How common is it to cancel shops? I have found myself accepting them and then seeing that the guidelines are really greedy, or that I only have a narrow window of time when the application said I had all day. Or sometimes it's just personal reasons which make it either inconvenient or impossible for me to do the shop. What is the norm and how do MSCs view cancellations?

It sounds like you are canceling a lot which would be frowned upon and will impact your ability to get assignments. The instances where the information was incorrect, like an all day shopping window being narrowed to just a couple of hours, is understandable. I'm not sure why you are canceling many shops just because it becomes inconvenient?

mildred, I have canceled shops in the past. Usually it's because a route fell through or it was too much work for the pay. I would tell the scheduler that I knew someone who worked at the location. The shop was canceled with no penalty.

"I would tell the scheduler that I knew someone who worked at the location."

You mean even if you didn't know someone who worked there? If a route falls through I haven't found a single MSC who wouldn't be understanding.

Thanks for the info. This particular shop requires me to visit the wine department of a high end supermarket and evaluate the interaction. I am not yet 21 (and I look young for my age) and feel uncomfortable doing it. The MSC was ok with me doing the shop, and I guess I could say I'm looking for my parent's anniversary party or something, but I will have a hard time not feeling super awkward. It did not mention this on the application.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/27/2016 07:08PM by mildredfortoon.

@mildredfortoon wrote:

It did not mention this on the application.

That's the key. If you had accepted the shop with this information upfront, you would be obligated to complete it. When full disclosure is not made, it's a different situation.

As for how common, I don't think it is common among people who want to keep their reputations intact. I have canceled for scheduler deception, but rarely for other reasons.

Lisa, I had the opposite experience.

I had a $60 bank shop get cancelled by the scheduler. I was able to cancel the car shop ($27), but the $14 cell shop scheduler gave me grief. Once bitten....

@LisaSTL wrote:

"I would tell the scheduler that I knew someone who worked at the location."

You mean even if you didn't know someone who worked there? If a route falls through I haven't found a single MSC who wouldn't be understanding.

While I have only cancelled one shop with a particular company and have performed nearly 2,500 shops for them....(cancel is a four-letter word to me).

Your real concern is the ratio of cancellations per shops executed.

Let's say you have done 100 shops for ZYZ company and in that, you cancelled 10 shops (10%) over a period of 6 months. This would be considered quite high for some companies and you could find yourself deactivated (unless you have a good explanation/reason).

By the same token, if you had performed 1,000 shops for the same company and had 10 cancellations over 6 months, this takes you to 1% cancelled. (still considered too many for some companies). There is methodology to the way shoppers "performance" is rated: (besides cancellations) other factors, such as submitted on time, correct receipts, no discrepancies in your reports and so forth.

If you don't care much about that company, it matters "not" what your score is with them but if you DO care about that company, please try not to cancel..I do understand that your guidelines made it impossible for you to do the shop and "stuff" happens to all shoppers from time to time.....but all these things add up to your total rating with your MSC.

Also, schedulers both move from one MSC to another and talk to one another across companies. Worse yet, independent schedulers may work for many, many MSCs. Once they don't trust you to perform this could affect your ability to get assignments from a lot of MSCs. Inconvenience is not an acceptable excuse.

You were able to cancel one without penalty. I still believe the majority of schedulers would not behave that way because of a route being withdrawn. We all know there are a few bad apples.

@HonnyBrown wrote:

Lisa, I had the opposite experience.

I had a $60 bank shop get cancelled by the scheduler. I was able to cancel the car shop ($27), but the $14 cell shop scheduler gave me grief. Once bitten....

Personally, I don't think a shop becoming "inconvenient" is a valid reason to cancel. That is, if you mean you found something else you wanted to do more, or you filled up your calendar after accepting the shop, etc. If you or a family member gets seriously ill, your car breaks down, your house burns down, that's another matter. That would fall under "impossible to do." I had to cancel a shop last month because my car was in the shop and wouldn't be ready in time. The scheduler was not happy, but I did give her 48 hours' notice, and my rating/ability to self assign wasn't affected. I'm sure if that happens again, I'm toast with them!

As Lisa said, it sounds as if you cancel a lot. If guidelines are misleading or don't disclose things that are critical, I think cancellation is valid. But I wonder what you mean by guidelines being greedy? If that means that the overall scope of the project goes well beyond your understanding of it (based on what information was available when you accepted the job), that's pretty subjective. I've cancelled one shop in the years I've been shopping because the job went well beyond the "blurb" provided about it. There have been other jobs that I've realized, after the fact, would be more work than the pay was worth, but I did them anyway (as I'm sure many or most of us have done!) because I either value the relationship I have with the MSC or because I was new with the MSC and wanted to establish a good relationship with it. Now, I probably wouldn't have much compunction about cancelling such a shop.

