GBW (Formerly known as GAPbuster Worldwide) 

One of the assignments I completed (100% according to the rules and without any problems) was showing as accepted/completed, until a few weeks later it turned to completed/invalid-just like that. The generic email said it was because the restaurant had a site problem and my payment won't be affected. I rang them to confirm this, which they did but still didn't tell me what the problem was and WHY was it invalid.
So I just had my statement for that month and guess what- that assignment is NOT PAID FOR. No answers to my queries/nothing.
I wasted time, fuel, money. It's a THEFT.

I agree. This company is untrustworthy. I went for 2 audits to a different city driving 400 km. They kept chasing me to do audits for them. I even managed to do one of the audits 1 day ahead as they had informed me that it was urgent. Normally I submit reports within 12 hours and when I intended to do so, I wasn't able to as the system won't accept the report 1 day before the set date. So, I got in touch with Sarah See to have this updated. She did not do so. The following day I audited another place and uploaded the report in 6 hours. I contacted this lady once again and she had made so many calls to me before the audits were done and not a single call when the reports were submitted. I submitted my report manually and informed her that it was delayed due to she not updating the system.

Later, I followed up for my payments and I heard back that they are delayed and then, I further got an email that the payments are in process. Sarah confirmed that I shall get paid.

Now, they've been chasing me by emails and phone calls to have another few audits done but and when I asked about the payment for the 2 audits that I had done, I got to know that I'm gonna be paid for only 1 of them as the other was not completed and I did not submit the report. I have the emails to prove it that I submitted on time and followed up. I drove 400 km to go back and forth in UAE (full of heat) and this is what they did.

I had been a mystery shopper for gapbuster in the past. I hadn't shopped for them for 5 years until I found my hours cut where I worked. I signed back up. VERY bad mistake. They offered me assignments in other towns with a 'bonus' for travel. I did the assignments, ending up about $100 or slightly more out of pocket, expecting to be paid on the payment cycle. Payment didn't come in by the last day of the cycle. I contacted them on the web form, no reply for a couple of days then a message to say that they would follow up with accounts department. Numerous messages, phone calls to Malaysia and Melbourne and I still haven't had a payment. It has been 3 months. I have not taken any more assignments from them and when they ring to ask me to do one I say that I won't until I get paid from My last assignments.

I have worked for them for many years and at the start they were a great company. Since moving to Malaysia they have gone down hill very quickly. The email they send are poor in English and poor in spelling. One of the things that really started to annoy me was the reimbursement which never pays the full cost of the meal. I you complained hard enough they did eventually add this ti the fee but they want the job doing on the cheep. They always contact you for further information even though the answers they want are in the report. I started saving completed reports and when the asked a question I just emailed a screen shot of what I had said. They did not like that. They are very poor in communication, respond to an email and they very rarely get back to you. However, the final straw was recently. I completed a job and a crew member disputed what I had said and I don't lie about things as I have nothing to gain. After a few emails and questions they took the word of the crew member and withheld payment. It seems to be they would crawl up McDonald's backside to give them what they want rather then the truth. I will now no longer do any work for them and I did quite a bit as I not longer find them and trust worthy company.
I was contacted by GBW 9 months after this non payment happened and there was an apology for they way it was dealt with. They wanted to put things right and make a payment for this job. It seems there were problems and training issues which have now been addressed and good to there word a payment was made into my paypal account. Although I am happy to change my rating based on this the overall experience with GBW was poor. However, If things have changed as I have had my account reactivated so will be doing some more work, I will be happy to change the rating again in the future but we shall wait and see. Based on this recent experience things look better.

Terrible company
They pretend they have paid you for ms work even when they have not!!
Despite my sending screen shots proving I have not been paid
Updating details twice!!
Con artists!
I work for a number of very professional ms company's
This mob should be ashamed of themselves!

