GBW (Formerly known as GAPbuster Worldwide) 

I received a text message saying they had an urgent job for that evening. I responded to the text and next thing they were calling me. They were quite pushy about it but I did it anyways since I wasn't doing anything else. I did the report which took forever. This was back in August and I still haven't been paid. I texted the number that had bugged me that night with no response. I emailed the person who emailed me with some questions on my report with no response. I finally emailed saying if I heard nothing then I was contacting the BBB. Some jerk called my cell but I wasn't able to answer it since I was at work and he had the nerve to say that he will call me again and I better answer the phone!!! He didn't leave a callback number and I haven't heard from him since and that was almost a week ago.

Without a doubt, this company is one of the worst I have ever had to deal with in any industry. Their website sucks and the questionnaires are, at best, very difficult to deal with. I noticed just recently that fees agreed on by phone or text are not being honored on the payment reports.

My suggestion is do NOT get involved with this company. I have refused any more assignments from GAP.

I have been a mystery shopper for a number of years and have never had trouble being paid. UNTIL I worked for Gapbuster. They owe me for over five jobs and no matter how many emails or phone calls I make they never respond. AVOID THIS COMPANY.

Wish I had checked this company out before doing work for them. They said I had carried out assignment incorrectly as I had purchased the wrong goods. Despite providing paperwork proving I had carried the task out in accordance with the agreed specifications, they are still refusing to pay out. They are ignoring emails. Had heard similar tales from others - AVOID!

There are some reviews below which are obviously written by stooges who almost deffinately work for GB's Head Office and are trying to amp up their ratings... Well good luck because the rest of us who actually know what you're all about and have actually conducted shops for you aren't afraid to speak out. By all means work for these cowboys if you want to get paid late, lied to by the desperate staff who will call/email you and beg you to "help them out" last min, then screw you over because you're not considered important as they have loads more gullible, under represented shoppers to do the dirty work once you step out of line. By this I mean have a genuine gripe about how the company is run by its office staff and how they will say anything when they need you only to blame you for mistakes they have made. On multiple occasions I tried to contact them to clarify badly written shopper instructions or issues with payment being late and I rarely got a reply. In the end I needed to phone them at my expense, only to speak to unhelpful and uninterested staff who simply do not practice what they preach in regards to providing good service to those who work for them! How this company feels that it is in a position to judge others on the service they provide, I have no idea. They simply have no idea how to retain good shoppers and seem not to care at all. Several years of good work, completely ignored by rude and childish staff - seriously avoid these guys at all costs!

Update - I finally did get paid. Halleluliah! It did take many months. Maybe the trick is to threaten to give them a bad review. I was paid by them depositing the payment into my paypal. I would advise not giving them bank details as these seem to be situations where they can say "we are attempting to put into your bank" as it often did on their website. Paypal did work and I received the full payment. I do continue to work for them.

I too have been trying to get paid for assignments done in May and July. They keep having excuses such as trying to pay me via Paypal. My profile had correct banking information not paypal. Then after two months of trying to tell them I'm not using Paypal, then they tell me that the bank probably had changed their international codes. Strange because I have other international companies that do direct deposit and there was no issue. But I decided to set up Paypal I put it on my profile. All the correct information is there. I've still not been paid!!! Now they won't even return my calls. I've worked for them for many years and no issues until now. Over $300.00 out is no laughing matter. Hmmm....I'm thinking of contacting their clients and letting them know and also providing proof of the many e-mails. I've kept all my documents even off my assignments list on the Gapbuster webpage. They've messed with the wrong person.

August passes and still have not been paid for assignments done in April, May, June and July. Some f these jobs were done following a desperate phone call from staff in Australia and now Malaysia. My emails are not responded to. B &Q assignments are a joke. One must purchase certain items, pay for them take to car, photograph bar codes and items and then after all that you have to return all items. Write up report and all this for €13¡!!!!!!!!!. As soon as I get paid I will cancel and complain to An Post in Ireland about the lack of customer service by the GAPbuster cowboys.

