I tell a scheduler my lowest price I will accept. They call later with a counter of less than half of the amount. Complete waste of both of our time, but this co. loves the phone.

cjbstar Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I tell a scheduler my lowest price I will accept.
> They call later with a counter of less than half
> of the amount. Complete waste of both of our
> time, but this co. loves the phone.


I think that must work with a lot of shoppers because it's their modus operandi. It doesn't work with me. Like you, I give my best price to start with.

Dear Scheduler,

Please look at a map before attempting to wheedle and condiddle me into taking a shop 1000 miles away because New York and Nebraska are so close alphabetically. Also, "FUN and YUMMY" aren't going to convince someone over the age of 10 that it's something wonderful to do for $6. I'm an older broad and this ain't my first rodeo.

Had an email from a new scheduler with "shops in my area". My reply to her was: Thank you for the email, but I'm in NH, so it would be an awful long drive to do a shop in Miami!

My idea of a "FUN!" shoe shop is being able to keep the shoes. It is NOT having to return them a half hour after spending a manditory 20-30 minutes with a salesperson buying them in the first place. All for $10 pay.

Oh and then there are those weekend shops I apply for and I can't get because the scheduler love to give it to another person, but waits three days to let me know I was not awarded the job. Then I see mulitple emails for the same shop during the week and again I receive 6 emails from her trying to find a shopper. You try to contact her and she doesn't reply back. AMAZING!!!

So I guess this signals the official end to the "Scheduler of the Year" contest?

(heart)

As schedulers our jobs are to get shops filled and submitted to our client. Schedulers do this by sending out mass emails, making phone calls to our shoppers and cold calling businesses to recruit new shoppers. This is the only way we can fill shops.

The mass emails are done by downloading a large excel file from our SASSIE system that is within a certain radius from a zipcode. I will say at times, the system is totally off based and I will contact someone that was supposed to be 15 miles away and they respond telling me they are 50. This is obviously something that we, as schedulers, have no control over.

We have 4 schedulers that work in office five days a week. We help each other to get these hard shops and locations filled so we can meet our clients deadline. Since we work as a team you may receive emails from different schedulers. We are a NJ based company and we are not familiar with every city. We do our best to group shops and locations together.

Jolaine Otey
North Fork Research (ICCDS)
Scheduler

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2014 08:57PM by JOTEY.

Other than the abundance of emails, what really, really gets me is when the shop says "don't shop before xxxx date and due xxxx". Usually, I get the shop a day before it is due but the actual don't shop before date was a week prior. GIVE IT TO ME THEN! Let ME decide when to do it!!

Point 2: If I request certain shops, don't just assign me OTHER shops automatically with a due date the next day and penalize me if I can't get it done!

WHEW! Thanks for the vent.....

Schedulers, heres how I think it should be done. Send one email a day to shoppers. Then do not send out another email on the same day unless new shops have actually been added. I get emails sometimes that say new shops have been added only to find they are the same shops that were sent out in the previous day's emails. This is really annoying.

Just love requests for shops that are near me but may be 200 or miles away. In addition am fond of shops with the wrong town location. Also adore reports returned with "are you sure this happened" or words to that effect.

“If you ignore your daily email from Market Force, you get six phone calls from the foreign scheduler later in the day.”

And then the foreign scheduler lines up the shop and I ask how about this … which is a second shop close by.. they say I have that oh wait …” I have reached my quota I will have to have someone else call you to schedule that!”

Really?! Do you want it done MSC or not ?

I also have to agree with several points .

1 I said no (as politely as possible and probably 3X) don’t call me back or have the person sitting next to you call me back in 5 minutes--- I still say NO and now you have wasted both our time


2 “Urgent! Emergency! Pleeeesseee Help me out!” Is like crying wolf, doing it 6x a day for a shop you want done next week or one you are giving 2 bucks on is useless and just makes us ignore all such emails


3 Shops you have to apply for and never hear back. They take days sometimes and sometimes it just disappears. I don’t have time for this. I’m (as I’m sure schedulers and my fellow shopper are too) busy. I plan my schedule around a full time job and 4 grandchildren who all have very different needs in very different places all at the same time. I need to know where I’m going and when.

