Dear Schedulers:

I know you really, really, really want to get that shop scheduled, but sending the exact same email EIGHT times to me today already at 2:30 p.m. doesn't make me want to do it anymore than it did when I received your first email at 4:43 a.m. Why don't you add a bonus and see how that works out for you?

Oh and I am also soooooooo not interested in the shop 5 hours away for $6.00 that I seem to keep getting offered every day. If I tell you a radius of 30 miles within my house, I mean 30 miles within my house!

I have to register my date of birth with your company, so why do you keep sending me shops that I am not eligible for because you are looking for an 18- 21 year old only? Because I might know an 18-21 year old interested in the shop? Fine. Send me that email once. Not an email that doesn't state the age requirement only for me to apply and get rejected. Oh and then the icing on the cake, you keep sending me the same email over and over for weeks.

If it's for that infamous pizza mutilation shop, emailing me six times a day, sending a text message, two phone calls at 7:15 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. isn't going to get me to touch it with a ten foot pole. If you call me and I tell you I am not interested in shopping that company as respectfully as I can, please don't attempt to bully me.

I love mystery shopping and I try really hard to provide you with excellent reports. I work hard to have an excellent reputation with your companies. I sometimes wish you valued my time and efforts more. To the schedulers that do value me and know me, they know I bend over backwards for them and will take a shop 40 minutes away in both directions to help them out at the end of a deadline. In turn, they keep me in mind for prime shops at a later date. These relationships are what makes mystery shopping worth it to me.

Oh and to the scheduler who had me rebut an employee's comments on my report, wanting me to reply to the shopped employee's email to their boss with my rebuttal...I will NEVER work for your company again. That is my personal email, my information and I do not appreciate that information being forwrded to the shopped employee and being questioned because an employee denies their bad service. What do expect them to do? Say yes, I gave them crappy service? How's that for my response? PULL THE SECURITY TAPES.

((Come on, I know you guys have more! Let's hear it. I can't be the only one getting the same emails over and over and over!!! ))

Dear EPMS, please stop with the RUSH!! URGENT!! emails if you're not attaching a RUSH!! URGENT!! bonus to it.

Also, please stop with the misleading email headings of "RUSH!! URGENT!! $330!!!" only to have me open the email excitedly, and see that I'd only make that $330 if I took all eight of your shops, located all over this pretty large state!

Jerks.

Huge bonus for late night happy hour.
Fee = $0
Huge Bonus = $10

ROFLMAO

NOOOOOOOOO.

I'd be ashamed to offer a shop for $10 at that hour.
Paying $10 for a glass of draft beer does not excite me.
Paying me $100 to drink it might.

Well, to be fair I really don't expect large companies to send out individualized emails to each one of their registered shoppers according to the shopper dynamics/preferences. I mean, really? How do you think that they would do that with hundreds of shoppers. "Oh, xyz does live within the radius of this shop but I remember they don't like doing oil changes - let's just send this to abc who once told me he does." is not practical. And, most emails have multiple states and cities in them, not just one.

Marketforce is a great example of their emails. I get the bulletin once a day with my radius. I only see the shops in my radius and its only once a day. There are some others that I can open my email and see several emails being blasted out. I don't even look at their emails now because they send too many...email marketing 101...too many lowers your readership people! Start calling or texting us if you are that desperate!

7 emails from 1 MSC in 2 hours....that is a little excessive (yet normal for GFK!)...STOP IT!

Chix- This particular shop 5 hours away and in a different state. It's not multiple locations. It's one location. Over and over and over again. I get the email almost daily for weeks at a time. It's annoying. I don't expect "an individualized email", but I do expect that if something is 400 miles away I wouldn't get multiple emails a day about it saying "RUSH! URGENT! NEED A SHOPPER!" I just delete and don't read those anymore. It's like the little boy crying wolf "$330 shop!" as a subject line...yeah for 8 shops with a 200 mile radius. DELETE.

A little common sense goes a long way. They expect it from us, why can't we expect it from them?

I agree that I like Marketforce's once per day email telling you what is available.

well said dmh! Your sentiments echo most of the rest of us and I couldn't have said it better myself! EPMS is driving me crazy right now with multiple frantic emails. I told the scheduler I could not longer do those shops until they changed the requirement of the phone call to be before the actual shop and not after. My accent is too strong to get away with calling them after the shop as they would not instantly it was me. Doesn't matter though, I still get multiple frantic emails.

In response to the original poster, I would certainly like to know which MSC forwarded your personal contact information to the client/shopped employee....

VickyS- Am I allowed to say because oh I will. Oh I will. I will spill all. It's a very well known company.

This was a few months ago now. I was so incredibly upset. The scheduler hit "Reply All" and initially it went to the client contact and the MSC. i wasn't ok with that but when the next email that came back IT was me, the MSC, Client Contact and the shopped employee I almost lost it. This was a targeted shop. I was provided a name, photo and work schedule of the employee...who had apparently been shopped two other times with similarly poor results.