I've had a good experience with Gapbuster, now GBW. Although they are slow to pay compared with other MS companies (end of the month following the month that you shop) I have never had any problems. The team in Malaysia are really friendly and have always helped me out whenever I had any problems if I asked.

To counter some of the comments on here, It is in GBW's interest to help you get the job done right the first time around, because they don't want to have to find someone else to do it by their deadline for the client.

So let me start by telling you I have been with GAPbuster for six years, At first when everything was controlled from Australia the company was great, it paid on time; staff would email you straight back; they would give you a call offer decent amount of money for a simple job and never had any issues.
Then at the start of last year Gapbuster shifted the offices for mystery shopping, We firstly got the Malaysian team, they dropped money and a lot of shoppers got blocked from doing Assignments simply because they didn’t understand English or terms used, but GAPbuster liked it of course as it meant higher profit margins for them as staff costs were a lot less. Then we got moved again to a usa team, so I decided to setup a false account as I always got told there is no jobs around me, the false one got so many emails about Shell jobs or McDonalds that I couldn’t even see. And then they would lie to your face when you asked them about certain job numbers, they don’t exist well weird because you just emailed me about it!. My Advice stay away from this lot they are just total crap you won’t get paid decent money, even if they promise you it, don’t buy £56 trainers at new balance if you do them, they will send you a lot of crap emails trying to catch you on your report so they don’t need to pay it, Once you have done one McDonald’s job your picture is screengrab from CCTV so you will always get a GapMac (yep gap mac is GAPbuster perfect burger so we get our bonus) so never a true reflection on whatever poor person is getting. So once I get paid this month, I will email gapbuster directly to close my account down after 7000 jobs for them. Also watch out for reviews by members of gbw saying how fantasic they are used to called "susan" or other female names as gbw does have an office in the uk... can normally tell they work for them by saying they always pay at the end of the month which they havent been paying on time since mid 2015... and the fact of is uk is handled by the us team yet another country is name when it changed six months ago kinda gives the game away...

They ask for you to review things honestly. If you leave a negative comment they tell you that you've invalidated the assignment and refuse to pay you. Total shambles and not worth the effort.

Lying, exploitative company with little in the way of ethics. They promise to put your pay up then they pick you up on a trivial detail and say you've failed the assignment. They are hypocrites - they couldn't do what their shoppers are expected to do. This company is very anal and pedantic. They come back with loads of queries after you've completed a visit and they film you really closely on CCTV. They often try to catch you out with your answers, with some insignificant, trivial detail - then they weasel out of paying you. The restaurants lie about you but when you tell Gapbuster the truth they take the restaurants side instead - (believing the liars). This company is baised to the clients - half the time they're too ignorant to even bother responding to your emails. This shows how little they really care about their shoppers or our opinions. This rotten company is unfairly and unjustly taking advantage of people who are desperate for work and money. The instructions they give you are condescending too. This stingy, old world, penny pinching company should be closed down - forever.

Appalling at paying workers, will offer you a bonus and then get the job voided, always pay late if at all - just don't bother going there.

You have absolutely no recourse to getting your money back as they are based in a country different to yours, where they no doubt exploit there full time workers on minimal pay.

They are just not worth the hassle for a couple of quid if you do finally get paid.

I am diabetic so I did not want a coke but got water instead... wasnt allowed and I didnt get paid. Their system is prehistoric...

In April I decided to start mystery shopping. I signed up to several companies. Market Force, GapBuster, GrassRoots and ESA. Out of all of them by far GapBuster has stood out. It's payment dates are incredibly delayed compared to the others. It has stood out even more due to it's almost non existence customer service and it's failed payments.
On GapBusters own site it states:

"Q. When do I get paid?

Payment dates are specific to the country you are in. Please see assignment guidelines for your country's specific payment date. Currently, payments for all countries are made by the 24th of the month following the month assignments were successfully completed. For example, a job completed February 6th will be paid by the 24th March."