4 This is not a scheduler but an edit problem- Edit the dXXn thing! You insist I have it in by noon or 10 or whatever the limit is and then it sits there for two weeks or more before you edit it. Then you want to ask me what color the employee’s eyes were???! If you edit in a timely fashion I can probably answer whatever off the wall question you find to challenge me with but sorry I don’t have two weeks to wait around for you.

dmh426, Which MSC is this?

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2014 03:44PM by BetteL.

There could be...Mystery Inspectors, Inc.
This company evaluates the difficult businesses. For
Example, the businesses that continuously
Receive bad reports or the hard to schedule shops,
Like pizza and funeral shops! Their evaluators
Could be NEARLY bona fide private detectives,
Who are actually paid VERY WELL to help turn
The situation around.

Sorry for typos. I don't do well with a smartphone typing.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2014 11:04PM by Mary Smith xoxoxo.

Vickys, I got to keep a $129 pair of walking shoe once, plus a fee. That has not been repeated yet.

Man, I"m SURE we ALL CAN EMPATHIZE with you! ! !

Totally felt you posted a WELL WRITTEN LETTER my dear!

Kudos!

I just found out two of them that call me often (with the difficult to understand accent) are female. I thought for the longest time that they were feminine sounding males (no offense intended) It's not like the very foreign, difficult to understand names are a giveaway.

1. Oh, I absolutely love (sarcastic) MF when they call me and I tell them, "No, I can not do the food shop as I do not have any money to put out for the food and then wait until you reimburse me."

The next thing out of their mouth is, "Oh, how about another location?" What do you not understand about, "I do not have enough money to put out."

2. I loved (sarcasm) it even more, when I got the call where the scheduler stated, "I know you can't do the food ones, because you are short on money. Would you be interested in a clothing store one?"

After, she told me which one, I stated, "I believe you have to buy something there too."

Response was, " Let me check. Oh you're right, but it is only $______."


"If I can't afford food (a need) not a want, do you think I can afford to put out money for a want? Besides that, I have never been able to find anything for $______ at that store."

Response, "They usually have something up near the registers."

"Ah. But nothing that I need when I can't afford it and nothing that I really even want." Again, what don't you understand about, "I don't have any money to be able to put it out and then wait to be reimbursed?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2014 02:09AM by Anita Koenig.

Jotey, if "WE" were offered a better pay scale, you'd have more takers. I'm fairly new at this but have already begun to learn to weed out a HUGE percentage of the offers because it's just not worth it.

I wish they has more movies shops in my area. I love to treat teenagers to free movies. I only did this shop twice.

How many emails for the $4 phone shop, some needed in Spanish, some with a whopping $1 bonus, did you get yesterday? I only got 4, and 3 the day before, and 3 the day before that! Deleted them all.

I find it challenging when I apply for multiple shops from different companies so I can make a route - plus I'm already going that direction on a particular day. There is a range of dates with the date I want the first or second date. When I finally get a response it's too late - the date has past. I then have to decline the shop (it's too late).

I also find it frustrating that I see a shop with a range of dates, but I'm going there the next week so I can't accept it. Then it doesn't get taken an finally it's offered again the same day I'm going in that direction. I attempt to sign up for it but don't get an answer before I've already left the house. How can I read my instructions ahead of time and plan. Give us a better time frame to do a shop (say a week or two). If there are blackout dates such as weekends, holiday etc.. make sure it's listed.

Give us better pay. Who wants to do a $14 shop for cell phones (no you don't have to buy anything) but by the time we complete the shop - 30 mins inside, plus driving, plus report time (1/2 hr - 1 hr) it's not worth it. My time is worth more.

Several times we decide to go out at the last minute for dinner and it's an urgent / bonus shop but I don't get an answer - as a scheduler you should know that we don't always plan on going out to eat until that day. If it's an urgent shop then accept our shops.

