Servimer: Quick & Easy Mystery Shopping Site

If you drive a lot and are particular about how your car is handled in parking garages and by valets, you might be the ideal candidate for mystery shopping gigs with Servimer.

What is Servimer?

Servimer is a customer experience consulting company that specializes in parking issues. These include the cleanliness of parking garages, the appearance and operation of airport shuttles, as well as the professionalism and integrity of valets and parking enforcement services.

How it works

Like most mystery shopping companies, you simply sign up and the site will start showing you shops that you can claim. However, before you take a job, you’ll need to take a quick quiz to make sure you read the instructions.

Servimer review

While many mystery shopping companies offer a wide range of shops, Servimer specializes. And that can be a big benefit for people who like this type of work.

This site works with parking garages, valet services and parking enforcement. That means each of your shops will be similar, which gives you the ability to get more efficient over time.

Better yet, the shops are short, usually taking from 15 minutes to an hour. And Servimer pays better than many of its competitors, allowing you to earn $25 an hour — or more, depending on your level of efficiency.

Self-park shops

For instance, when we tested the site in Los Angeles, there were several shops available at self-park garages. Each shop paid $26, plus parking reimbursement. The job asked shoppers to note the site’s personnel, cleanliness and payment process on the way in and park for about 40 minutes. (You can stay longer, if you want.) The final step is to insist on paying cash, even if the lot says that cash is not accepted.

This gig looks for hazards, like broken concrete, as well as graffiti and the presence and professionalism of the parking staff. If all these issues are in order, the shop becomes essentially an integrity check for the parking lot staff, says Christopher Stanley, Servimer’s regional manager. The lot operator needs to know whether their staff will report the cash payment or pocket it.

This shop is easily completed in an hour, Stanley adds. You can do the initial write up while waiting in a coffee shop for the 40 minute waiting period to end. (The 40 minutes is required because a lot of lots don’t charge you until after 30 minutes. But if you want to leave sooner, you can claim you lost your ticket.) Your final write up, about the process involved in paying cash, can be done in a few minutes after leaving.

Parking-enforcement shops

Parking enforcement shops offered through Servimer can take even less time. These gigs, which generally pay $30, ask you to park illegally in a set area and call parking enforcement on yourself. (Surreptitiously, of course. Mystery shoppers never identify themselves. “Someone,” you say, “is double-parked at xyz Address.”)

The shopper then monitors how long it takes for parking enforcement officer to arrive and whether the driver can talk the officer into letting them remain illegally parked for a few more minutes. You’ll also check to see if the officer will let you stay longer if you give him or her a few dollars in cash. However, shoppers are advised to leave before the officer writes a ticket.

Typically, these shops require less than a half an hour to complete, Stanley adds. They’re aimed at testing the officer’s professionalism and integrity.

Airport shuttles and valets

The site also offers gigs to check out airport shuttle services and valet parking. They’re equally quick and easy.

And like these other shops, the typical shuttle check or valet check will pay your expenses, plus $26 to $36.

The work

Servimer operates in every state, but the number of jobs varies markedly depending on your location. Big cities like Los Angeles and Atlanta are likely to have dozens of shops to choose from, while smaller urban areas may only offer a shop or two a week.

Shoppers also have fairly good flexibility when it comes to when shops are completed. Typically shops must be done sometime within a week-long time frame during set business hours. However, shoppers determine when within that range they want to do the shop.

That can allow shoppers to bundle other jobs — whether personal shopping or shopping another mystery shopping gig — with the parking lot shops. Shoppers sometimes list this as an advantage because Servimer parking lot shops are often in expensive urban areas, where you’d otherwise pay a small fortune to leave your car. And, of course, the Servimer shop covers the parking.

Pay

Shoppers who use PayPal are paid twice a month, roughly a month following the shop. Those choosing direct deposit get paid once a month, in the month following the shop.

Recommendations

From an hourly pay perspective, Servimer shops are the highest-paying mystery shopping gigs SideHusl.com has found to date. We also see positive reviews from many Servimer shoppers, which gets this gig company our highest rating in the category. You can sign up with Servimer here.

Other mystery shopping companies worth considering include EyeSpy, Jancyn and Service Evaluation Concepts. It’s smart to sign up with multiple companies, so if mystery shopping is intriguing to you, we’d recommend that you sign up for all four.

What their users say (Mystery Shop Forum):

They are both highly communicative and appreciative. I should probably do more work with them.

I really like them. I’ve done a bunch of shops for them. And anytime there’s been an issue (once totally my fault, once a really strange situation completely out of my control), they’ve always been professional and responsive.

We got a raise! Again! Ok, it’s just a buck, but it says a lot about a company that is willing to keep bumping up pay rates as costs of living soar. When almost all other MSCs are reducing or even eliminating, fees, Servimer continues to be a first-rate company in my opinion!

Bundling shops

The reports are set up so that answers to early-appearing questions will guarantee that only relevant questions follow. You can do as many shops as you like in one day and many shops do 10 or more in dense urban areas.

Many of their shoppers take advantage of the ability to dictate the few, short, narratives for each shop while conducting that shop or others during the day. Because of flexibility of when you shop a location, you can use their shops to be close to other MSC shops, get your parking reimbursed and grab other well paid shops within walking distance. (I use this technique to grab well-paid shops that go begging because other shoppers cannot afford to park near them.)

All of their regional managers have done hundreds if not thousands of their shops. And, THEY validate your shops and coach new shoppers to improve their reports. This means that any returned report will come with help to let the shopper understand what needs to be fixed so that they can return an acceptable report. Perhaps by now, you can begin to see why Servimer is voted by shoppers as one of the best MSCs to work with year after year.

The hype for me is when I’m doing a fine dining lunch that includes x amount for parking and I take a valet shop near (or sometimes even at) the location. Or when my daughter has a dr appointment, so I don’t pay for parking.

Easy peasy

The narrative is only a couple sentences. It doesn’t have to be a book. I’ve never had a problem submitting something like: ‘The parking signage was highly visible from the street. As I pulled up to the ticket dispenser I observed a padded gate arm in the down position. The dispenser issued me a ticket with the proper time and date printed on it. The garage was overall well maintained, with some areas of rust and dirt but nothing excessive.”
And then the exit narrative just simply stating what happened when you offered the attendant cash payment, or created a problem of some sort. It’s not a Coyle dinner report.

There are some random special shops, those might have a wonky scenario. But for the most part they are just looking for you to try and pay a live human being in cash. Once you do a few it is really simple. There might be quite a few yes/ no questions. But after maybe a few shops, these things become second nature and don’t take any extra time.