However I am still yet to receive payment for a job I completed on April 23rd. I have contracted their customer services team through their 'Enquiry' page twice. The first time I was told that I would receive payment during the first week in June due to international payments being made. This counter acts what it states even in their own FAQ. It is the 6th of June, I still haven't received payment and they haven't responded to my 2nd email.

If I haven't received payment by next week i'll be taking this further through the courts.

Like many others on this site, I thought that the negative reviews were the exception or the minority of mystery shoppers in the UK, I was wrong. They owe me over £100 from April with no payment to date, I'm constantly being lied to on the phone, no matter how much money they offer you don't accept their work, because at the end of the day you will not receive a penny of the money they agree to pay you. As I type this up, I'm taking gapbusters to small claims court. AVOID AT ALL COS T.

Jeg har udført opgaver for Gapbuster i mange år, og der har aldrig været problemer.
Tingen virker fint og betaling er altid rettidig.
Hvis jeg sender mail til dem, får jeg altid hurtigt og venligt svar.
Så 5 stjerner herfra :)

Gapbuster is now GW and is based in Malaysia. Occasionally I have issues due to misunderstandings as the proof readers are not native English speakers. However they are always polite with queries and as long as you have decent records everything goes through. Yes, they take longer to pay than other companies (end of the month falling the one you work in) and Gap won't make you rich. However, as an extra income source they are ok and do what they say on the tin.

This company is now using the brand SMARTWORLDSERVICE.COM to avoid empoyees to know this REAL opinions.

They did offer me a contract and when I asked about how shuould I declare the income in my account and how to get other employers opinions, they NEVER asked me... and here I read why.

They further take us for fools and they writte HERE stupid FAKE opinions claiming this is the best mistery shopping company?!

UPDATE: They have created a new clone of their website called GLOBALSMARTWORLD.COM

Not going into all the detail, suffice to say that payments 4 months overdue and considerable sum. 3 promises of call backs, 5 enquiry forms filled in and 4 replies to emails. I now intend to send a registered letter of payment request to the CFO Larissa Clarke and if that fails I will take the legal recourse.

In the past time had a good experience with this company but the last eight months it looked like Gapbusters has stopped. The Australian company that worked with Mc Donalds mystery shoppers don't answers mails and calls anymore. You can try to contact them but I only get automatic answers. Such a shame a nice company like this had to end this way.

I'd urge everyone to STAY AWAY from this company. I didn't have a problem for a few weeks but then they said they'd checked CCTV in a shop I had visited and decided that the number of seconds I said I had spent queuing were a couple out from their count. It is IMPOSSIBLE to ever be exact on this - unless you hold a stopwatch to your face and give the game away that you're mystery shopping! This is only one aspect of a shop too. However they said they were not going to pay me ANYTHING. No compensation for the food I had purchased, printing the paperwork, or travel costs; this despite the fact that they had all the information they needed.
When I complained to McDonald's I was informed by Gapbuster they were removing me from their database still owing me two month's pay, as they pay you this much in arrears.
I worked loyally for this company, putting up with constant calls and texts regarding last minute jobs, or additional information they needed for their questionnaires - then they treat me like this. Stay away.

I am worked for Gapbuster for 3 years now. I have another full time day job so I take assignments for Gapbuster as an extra income. And also I like doing mystery shopping.
My experience with Gapbuster is very positive in general. I have a real good communication with my contacts in Gapbuster. The call and send email whenever they have extra assignments. It have never been a problem to negotiate salary or adjust when to do the assignment. And I have never had any problem with payment. The jobs are paid every month. 2 times I have had small delays that I have been informed by Gapbuster of in time.
The only negative I have about this company is that the website is very inefficient. It is to many clicks to find jobs and to deliver assignments. And off course you never make a lot of money on one single job.That is why I always do multiple jobs. Often when I am out travelling.
In these 3 years I have developed a good relationship with Gapbuster and now take 50-70 assignments every year and makes around 2000€.