The targeted employee responded to my report in a different colored text, basically calling me a liar again and again saying that I must have "had a bad day" and was taking it out on her. It was going to get into a pi$$ing match so I responded that I stand by my report 100% and to pull the security tapes if they feel there was any discrepancy, because the tapes would match myreport to a "T". I then called the scheduler directly and told them how incredibly unprofessional that was and deactivated myself.

That gets me every time. I have received three emails for the same shop in less than 10 minutes, and no extra incentive. I am with you dmh426, I often wonder if they have a glitch in their system, but I believe it is a human finger hitting that enter key on the other end of cyberspace.

I get a laugh out of the $4.00 ones. I would take them but can't just sit at desk during working hours and call to talk about a family member traveling soon to another dimension, multiple times. Not only would my boss scratch his head but I would never hear the end of it from my lovely comrades in the office.

dmh426, you can name either the MSC or the client in a post, but not both.

What gets me is the Bare schedulers. They seem to take forever to give me the shops I'm requesting. I need to know at least the next day when I'm ready for my route.

Too bad. I've canceled 5 pending applications already. I had no choice.

DSG....

Dear Genesis... calling me with your cryptic shop offers four times a day, and then telling me I don't qualify (thankfully) really sucks. What sucks worse is when you then switch to having Darvina/Darvine? call me another three times that day with the same cryptic shop offers.

Darvina/Darvine then offers me a different shop, a lovely 60 miles away, and throws in a $3 bonus for gas. Have we time traveled back to the 1930s when $3 would be a sufficient amount for a 120 mile roundtrip?

Stop sending the daily (5) emails for the $4 funeral home shops...I will never do them and I'm pretty sure everyone else hates them too...lol

DMH - what happened to you sounds utterly horrible!!

I know as a new scheduler, I am making a serious effort not to spam shoppers with my shops. I am also making an effort to be able to be easily reached and attempting to respond to shoppers in less time.

My pet peeve is the daily multiple emails even when I don't qualify because of the 60-day wait period.

I get annoyed when I receive a call from a scheduler asking if I am available to do a shop with a measly $5.00 bonus. I tell her that I need more money. In response, she ells me that she cannot increase the bonus because there is not enough money to do so. So, I respectfully decline. The annoying part is an hour later, I receive a call from a different scheduler of the same MSC asking if I am available to do the same shop for the same amount of money. Lately, it's been Maritz and Market Force doing this.

Don't you love when Samantha from MF mails you with a premium bonus of $3. Forget it Samantha.

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

Hey! That foreign scheduler gave me a $40 bonus to shop a Mc Fastfood shop once!! :-D

ICCDS is the worst company when it comes to their major grocery store chain emails, they are horrible and send an email for each location. The bad thing is they have like 20 locations that need shopped and 2 schedulers trying to fill them. I almost need another email box because of ICCDS. If ICCDS has an employee on here, I would love to know why you think this is a way to get people to help you...

dmh426- you can name the MSC that spread your personal email as long as the client who shopped is not named in that reply or elsewhere in the thread.

I want to get the emails on what's out there. If I don't have any extra shopping time available, I delete after a quick look and sometimes before a quick look. Got much more severe problems doing this than the email situation. Can't fix it, not going to worry about it.

I hate getting emails on age-restricted shops that don't state this in the subject line. Bare is especially known for doing this on their restaurant shops "Have Lunch On Us! Easy Report!" I click on the email and you have to be 21-28.

I also keep getting emails about going to the movies for free. When I click on the link, I have to bring someone 12-16 years old.

It's very frustrating, to say the least.

Canuck Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> What gets me is the Bare schedulers. They seem to
> take forever to give me the shops I'm requesting.
> I need to know at least the next day when I'm
> ready for my route.
>
> Too bad. I've canceled 5 pending applications
> already. I had no choice.


Depending on the account, I sometimes send an email or call them. I always do this if I am heading through the ghetto. It's not easy to fill a shop where there is an armed security guard at the entrance of the location. I will knock out a few easy jobs to pay for my gas on my way to my better shops.

I ignore the calls from the foreign schedulers and eventually one of the nice ladies who speak English calls with the same bonus. I record in my cell phone which calls come from whom so I know which ones to answer.

I can't stand when I apply for a shop and in the comments I state "I will only be in this area for a short time and must know by 11:30 am CST" (I've even included the time zone to make it perfectly clear) and then still get assigned the shop around 2pm when I'm long gone.

How about when you get a shop stating Please Help! Shop must be completed between 4-8 and it's already 4? Really?

Also, dear schedulers, our money is in routes and bonuses. I'm happy to take a base pay shop if it's a. near me or b. easy to fit into a route. Please approve them immediately because if you wait more than a couple of hours I'm going to cancel. I can't be sitting around the house waiting on you to plan my route.

Even though those foreign calls are hard to understand, I get some pretty good bonuses from them. I ask for it. They say they will have to forward my request. 10 minutes later? Got it.

But..the women from Colorado/Georgia are the best. They'll offer more and will look to see if you can do a few more shops around your area.