WeGoLook Agent Review

WeGoLook was the first app I came across when I was introduced to the world of Field Agent services. The business is headquartered in Oklahoma City, OK, but they seem to have a sizeable footprint of available “looks” and have partnered up with a number of well known insurance companies, including Sentry Insurance, State Farm, and more. When you sign up to WeGoLook, you’ll be asked to include information about your skills and certifications, including things like whether you have experience in appraisals, licensed to fly a drone, or if you can work as a 3rd party insurance adjuster, leading to the possibility of a wide range of available task types; however, so far in my experience specialized tasks are few and far between. I did have one task in which I was able to use my notary stamp, and it paid well (roughly $50), but I wouldn’t necessarily count on tasks outside of the typical taking of pictures.

Types & Frequency of Jobs Available

I imagine the types of jobs available are skewed heavily based upon the types of contracts WeGoLook holds in different states with different companies. Tasks (or “looks” as WeGoLook refers to them) in central Iowa where I’m located have typically revolved around heading to a specific address and then taking a few pictures. For me, I get almost exclusively two types of tasks – “Automotive Damage” and “Property Condition Reports”.

The Automotive Damage “looks” typically require me to schedule with the owner and then use my phone to take roughly 10 to 15 photos of the vehicle, including verifications of the VIN, interior pics, odometer pics, and then pics highlighting areas of damage. And the other type of “look” I often perform are Property Inspection Reports where I go and take a handful of pictures of the property and then a couple address verification pictures.

In both cases, I can usually get onto the scene and be driving away within 5 to 10 minutes.

It seems like the vast majority of clients WeGoLook is involved with are insurance companies and possibly landlords or other real estate investment companies (including lenders) who are looking to get eyes on an asset. Some of WeGoLook’s promotional material suggested Drone Operators were employed for certain large scale weather events and their list of skills suggests there may be areas where deliveries, process serving, appraisals and other types of “looks” might be available, but I’m just not seeing them even when I select I hold the skills associated with them.

The work seems to be pretty consistent, though. I wouldn’t say my area has particularly high volume, but in any given week, I probably see 8 to 15 or so “looks” available, but I’d say half of those are often further away than I’d be willing to drive. As you might assume, there’s some ebb and flow to available work associated with insurance claims that are weather related. Generally, depending upon my schedule, I can pick up 3 or 4 a week, but if I could dedicate a day (and justify the expense of fuel), a lot of times you can group a few together on a route and bust out 120 mile round trip and knock out a bunch in one go. The caveat to that is that for Automotive Damage inspections, you often have to schedule with the owner, so you’re at the mercy that you can schedule all of these distant “looks” in one 4 our window and that isn’t often very easy.

Income and Payment

Pay on WeGoLook typically ranges from $12 to $20 for field inspections, with those that go unclaimed for a period typically reaching upwards of $35. At that point, either by means of being claimed or perhaps because WeGoLook pulls them down, they usually disappear beyond $35, but I’ve seen a couple that were bidding $75 for Automotive Damage inspections that were out in the boondocks.

There’s a bit of strategy to accepting or denying orders temporarily, as unclaimed orders increase in pay by $2 at certain intervals. Sometimes that interval has been a few hours and sometimes that interval was daily, but the longer you hold off on accepting an order, the more you can potentially earn – assuming nobody else gets to it before you do. Most of the jobs also have an upper limit as well, so once they hit that $34 mark, that’s probably about as high as they can pay. Usually, at that point, they’ll start to email “lookers” in the area and sometimes you can negotiate.

It’s a bit of a gamble, but in my time on the app, I’ve started to get a pretty good idea of towns that tend not to have jobs be claimed very quickly and that I can squeeze a few extra dollars out of. It’s burned me a few times in losing tasks, but generally if I’m not accepting them quickly, it’s probably because I’m conscious of my time and fuel which you have to factor into your cost of performing the “look”. When they do reach out looking for help on an order, I try to emphasize that in order to pay for the fuel and the fact a particular “look” may be an hour and a half round trip. Even then, I really don’t see jobs getting into the $40+ mark very often and they’ll let me know my request is more than they can pay, so I’ll just decline.

Automotive Damage “looks” appear to pay better than Property Inspection claims, but they are a bit more time consuming and require actually getting ahold of someone to schedule a time to perform the job. With Property Inspections, they start out at $15 and they’re usually claimed by $17, but you just need to show up and take the photos on your own liesure. With Automotive Damage orders, they tend to start at $17 and get accepted around the $25 range if they stick around for awhile on the app. However, the higher payment is because there’s a bit more work to be done, not just in a few additional photos, but you also have to reach out to the contact, schedule an appointment, and then ensure you meet the appointment date. And that can be frustrating, because often people just don’t pick up, they’re skeptical of you reaching out on behalf on the insurance company despite the information you can provide them, or you have a date scheduled only for them to not show or the vehicle to be unavailable.