This organisation is one of the worst I have ever had the displeasure of working for! Both my father and myself worked for them for a number of years about 6 years ago. They screwed us both completely! I won't go into his issue too much but basically their communication with him was totally unprofessional and lacking in leadership - similar to mine! I was assigned a visit as a reward (I was always helping them out with last min visits etc.) and was told I could conduct it at any time within a month. I contacted them and asked them to change the date of the visit on the online system as promised yet received no reply! As I didn't get a reply and I would be in the area of the visit specifically on a certain date I took on the visit. I didn't know what else to do, and the person from their office had very clearly stated it could be done at ANY point in the month. Yet when they got back to me (6 days later!!) they said it was invalid as the visit could not be conducted on that day! When I stated I was told I could conduct it at any point in the month I was ignored! Because I insisted that this was not acceptable and that people in their office had lied to get me to conduct certain other visits they were desperate to complete, I was removed from their systems! I had literally conducted hundreds of successful visits for them but that meant nothing, no loyalty or respect for the work I had done for them at all! 6 years later (a few months back) I signed up again to see if they had changed their ways! I conducted a visit and it all went well - then was contacted by them to take on another last min one and did it, again no problem! Then tried to log on the next day and found I had been removed from their systems! It then took over a month and a half for them to pay me for the two assignments I conducted!! Apparently they haven't changed their ways. Avoid this awful, despicable organisation like the plague - for a company which is employed to keep a check on the service provided by others they really have no idea themselves!! You may work for them for a while and think it's all great (like I said I was with them for a number of years) but as soon as there is a problem it will be your fault no matter what, they have no clue about responsibility or customer service! I'm a manager myself for the NHS and I supervise services for over 2 million patients in and around London. When I or any of my staff make a mistake, we are held to account (and rightly so!). No one in this company has any such responsibility as they put all of it on the shoppers who get paid very little and have no real way of complaining about it (they just remove you if you do!). Try any of the other Mystery Shopping companies, I've worked for around 10 of them for 9+ years and they're all so much better than this joke of an organisation!

I have been doing mystery shopping for this company for quite some time now. Whenever there is an enquiry about an assignment for one of their clients, I have always insisted on the CCTV footage to be requested to prove the managers' claims because they are usually erroneous. Considering issues are usually (if not all the time) raised by the manager when there is a negative feedback during the visit, this trend should have been picked up by GapBuster that they are doing this so that they will not be in trouble with the area manager or the head office when the results go through so they always try to reject the negative feedback.

CCTV footage during the visit are never looked into by GapBuster and the manager's word about the visit always has more weight regardless on what the shopper says. I've never had any success on requesting the CCTV footage. I believe the company should be neutral, request the CCTV footage for them to see for themselves what actually happened during the visit and judge from there (without bias to the company who is paying them millions for the contract) whether the issues raised have any truth to it before rejecting the visit conducted or simply have an in-house quality control that would check the footage without gaining from the visit being rejected.

I am with them for about an year now and never had a problem. Just thought I will add my input as most of these forum's have input from people who seem to have got an issue. Chanced upon this site while I wanted to see what other companies offer MS in my area. Thank you folks at GB..

If you want te become fat, frustrated, and depressed you mustw ork for them

They also delete accounts for no reasons.
They pay 12.39 euro for a task, - 6.50 for a meal, you got 6 euro, - 4 euro driving costs is 2 euro
2 euro for 30 minutes work, and ofther they pay not or not accept you papers


btw The usser Susan, is one of their own employees
Excellent company

I work for over 20 Mystery shopping companies and Gapbuster are one of the best. Have been with them for six years. They have never not paid me exactly what I am owed down to the last cent. If you read the instructions and carry out the assignments as per guidelines you'll get paid. I think they pay very well and payment is always open to negotiation subject to how urgent the visits are. Pick what dates /times suit to get paid to eat and shop for free. Do what they ask and you will make easy money, simple.
people don, t do this.

I wish I knew who I could complain to. I've done a few assignment in the past and they've gone ok although they try to catch you out with your answers a lot.
You get hounded by pleading emails last minute raising the premiums to get you to do a last minute shop but when you reply as requested there's no reply.
After today, I will no longer be working for them. I was asked this morning if I would complete a shop but because they gave the wrong timeframe they said it's invalid. I forwarded the email they sent me with the timeframe on there and I got a really abusive message back all in capitals. It was so unprofessional.
I'm sticking with a different company as these people have no idea how to treat mystery shoppers.

