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How to work for Advanis
I'm thrilled to have found this company for the sake of my Canadian readers, who e-mail me often asking me to expand my home-based job lead hunt to jobs originating from Canada. Well, here's one for you:
This company is a legitimate company based out of Canada, (although they do offer some jobs in the U.S.) that offers work at home jobs in customer service as well as other areas such as:
Administrative work
Analysis
Market research
Programming
and
Mystery Shopping
Some that have worked for this company also report having worked in the area of completing customer satisfaction surveys.
As
of this writing, there are no fees to work for Advanis, although you
would be responsible for purchasing a corded phone and headset.
Just
as a side note, in my experience the cheapest place to purchase corded
phone headsets that are durable is Amazon. You can also purchase them at
WalMart but be advised that the quality of those headsets may not be
the same, (I learned this the hard way, like in the middle of a phone
call for instance , when my headset died). Headsets carried by Best Buy,
Office Depot and Office Max are also pretty good.
I have worked in call centers from home for many years, here are my recommendations for a corded phone and a headset that are hardy and will stand the test of time. In fact, the phone listed below is the very phone I use. Remember to keep your receipts as these items are tax deductible:
AT&T CL2939 Corded Phone, Black, 1 HandsetExcept for the mystery shopping positions that are offered, most of these work at home jobs are for Canadians only.
However, Advanis does still offer work at home opportunities for those of us in the U.S. , it is just that they are ONLY mystery shopping positions.
Before you pack up and hightail it out of here though, stick around for some of the details because I think you might find them interesting.
The first thing is the pay.
Advanis will pay up to $15.00 per hour for their mystery shopping jobs, which is really not bad.
If you have looked at my pages on Mystery shopping, you may have read my explanations on Mystery shopping and how it all works.
Mystery Shopping is typically very low paying.... at least at first. (You can work up to higher paying shops, but I digress.
So why do them?
Here's why and I'll give you an example from my own life.
If I can get organized enough to plan my errands in advance and coincide them with any available Mystery Shops I have going on, I consider it a great way to actually get paid for the errands that I am running and deduct the mileage that I am driving as a tax write off (which at .55 cents a mile adds up quickly).
When I plan my errands in advance and I know which stores I
am going to hit and the routes I will take, I can also look at
all of my mystery shopping invitations (there are always available shops
waiting for me in a separate email inbox, one dedicated exclusively to mystery shopping )
and see if there is a shop
that needs to get done around the general vicinity that I will be in.
If THAT works out, then I do a happy dance because I get to write off my mileage for tax purposes and I can actually run in and perform a quick mystery shop and get paid
(in my mind , I am getting paid WHILE I am running my
errands, even though the mystery shopping check does not usually arrive
for a few weeks but whatever, I love getting checks in the mail at odd times!)
Ok, but I think I went off on a tangent so forgive me.
What
I was trying to say is that these types of mystery shops do not pay
more than $8-$10 which is why most people do not do them.
By the time
you figure in the gas money you have spent , not to mention
the
precious time you have poured into it, $8-$10 may not be that much.
(That is why I only do it if I am already going to be out doing
something else, otherwise it is not worth my time.)
There are other types of Mystery shops as well (ones that pay better) but those don't come around every day.
The thing I like about Advanis is that they will pay you $15.00 an hour... not $15.00 per shop (so another words if you run into a snag and it is taking you a while to complete the shop, you will get paid for your time).
1. If you are applying to work for Advanis as a mystery Shopper, be prepared to let them know how many hours you are willing to work and how far you are willing to travel per week.
2. Just like any normal job, you do clock in and out! You clock in when you leave your home and clock out when you arrive back home.
How do you do this?
3. Using your cellphone with a GPS tracking device, (if you don't have one, one is usually provided for you) you would have to call a rep from the company as you are leaving your home,
when you arrive at your destination, when you leave your destination and when you arrive back home.
GPS is used to help you but they are also monitoring you to make sure that you are where you say you are and well, to be fair, it is also used to help you if you get lost.
4. Once you have completed the shop, another reason you call in is to complete the mystery shop. You will answer questions about your experience, what you saw, etc and you may also be asked to
send in a picture of the location or a business card that you obtained from the representative who assisted you.
If for any reason you are not able to answer questions about the mystery shop in the moments immediately following the shop, then you will have 24 hours to call in to Advanis, get those questions
answered and thus get your assignment in on time.
Again, one of the neat and interesting facts about this position with Advanis is that you get paid for the time you spend outside your home completing the mystery shop and not just a flat rate per shop.
So if you spend 20 minutes simply getting to the mystery shop location, you are still paid for this time.
One note: Don't forget to jot down your mileage. Just jot down your starting point, the miles on your vehicle at the start of your trip, the end location and the miles on your vehicle at the end of your trip. Currently, the IRS will allow you to write off .55 cents per mile... believe me that adds up fast.
I like to think about it this way: neglecting to write down your
mileage is like throwing more than $1.00 out the window for every 2
miles that you drive..... $11.00 every 20 miles...)
From what I have seen, most people that have worked from home for Advanis have been happy with the work tasked to them.
The only complaint that I have heard is that some of the mystery shopping assignments were too far from their homes and thus difficult to complete.
So, that is one thing to
consider, although, it really depends on where you live. For the most
part, the larger cities will have more opportunities available.
From all indications, the company pays as promised, on time every two weeks.
So,
I hope this has helped you a little bit in making an informed decision
in regards to whether or not you should seek out employment with
Advanis!
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