Warning: Scammers on the Lose!

It seems that every time the end of the year holiday season rolls in there are a handful of evil individuals looking to take advantage of other people. We’ve had numerous reports from various people that they’ve been targetted by scammers posing as legitimate mystery shopping companies, AQ among them.  Numerous would-be victims have let us know that the scammers have upped their game and are now creating fake contractual agreements in an attempt to look legitmate. This isn’t the first time that scammers have changed tactics, of course, and it probably won’t be the last. Here is the previous article we posted, with examples.

We would hereby like to issue an official warning to anyone out there receiving odd emails, snail mail letters, and/or messages via Facebook, Whatsapp, or SMS from individuals claiming to AQ employees (or any other mystery shopping company for that matter, as this is not an issue isolated only to AQ). To help keep you safe, please take note of how AQ operates:

1. AQ will never ask you to cash a cheque or transfer money by MoneyGram or bank transfer. The only out-of-pocket money a shopper may be asked to pay would be for a ‘purchase scenario’ mystery shopping program, for which a shopper would be reimbursed up to a certain amount depending on the project. These details would be clearly explained before visit via a training manual and a shopper briefing held by an AQ Project Specialist.
2. Any personal information required for any mystery shopping program of financial details will be stored in one of these two platforms (Shopmetrics or Sassie/AQ Worldwide) in your personal profile. AQ will never ask for personal details (eg. Bank account, address) via messenger or email outside of the platform.
3.  For AQ login programs are:
   1. AQ Worldwide (Sassie) https://www.aqworldwide.com/index.norm.php
   2. AQ Shopmetrics https://aq.shopmetrics.com/auth/index.asp#login (Login),  https://aq.shopmetrics.com/auth/index.asp#signup (Sign Up)
4. Please note that AQ Services’s official email address domains are “<name>@aq-services.com”. We do not use other hosting addresses (@gmail, @yahoo, @rocketmail, @ilovemysteryshopping.com, etc), if you are targeted by someone using a domain like that (eg. info@nullilovemysteryshopping.com, or aqservicse@nullgmail.com) they are not part of the AQ Services and may be IMPERSONATING AQ Services employees.
5. AQ does not ask would-be Mystery Shoppers to sign a contract outside of the Shopmetrics and Sassie platforms. There is no ’employment agreement’ or contract for mystery shoppers.

If you are contacted at any point by someone you do not entirely trust, or if you simply want to double check the legitimacy of any contact, please email AQ Service International’s Data Protection Officer at dpo@nullaq-services.com or give us a call at +60(3) 2072 1133 (Asia) or +310 70 331 9500 (EU).

Scammers target those they believe are most vulnerable, and this means they target us all during times when we could all use a little extra cash – i.e. during holiday periods.

Mystery shopping is a legitimate market research tool which many companies and business around the world use to measure, monitor, and improve their frontline service performance. If you’d like to become a real mystery shopper, please don’t hesitate to contact our Community Management team or follow the sign up links above. We’re always happy to provide legitimate mystery shopping opportunities to people keen on joining the mystery shopping team!