VIDEO SHOPPING PROS – Up next Schiller Park(Chicago)Illinois

Our next Video Training and Certification class will take place on September 18, 2014. It will be a full day session taking place in Schiller Park (Chicago), Illinois.

This is a comprehensive 8 hour training and certification session which will prepare the shoppers in attendance for entry into the wonderful and high paying world of Video Mystery Shopping. Don’t miss your opportunity to get in on this rapidly growing end of our industry.

This session covers finding jobs, developing scenarios, technical aspects of video shopping, hands-on training with the most current equipment, delivering the finished job and a variety of other essential information to provide for successful video shopping.

The classes are conducted by instructors who have a combined 25 years of video shopping experience. Upon completion of this training, your contact information will be provided to 47 schedulers and companies who are currently assigning video shops. Additionally, you will be provided with a list of these schedulers and their contact information.
Hurry and sign up for this class. We have trained over 50 shoppers this year, many of who have reported that they have recovered the cost of the class and equipment within a few weeks of being certified.
Sign up now. Space is limited and is sure to fill up quickly.

Contact us at:
Training@VideoShoppingPros.com

There is still limited space available for these other locations as well:
September 18, 2014 – Schiller Park (Chicago), IL
November 6, 2014 – Kent (Seattle), WA

Here is just another example where being MSPA Certified could make you more money. Yes, $5.00 is not much but it is better than nothing.

"Shoppers, we still need help with shops in your area and need the most reliable of shoppers. We can't afford to use shoppers who flake or cancel. We are up against a tight deadline. The amount of money we are paying out is well worth squeezing it into your shopping schedule. Shoppers who take on one of these assignments and completely successfully with no issues will receive the following:
1. Base pay of $65
2. Added bonus of $5 for Silver and Gold MSPA Certified shoppers only
3. Hero citation for their shopper rating"

I fail to see the logic of being certified "Silver" or "Gold." Sounds like a way for MSPA to milk money out of shoppers to support their website.

When you sign up with a company to become a shopper for them, you usually have to supply them with examples of your mystery shopping experiences so they can grade you on grammar, punctuation, spelling and sentence structure, the basic building blocks of a good report to the client.

In some cases you also have to tell them the other companies you have done mystery shopping with in the past. I don't know if the individual companies share information about their respective shoppers' abilities or performance with each other. Owing to the highly competitive nature of the business, I seriously doubt it.

Most of the companies I work for ask if you have a certification in the application but never make any mention about you getting preferential treatment if you have one or the other. The certifications might help a newbie get an early advantage such as self-assignment instead of needing a scheduler to assign shops but most companies recognize seasoned shoppers with consistent superior performance with these perks, eventually, anyway.

If a shopper takes four months to complete certification after receiving the materials, what does that tell you about their motivation to take the certification in the first place. I will steer clear of any company that gives preferential treatment to certified shoppers over proven, capable shoppers. Just my two cents...

And you have the right to your opinion just like I do. It was worth for me get the shops that are only assigned to certified shoppers. And like I posted above, some will pay you more for being certified. And I have received referrals from other schedulers who work for MSCs that are affiliated with the MSPA. If it is going to put more green in my bank account, I am happy.

But like someone posted earlier in this thread, shoppers will never agree on this issue. Maybe this topic should become like politics and religion and we should just not talk about it.

tanmanlovespool Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I fail to see the logic of being certified
> "Silver" or "Gold." ....... The
> certifications might help a newbie get an early
> advantage such as self-assignment instead of
> needing a scheduler to assign shops but most
> companies recognize seasoned shoppers with
> consistent superior performance with these perks,
> eventually, anyway.
>


Well, duh, there's the logic right there. If you can say it, why can't you see it? If the certification gets you those perks "now" instead of "eventually" that's the logic of being certified.


SMH.....

Shop2LiveinFL Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But like someone posted earlier in this thread,
> shoppers will never agree on this issue. Maybe
> this topic should become like politics and
> religion and we should just not talk about it.


Personally I don't understand someone who is not certified commenting on the value of certification.

I do. If only people who were certified and found it a great idea were commenting, there would be no debate. Over the years I have seen many interesting comments from all sides.

The only consistent has been shoppers who did not certify in the beginning of their career have often found it to be unnecessary later. Primarily because they were already inundated with work.

My opinion is it could possibly give a new shopper a leg up with some companies, especially in areas where there is a lot of competition for assignments. Without having seen the actual course, I can only imagine it is strictly designed to teach shoppers to perform in a way acceptable to MSCs. The rest of the education has to come from places like forum. We all know there is much more to this business than shopping and reporting.

Someone who is not certified has had no personal experience with the worthiness of certification. They can only make assumptions that it wouldn't have helped them. Only someone who is certified can make an actual statement to how being certified affected them. Someone who has not been certified can say they didn't because they already had enough work, or some other reason, but they have no way of knowing how their shopping career would have been different.

I figure if it can keep me from having so many on the job "learning experiences" it is worth it. In other words, if the extra training keeps me from blowing a few shops, or performing poorly on them, because it teaches me something I normally would have to learn on my own... then there's my payback. If it increases my confidence level so I apply for something I thought was out of my league, and I take a tough shop, and succeed ... there's my payback. If it gets me a few $5 bonuses from companies who value the effort I put into my shopping career ... there's a partial payback.

If it frustrates me to no end and I give up halfway through the "course" ... well, it was still a learning experience, even if all I learned was "never do that again!".