If you are able to schedule or have accepted a “look” and for whatever reason it gets cancelled, you’re typically comped $5 or so bucks for your time in just accepting the order. If you get to the day of the appointment and reach the site only for the asset to be unavailable for inspection, they’ll comp you half the value of the payment with the caveat that it only gets added to a successful inspection eventually being performed for the original payment amount. So, for example, on one occasion I drove an hour for a rare $65 vehicle damage inspection only to show up and learn the vehicle had been towed to an entirely different town.

I was paid $32.50 for making the trip, but I was only paid that amount once I was able to reschedule at the new address provided. Fortunately, the new address was actually closer, but I had to drive there again the following weekend to perform the task as originally planned for $65. In total, I earned $97.50 but it required two trips of an hour each, plus twice as much gas. And that was the real kicker, because if you don’t have a fuel efficient vehicle and you start making trips that don’t pan out and then need to make return trips, depending upon the original agreed payment, you could potentially end up losing money on a “look”. In the situation I mentioned, the closer address and price of the “look” justified a return trip, but I’m not exactly sure what would happen if the vehicle had moved another 30 miles further.

Overall, with a bit of planning and consideration of time and fuel expense, when you extrapolate it out, you can earn upwards of $70 an hour assuming a Property Inspection is $12 flat fee and only takes no more than 10 minutes. And that’s reasonable to expect and that’s really good money assuming the job is a small detour or near an area you frequent, but if you just start accepting jobs mindlessly that are too far away, obviously travel time and associated costs can really eat into that flat fee. I recommend using current fuel prices to calculate your actual fuel cost per mile, give yourself a buffer, and then multiply that by the round trip mileage to see if a task is worthwhile.

If it is, the payment will be added to your account pretty quickly and your account balance will get paid out via direct deposit the following Friday from any orders performed during the prior week.

Interface

I like that WeGoLook uses an actual app and it works pretty well. You have a list of orders you’ve accepted and a list of orders that are available to accept as well as a list of orders with tasks To Do (usually to schedule). Sometimes, when I start to collect a large number of jobs I’ve accepted, it can be a little tricky keeping things organized, but overall it’s pretty straightforward.

You can schedule and reach out to contact phone numbers directly through the app, choose the date to schedule, and also link directly to navigation apps directly from the job page. I don’t have any major complaints about the app, but there’s a couple of quirks I feel like would be good changes to help with work flows. During the storm season, I was tasked with shipping a few items and WeGoLook was going to reimburse me, but you have to request reimbursement on the initial “look” scheduling page rather than as a direct part of the submission page. So, instead of submitting a receipt at the end, you actually have to perform the job, then go back and submit the receipt, then resume the “look”, and finally submit it.

Similarly, sometimes I felt like the order of the submission page hopped around a little bit, but I appreciate it’s all within the app. Another field services agency requires you to use your camera app and then upload the photos separately. Sometimes I find that helpful, for example, if I just want to take a few photos as fast as possible for an asset a bank is trying to repossess, so I can deal with the paperwork when I’m off scene, but for the most part being able to keep everything within the app makes the jobs go a bit faster.

Agent Support

Most of the time, dealing with agent support is really only necessary in the event that a “look” is past due or when they’re getting a little desperate to find someone to take on a “look”. In those cases, they can be pretty persistent with phone calls, texts, and emails. Support tends to be pretty quick during business hours responding to texts and emails regarding “looks”.

If you fail to perform a task you’ve accepted, they give a little bit a leniency and can sometimes push a deadline by a day as long as you communicate with them, but ultimately they do have deadlines they’re trying to meet for the clients and it shouldn’t be expected.

On a couple occasions, because of the work flow regarding reimbursements mentioned above and another time where a vehicle wasn’t available to be inspected, I messed up and forgot to submit a receipt and also forgot to submit proof of my visit directly within the app. In both cases, customer support resolved it by taking my word for it and that was appreciated.

Final Thoughts

WeGoLook provides a nice blend of available tasks at a reasonable pay rate and they pay on a weekly basis, so the turn around from performing a task and getting paid for it is about a week. That doesn’t compete as well with apps like iVueIt or Field Agent App that pay almost immediately in some cases, but it definitely beats services like Sand Castle Field Services that only pay on the 15th and the last day of the month in a way that can result in delayed payments.

I do wish at times, for certain tasks, that I was able to take the photos in my camera roll and upload them rather than do everything from within the app, but I also realize they use GPS features to prove the location images were taken. I also find it a bit frustrating when doing Property Inspections that you have to take a photo of a cross street sign. At times, this has required me to do back tracking or extra steps to try and find a cross street sign down the road, rather than just pulling up, taking the photos, and pulling away but it’s only a minor annoyance.

Since starting to use WeGoLook, I average between $80 to $200 month in extra income. I feel like in my area with the volume of work available, I could probably realistically hit an average of $50 a week with the app and if I had a more fuel efficient vehicle and a bit more time to dedicate to it, I could probably double those numbers. I feel like they slightly lag Sand Castle Field Services in pay scale and they don’t seem to venture much from their lane of available types of work, but it’s a solid app that provides roughly 50% of my Field Services gigs, so I’d recommend any Field Agent to absolutely use and arguably failure to do so would really hinder a person’s ability to be successful in the space.