I received an email posting from a company that uses the Sassie platform 3 or 4 days ago about some grocery store audits. I applied for 2 of them that are in a city about 25 minutes away from me. The day before yesterday I received an email from a scheduler with that MSC asking if I would like to do a grocery store audit in a city that is 500 miles round trip from my home (about 8 hours of travel time). I wrote her back explaining the distance and how that would not work for me, and told her that I had applied for 2 shops a few days ago in a city that was closer to home. She wrote me back and asked if I would like to do some grocery store audits in this other city (duh, I applied for them). I wrote back that I had applied for them 2 days ago and they were still showing as "pending" on the website. Late last night I received an acceptance email for the location in the city that is 250 miles away! And the other 2 audits in the nearby city are still showing as pending...I have emailed her a few times this morning explaining that I cannot do this shop and reiterating the distance and travel time involved, along with a request to do the shops that I had originally applied for...no response. I also called the cell phone number she had listed in her email and left her a voice mail. She has not returned my call, either. Not really asking for any advice here, just venting. Hopefully she will get around to reading her emails and responding. The MSC must be having a hard time getting locations filled if this is how their schedulers operate.

How frustrating. I've had similar things happen and it really ticks me off. I guess they get busy or whatever but it's like they don't read their emails properly or perhaps just don't care.

Yes, very frustrating, and the shop is due in 4 days...the original email posting with the shops I applied for gave a due date of August 1st, so I had planned on doing the ones I had applied for July 30 and 31. I sure hope she reads her emails and gets back with me to cancel this shop so I don't get dinged for not doing it. It would be nice if she would assign me the two locations I applied for. It just does't make any sense. I made it abundantly clear that the other location was too far away from me, so I don't know how she could not have read my email properly! And I have never done work for this MSC or had anything scheduled to me by her before. If she's new to scheduling she needs to get a better system going.

I know it can be frustrating. You already sent an email pointing out the scheduling error, so you should be covered on your end and not get dinged. Definitely follow up if it is not cleared up by the end of Monday. My experience is that most schedulers don't work weekends.

I just got back from doing a shop for another company only to find an email from her in my inbox with updates to the instructions for the shop that is located 250 miles away!!! No response from her to any of my previous emails and no response to my voice message that I left her this morning on her cell phone (she gave her cell phone number in her emails). It's not a canned email to numerous shoppers, she addressed me by name in this most recent email she sent. Is this ridiculous or what?

You serious? What's wrong with her. Good luck. I think your email will cover your rear end.

Okay, she replied and gave me one of the locations I had originally asked for. It only took 4 emails and a phone call over the course of 15 hours. I had to shout (all caps) in the subject line of my last email to get her attention about it!! She was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing...but at least she now understands I am not driving all the way to the other side of the state to do that shop!

Hope the scheduler gets a citation from the MSC like any shopper would for not following instructions.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/18/2015 08:15PM by Tarantado.

You should have asked for A $1000 bonus if they wanted you to do it that bad

@JASFLALMT wrote:

"... The MSC must be having a hard time getting locations filled if this is how their schedulers operate.

Maybe they are experiencing a challenge finding good schedulers.

I've been there, OP and it was really frustrating. Then, I got reprimanded for having sent "so many emails," as she said. If I did not send those emails, I would have had a very bad record. Another thing that really infuriates me is getting a confirmation for a shop which application I had already deleted because of the length of time it took to be accepted. Don't they know we are also busy and we have some routing to follow?

I had one schedule me a shop in the wrong town. It had a very similar name to a town near me and I was applying for a shop here. It was only a 10 hour drive! Lol, she canceled it. Her mistake.

Thank you all for your sympathy/empathy and support. I am grateful that she gave me one of the locations near my home, but since there are some vague areas in the instructions I do have some questions before I start. I actually have time to go today instead of staying home and doing housework all day...I sent her an email early evening yesterday with my questions and of course have not received a reply yet, LOL. Maybe I will get lucky and hear back from her before mid-afternoon.

Maybe she has the weekend off. You might get an answer tomorrow. Good luck.

This is a weekend, OP. Don't bet on it. What I did was I completed the shop and used my instinct. Then on the report, I told her I did not receive any reply to my email so I proceeded to complete my report. The shop was 10 and was paid. Good luck!