If your prepared to WORK, you will love this company. Ive been with them (and over 30 more) for 7 years. At the start it seems daunting all that 'paperwork'. You get used to it quickly and they pay the best, never late and always pay the correct amount. Lovely people to deal too with if you have any issues.

I didn't even get as far as working with these monkeys. Clearly there is something terrible going on here. I cancelled the first assignment I applied for after I was shocked by the sheer quantity of paperwork involved for as little as £4 for a McDonald's meal. I wrote them this, which I think summarises my thoughts on the company, though I doubt they'll ever read it:

I cancelled this assignment because there is a ridiculous amount of work involved in (a) meeting the requirements to complete and assignment and (b) filling in paperwork after an assignment.

I would have to conduct so many assignments to make up for the low pay and ridiculous amounts of time it would take to fill in all the paperwork, that I suspect I'd be dead from stress and eating junk food before I finished.

Your business model is verging on the unethical. I suggest you evaluate yourselves before cheekily suggesting the frankly absurd notion that you're in any way qualified to assess any other entity.

I have worked for this company approximatly 6 months. I have never been paid for any of the jobs I have done.
Sent in several enquirys and some no response and others saying this has been resolved.
the jobs I did were in Oct and August of 2014 it is now Jan 10,2015 and I still have not been paid.

One answer I recieved was you are added on to the pay run for the end of this month which was December 2014 and still no payement.

This company is a joke and I would not recommend anyone do shopping for them. I am at the point of taking legal action but for $60 aprrox Canadian is it worth it. NO So my adivice is stay clear of them unless you can afford to shop and not get paid.

They are the worst mystery shopping company. They never paid me on time and they didn't offer an explanation as to why they were 40€ short. I emailed them everyday for over 2 months and got no response.

I work for quite a few mystery shopping companies, and have been with Gapbuster for nearly two years. You have to be very careful with this company and only do assignments that you can afford to lose money on as there is no guarantee that they will pay you. Firstly, you will never receive the total amount of money owed so its worth keeping a record yourself of what assignments you've done and how much they owe you. Secondly, they will sometimes cancel several assignments you've already completed usually claiming that the customer requirements changed so you will not get paid - This happened to me recently when they rejected four of my assignments from three weeks previous because they'd forgot to inform their mystery shoppers of a change in the assignment specifications.
However, what makes this company worse is that it is impossible to contact them. They openly admit that the 'contact form' on their website does not work, and has not worked for the past 2 years. All emails, whether sent to a general or specific address, are filtered before reaching the staff and any that are not a direct reply to a specific enquiry from staff are deleted. They also have a high staff turnover and so you're unlikely to speak to the same person twice. I recently spoke to a 'manager' there over the phone (and only managed to do this because they phoned me) who told me that the best method of communication was to wait until they phoned you; she admitted that this could take several months - Not particularly helpful if you have a problem with an assignment on the day.
However, they are so badly organised that you can use it to your advantage. They will occasionally call asking you to complete assignments last-minute (usually because they're refused to pay another shopper because of their mistake; see above). You can often negotiate up to £25 payment for an assignment which typically pays £4 and do several assignments in one time slot or go over the monthly assignment limit for a specific company/brand. Sometimes, this makes up for the lost money. Although it does also show that they have a lot of money to spare and so really undervalue the work their shoppers do for them.
I do wonder why big brands, such as McDonalds, Screwfix, Shell, etc, employ this company especially as there are much more professional organisations out there who do a much better job. It is obvious that Gapbuster is highly profit orientated towards themselves by minimising payments to shoppers, will ignore shoppers unless they want your help, and are willing to bend and break customer rules when it suits them. If you can cope with this and are confident that you can negotiate higher pay out of them then give it a go, but its not a reliable source of income and is simply much more stressful and difficult than is needed.

not recommended to join... late payment as always... i dont understand why client like Shell hire them...totally bad

3 years ago I'm shopper for this company this year is bad co-ordination and bad coordinator in Thailand , don't have standard to distribution to shopper,don't have communication , if you are coordinator's friend you'll get good job and good travelling expense, pay is late, many follow but don't have practical introduction from coordinator have only guide book you must to read it and understanding by yourself, if you want to contact them on time that you see problem No can not mail and wait them call
I love your job but i don't like you coordinator