I'm new to Mturk as of Sept 24th. As for the higher paying hits, you can pretty much tell if they're scams to get you to sign up for something you don't want or need. I never accept a hit that asks for my mobile phone number, credit card or bank info, and I never accept hits that required me to sign up for anything. That's one of the things I appreciate about being able to review a hit thoroughly before accepting it. I have also created a specific email address on Yahoo because I just knew I'd receive a ton of spam after giving out information. I just mark them as spam and I never have to worry about them! I have had no problems with any of the requesters so far except for one. nlds.soe.ucsc.edu I have worked over 90 hits for them on Oct 1 and Oct 5, and today is the 14th and I haven't received payment for them yet. They are the only outstanding requester, except for the ones I did yesterday. Has anyone else had any trouble receiving payment from this requester?
I don't have any idea about this Requester but you can check reviews at http://turkopticon.differenceengines.com/. Requesters have 30 days to process hits after which all your pending work gets auto-approved. I wouldn't worry about a 10-15 days delay.
That's just one of the pitfalls of MTurk, it can take requestors ages to approve stuff (well if ages is exactly 30 days). But I completely sympathize with hating the wait, seeing the pending count mount, and then finally whenever they approve (hopefully not reject) its like a wash of relief. But if you use Chrome or Firefrox browsers to do the hits in, well you should and use the Turkopticon extension, while the ratings aren't without their flaws they at least can give you an idea of the overall quality (including approval time) of each requestor. Note to all people who use the Turkopticon extension: please rate requestors, even good ones, the app and the Turkopticon ratings system is only as good as the Turkers who rate it.