She was one of those people who if you ask 4 questions, 1 question gets answered (I guess instead of in-depth reading she just scans the email quickly). Anyway, after several emails sent, I finally got all of my answers...the audit was a terror, though. It took three times as long as I was told it would take...go figure. Never again.

You know OP, some bad mshopping experiences can really make us better shoppers. Those problematic ones are the ones that stay in my mind. I sort of categorize them. When they fall under 'Never again' category, even a substantial bonus would never make me budge. But there are times when I am in a good mood and up to a challenge. You never know, a better scheduler or another MSC may handle it. Or Guidelines could have improved to your liking.

Take this example for instance. It's a bar shop where you have to sit with a partner at the bar stools or the shop is useless. Never again, I said.
All I remembered was the frustrations we felt at not getting two bar stools for almost an hour. I thought, "I could have done this if I was alone." Lo and behold, I got an email for a bar shop. It specifically said, having a guest was not required.

Thanks to your thread, I am reminded of many shops I would not touch with a ten-foot pole. But who knows...

I had something similar happen with Sinclair Customer Metrics. They had a client in Niles, IL and Niles, (another state). The scheduler messed up and put me in for the wrong one for the following day. I immediately called and had it fixed but later I could not self assign shops anymore. I called to find out why and that situation was counted against me (cancelling a shop with little notice) and is the reason I can not self assign certain clients anymore.

Sinclair stopped sending e-mails about new shops. Any one noticed that?

@gene wrote:

Sinclair stopped sending e-mails about new shops. Any one noticed that?

Now that you say that, I used to get a daily email (every morning) telling me about open shops. I don't think I've received one of those morning emails in a while, maybe a couple of weeks. I know there are jobs available because I checked the board just two days ago. Interesting...

Actually, before hitting submit on this, I checked my email; the last daily email I received was on June 28th.

@gene wrote:

Sinclair stopped sending e-mails about new shops. Any one noticed that?

I get emails all the time from Sinclair

Seems like they fixed the problem just yesterday.

I hear ya, risinghorizon. It really was an audit, not a shop, though I was there incognito. But I really mean "never again" because for $125, I had to get prices for over 2,000 items (of course some of which the store did not carry but I had to look for them anyway) but it took 4 trips back to the store of about 2 hours each visit to get the prices (hard to stay in a grocery store for 5 hours or more without someone wondering what you are doing), and then data entry into an Excel form after each visit...I was told the entire audit would take 4-5 hours but it took much longer than that...I suppose if they offered me $300 I might do it, though

@risinghorizon wrote:

You know OP, some bad mshopping experiences can really make us better shoppers. Those problematic ones are the ones that stay in my mind. I sort of categorize them. When they fall under 'Never again' category, even a substantial bonus would never make me budge. But there are times when I am in a good mood and up to a challenge. You never know, a better scheduler or another MSC may handle it. Or Guidelines could have improved to your liking.

Take this example for instance. It's a bar shop where you have to sit with a partner at the bar stools or the shop is useless. Never again, I said.
All I remembered was the frustrations we felt at not getting two bar stools for almost an hour. I thought, "I could have done this if I was alone." Lo and behold, I got an email for a bar shop. It specifically said, having a guest was not required.

Thanks to your thread, I am reminded of many shops I would not touch with a ten-foot pole. But who knows...

At the end of the month they won't send you emails if they don't have shops still outstanding. But they sure are coming to me. I bought four pizzas on Thursday. Getting two more Monday and two more Wednesday. I wait until they are desperate and then pick up pizzas for the homeless. Pizza for them and $10 for me. That works. Lol

Hi iblessyah, I am not really sure how your post relates to this particular thread...but anyway, if you are only getting $10, you are selling yourself short. I do some pizza shops for 2 different MSCs and if they are carryout, I will not take less than $20 for each (and those are ones that are within a 30 mile round trip drive). If the location is further (the farthest one is a 50 mile round trip drive) I will get betweeen $30 to $45 from one of these 2 companies. And I also bag up the pizza (4 or so pieces per ziplock) and keep a case of water in my car so if I see someone who appears homeless I can give a handout...it is unfortunate that only about 5% of the ones who are standing around with signs begging for money are really indigent. But it's hard to tell who really needs it and who doesn't...I can usually tell by the reaction I get when handing over the pizza and water who is grateful and who is wishing it was money instead.