blocks when you start browsing SEC's portal. Many of the available jobs are only for the special Certified Brand Agents (the ones where you have to take a separate exam). These exams are for particular clients. For example, one job in Texas required you to study Food Safety Certification Guidelines, answer a questionnaire, read SEC Standard Requirements, and then pass the exam for this unique brand. The certification would carry over to other shops for that brand only. This means you may be taking multiple certification tests per day to apply to Certified Brand Agent jobs.

Not intuitive, but complete

The site isn't the most user-friendly experience out there, but there are lots of details on the job listings to help you out. You'll see a base compensation listed, and some shops offer bonuses too. However, if you want very detailed information about a shop, you have to be accepted for it. So for jobs you're not "qualified” for, you'll only see pay, location, and job type. Once you pass the certification for brands, you'll see all the details you need to get the job done.

Payment between $65 to $95 per job

SEC offers payment through direct deposit or check. If you choose to be paid with a check, you'll have to pay a $3 fee on every monthly payment, which will be deducted from your overall payout. On the bright side, payment was quite high for the shops on SEC. Most of the gigs we saw were $65+. Some were up to $95 at the base pay with a $30 bonus. However, since none of these shops were even in our state, there was no way to complete the tasks from our location.

Site may need a serious update

There are some things about the website that raise a few red flags. For example, on the agent portal, you'll see some links like "learning tips” and other helpful content on the side of the screen. When we clicked through these for extra information, many were blank or had no information. Further, there was a blog notice at the bottom that showed the most recent update to the SEC blog was in 2011. However, the site seems to function as it should beyond those little foibles.

Outdated ratings and almost no reviews

Currently, Service Evaluation Concepts is not rated by the Better Business Bureau. The company shows an "NR” on the BBB webpage, and there are zero reviews for SEC. We could only find one third-party review on Yelp for SEC and it was posted in 2021. There aren't any more recent comments about the company anywhere that we could see beyond two 5-star ratings on Facebook.

Not worth the red flags

With so little feedback to go off of, a clunky older website, and zero jobs within our state (much less our local area), SEC isn't one of our top picks for mystery shoppers. If you're lucky enough to have some jobs in your area, it may be worth a look, but with the extra certification requirements, even the high-paying jobs may not be worth the effort. For this reason, Service Evaluation Concepts earns a lower rating and a cautionary note that this outdated site might not be as active as it used to be.