Before I get too upset, I would like your thoughts on this scenario. I did a series of four shops one day in a remote area. There was a wild fire in that area and I had to get creative in getting from one shop to the next. There was zero internet access or phone access. What should have taken me 4-6 hours took more like 10-12.

When I arrived home after midnight, we did not have internet access either. Early the next morning electricity and internet were restored and I started entering reports. I got one or two done and everything went down again. I emailed the scheduler from my phone which was still working. Since the reports were mostly long narratives, I could not do them from my phone.

As soon as I could (within the next couple of hours due to having to wait for the places to open), I went into town and got the remaining shops done except for the last one, which was about half done before I lost internet access again. I tried a third hotspot and could not get on.

In the meantime, I got a nasty email from the reviewer that the final report must be done IMMEDIATELY. I got it done from my fourth internet spot of the day but it was early afternoon by this point. I emailed him back and apologized for the delay, explaining what had happened.

Now they are not wanting to pay for any of the shops because they were "late." I cannot remember now if the first two were late or not, but if so, the first one would have only been late by maybe ten minutes. I have no doubt whatsoever the reports were used. They were excellent reports as I went the extra mile due to having issues. There was no indication they were being reshopped.

I've done these shops many times as have other shoppers. I know I'm not the only one who has had issues, mostly related to the remoteness, because some shoppers have sent emails "reply to all" by error.

If I gave you the name of the nasty reviewer, a good many of you would know exactly who I'm talking about as there have been other threads where he has been mentioned by name.

I feel that if they were not going to pay me, then they should not have demanded the report be finished. Rather they should have cancelled the shop. To do otherwise is fraud as far as I am concerned.

What are your thoughts?

I agree with you.

I would go right to the top of the company.
Once I got paid for these, I wouldn't work
for them anymore either.

I am very new to this but I also agree. Demanding that you finish a late shop, and then refusing to pay because the shop was late, just seems wrong on many levels.

I agree with the others.

Go to the top.

Can you please share the MSC so that I may avoid them like the plague?

I will tell you this much. It is a small MSC based in Northern California. Their shop instructions come in multiple colors with every other sentence being a threat of one sort or another. I love their two schedulers but really despise their upper management. Fortunately, it is California, so the owner's name and address is listed on the Secretary of State's website for the service of court process.

i have a strict policy when dealing with any company,
not just msc's. I try once to get whatever I need done
through the normal channels. Then I go right to the top
if they can't resolve it. I have better things to do then
waste my timel.

The client wasn't named, who was the MSC please?

I would fight for my money... it's not like you flaked or just delayed reporting because you got busy...

Sounds like JMRidgway, to me, based on the description OP gave.

Glad you made it home safe after such a harrowing route!
Sounds like you have a good relationship with the schedulers, so how about a conversation with them? They'll be under the gun to find a new shopper for these if your reports aren't accepted.
After that, straight to the top.

She identified the MSC on another thread as being Intellishop. Big surprise. whiterose, why not contact Sara Petersen to see what she says? sara.petersen@intelli-shop.com.

Ah. I don't shop much for Intelli, so I guess I didn't realize they do the big multi-colored font stuff too. Nor did I realize Intelli was a "small" MSC. Nor have I had the time lately to check on very many threads, (so I'm missing out!) so I hadn't seen that.

Of course, maybe Ridgway isn't "small", either; maybe they just seem that way to me because they don't have a ton of shops here. But, I like all (but one) of the ones they do have.

And, just lately here, Ridgway seems to have taken it easy with the multi-colored font stuff.

This wasn't Intellishop. That was a case of the MSC making a mistake on a single small shop with a reimbursement of $7, which will be paid next month. They made a mistake and they admitted to it.

This is four $28 shops for a local company.

May I make a suggestion for future use, please. I oft times am jumping from hotspot to hotspot. What I have begun doing is opening the survey page and leaving it open. I do not shut down the computer although I may put it to "sleep" or "hybernate". When I am done with the shop, I will open the computer to that shop survey and begin to enter the data. When next I am at a hotspot (usually stopped for the night), I then open a new window and log into the msc's that I worked for that day. I then switch to the completed surveys and press the completed button. I loose no data and it saves a bucket of time.

This can also be done with your home computer, just open the surveys and make the computer sleep. When your done for the day, wake the computer and enter the data. When you are done, connect to the msc sites and submit the work.

Did I make sense?

Great tip... tnx

I'm giving it a few more days. If I don't get paid and have to file a small claims, I will post.

I have had similar experience. MSC allotted 5 laptop shops for evaluation.
When I returned after the evaluation I found message from MSC that the Audit has been cancelled.
I advised them by return mail, that Audit is complete, and I filed my reports well before the deadline of 24 hours. Till date no response from MSC either for accepting my reports or rejecting my reports.Now I have come to know that the scheduler had provided wrong specs for evaluation.Scheduler has since been fired.What happens to my hard work is not known. Is it my fault if scheduler messed up. MSC should have contacted me on my mobile for advising cancellation of Audit instead of sending email when I was in the field. Though I have email enabled mobile, but I do not subscribe to mail facility on my mobile as I would become total slave of MSCs.

A small MSC with multicolored guidelines based in California sounds like Monterey Mystery Shopping....
Although I have never encountered any issues with getting paid by them. But then again I never had to shop under the circumstances you are describing.

I received $40 of the $112 today with no explanation. Since they pay fees separately from reimbursements I will give it a day and then contact the owner. Normally, the fees and reimbursements deposits come within minutes of one another.

I would not work for a company that is not understanding and can't accommodate unforeseen problems

Good luck on that quest.....


natureloveit Wrote:
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> I would not work for a company that is not
> understanding and can't accommodate unforeseen
> problems