Being a shopper, working in the IT field, and knowing how the scheduling software works, (Sassie, Prophet, ShopMetrics etc), Unfortunately the way the databases work and the way the bulk emails work for notification of shops, as a shopper you will get multiple emails for similar shops. When they bulk email by state, or in some cases country, you will get emails for shops not even close to you. There's a cool button on email clients and webmail that says delete. I have to do that many times a day as I'm registered with over 80 different MSP's. If it bugs you that much to get those emails, maybe you shouldn't be a shopper.

dmh, love the real world comments! Most, if not all shoppers are tired of getting shelled daily with repeat e-mails...send it once and go away. If I want to accept the shop I'll respond, if not I won't respond. Seems simple enough.

Most shoppers would really apperciate more targeted e-mails (distance & type of shop). I live in the inland L.A. area so why do I get parking lot shops in Marina Del Rey or Laguna Beach which are 50 mi. away? The 405 & 91 Fwys ARE parking lots most of the day and would take me 90 minutes travel time each way. Ditto for the oil change shops that require a GM or Luxury car...are the kidding me? I own a 13 year old Ford econo box so why do I get constantly shelled with e-mails for these shops?

In the last 2 months I continually received e-mails to do Costco shops for some kind of creme or lotion and and you had to be female....I'm a guy! Some of these were bonused at $50 to $60, too bad I don't qualify...

I also don't understand why schedulers continually send out of my mileage radius shops and offer a $4 to $6 bonus...that's not a bonus, it's not even lunch money. If you want me to change my schedule at the last minute to bail you out of an approaching deadline, that costs money...try offering a $15 - $20 if you need the shop completed that badly. You wouldn't do it for $4, so why expect me to do it?



The same goes for expecting a shopper to rebut a client or a client's employee rebuttal to my report. Shoppers only report what they observe and it should end there. If the client questions or doesn't like my report do it right, set-up and have the client pay for another couple of targeted shops...don't be cheap, I did my job. I've never seen an assignment that says shoppers are anyway obligated to submit a rebuttal. If you want a rebuttal from any shopper pay them for it.

Finally, part of the qualifications to be a Scheduler should be a minimum requirement of 6 months prior experience as a Shopper. That would certainly make the scheduler/shopper process more effecient.

I've got plenty more insightful observations, but will save those for another day.

DMH 426:

I absolutely agree with your comments and you articulated well the problems that confront us shoppers!

My biggest irritation is the phone calls from the "foreign" schedulers. They are very persistent but usually very hard to understand. I'm not willing to spend 10 minutes on the phone trying to understand what shop you need done, only to be offered a paltry sum to have it completed ASAP!

The solution would be to never give out your email address or phone number. That'll fix 'em,.

What I get a kick out of is the shop that says cannot be done on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday, Why they can't say Wednesday only is beyond me. Then to top it off when I choose Wednesday it say someone else has a shop within 3 days chose another date. I contact the scheduler and they say they can't do anything about the fact that they are posting a shop that cannot be done by anyone!

I don't like receiving texts with shop offers because I do not sign up for it. What if I don't have unlimited texting and by sending me texts you make me pay??? Also when I moved, I updates my profile with a new address, yet I still get texts begging me to do shops at the town where I used to live. I replied twice to the scheduler saying that I moved but it doesn't help. I receive the same text for the same shop from the same scheduler every month.
Sorry, schedulers, I only want texts from friends, you have my email for job offers.

Watching the Wheels,

I am sorry you feel the pay scale is not large enough. To clear things up the schedulers do not make up the pay or the bonus structure. This is set by the clients. Our jobs as schedulers is to simply fill the locations and have the shops accurately done in a timely manner.

Jolaine Otey
North Fork Research
Scheduler

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/27/2014 01:16PM by JOTEY.

LauraJeanne Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How many emails for the $4 phone shop, some needed
> in Spanish, some with a whopping $1 bonus, did you
> get yesterday? I only got 4, and 3 the day
> before, and 3 the day before that! Deleted them
> all.


These particular emails annoy me to no end...