I don't mean to assume, but it sounds as if you perhaps don't take mystery shopping seriously or look at it as a job. Even though we're independent contractors, we still have an obligation to complete our assignments--unless there is an unusual or compelling reason not to.

When you're in business for yourself, it's really important to fulfill obligations to your clients, meet deadlines, etc. That is, if you want to be successful and get and maintain a good reputation.

@mildredfortoon wrote:

Thanks for the info. This particular shop requires me to visit the wine department of a high end supermarket and evaluate the interaction. I am not yet 21 (and I look young for my age) and feel uncomfortable doing it. The MSC was ok with me doing the shop, and I guess I could say I'm looking for my parent's anniversary party or something, but I will have a hard time not feeling super awkward. It did not mention this on the application.

It appears that this shop only required You to have an interaction with the Retail employee. I don't think the supermarket would let you purchase the wine but inquiring about it would of been successful. You look young and not yet 21, may have been the reason the MSC gave you the shop. The Client wants to know if the Retail is carding its customers Just because it is a supermarket the customers still have to be of age to purchase alcohol.

You are YOUNG and not yet 21 Two good vices to have to preform a intergity shop. (Even if you were 21, purchasing alcohol, you would still feel awkward.) It 's just that feeling of ...."coming of Age".

As far as canceling.........the advice given is appreciated.

@HonnyBrown wrote:

.............................I would tell the scheduler that I knew someone who worked at the location. The shop was canceled with no penalty.

It boils down too how many times you want to do this. Though the MSC would never check on you it will tend to get stale. and you will start to get penalize-------->"Once bitten....................."

That bad apple was enough to leave a taste.

@LisaSTL wrote:

You were able to cancel one without penalty. I still believe the majority of schedulers would not behave that way because of a route being withdrawn. We all know there are a few bad apples.

@HonnyBrown wrote:

Lisa, I had the opposite experience.

I had a $60 bank shop get cancelled by the scheduler. I was able to cancel the car shop ($27), but the $14 cell shop scheduler gave me grief. Once bitten....

@HonnyBrown wrote:

mildred, I have canceled shops in the past. Usually it's because a route fell through or it was too much work for the pay. I would tell the scheduler that I knew someone who worked at the location. The shop was canceled with no penalty.

lying to schedulers isn't good idea. it will come back to bite you. like someone said these schedulers work for many companies & talk about shoppers. someone told me there's a scheduler forum where they call shoppers out by name.

@BirdyC wrote:

Personally, I don't think a shop becoming "inconvenient" is a valid reason to cancel. That is, if you mean you found something else you wanted to do more, or you filled up your calendar after accepting the shop, etc. If you or a family member gets seriously ill, your car breaks down, your house burns down, that's another matter. That would fall under "impossible to do." I had to cancel a shop last month because my car was in the shop and wouldn't be ready in time. The scheduler was not happy, but I did give her 48 hours' notice, and my rating/ability to self assign wasn't affected. I'm sure if that happens again, I'm toast with them!

my car broke down on way to shop. i called bf & made him wait for tow truck while i took his truck to go do shop. i finished shop & he was still waiting for tow truck. when car is in shop, you rent or borrow a car to do shops instead of flaking. There are trains & buses too.

@MSNinja wrote:

when car is in shop, you rent or borrow a car to do shops instead of flaking. There are trains & buses too.

In my case, I knew ahead of time that I would have no car. My husband works in another state, so I couldn't use his car. I have nobody else to borrow a car from (zero family in the area and I wouldn't ask to borrow a friend's car). It would cost more to rent a car than the shop paid. I think 48 hours' notice was sufficient. Not that I'm in the habit of canceling shops, and I felt bad about it (have cancelled less than a handful in three years of shopping). If I had been on my way to do the shop, as you were, then I would have figured something out so that I could do it--take a bus or a cab, perhaps. But in this case, it wasn't an emergency. It would have been worse if I'd waited until the day of the shop, then found out my car wouldn't be ready. It was 50/50 whether it would be or not, so I erred on the safe side. I'd rather have the MSC find someone else who could definitely do it than to have me cancel on them the day of.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2016 10:28PM by BirdyC.

Ninja, I don't do it often, but it hasn't bitten me in 7 years of shopping. I will continue to do it when the need arises.

Food shops are the exception. I always know someone who works at the restaurant so the schedulers won't call me. It never works.

@MSNinja wrote:

@HonnyBrown wrote:

mildred, I have canceled shops in the past. Usually it's because a route fell through or it was too much work for the pay. I would tell the scheduler that I knew someone who worked at the location. The shop was canceled with no penalty.

lying to schedulers isn't good idea. it will come back to bite you. like someone said these schedulers work for many companies & talk about shoppers. someone told me there's a scheduler forum where they call shoppers out by name.

If possible, reschedule instead of cancelling (if a car issue, etc)

We've all taken shops that, once we got a good look at the guidelines, regretted saying "yes". And sometimes regret comes later and it may mean losing money--for example, I was reviewing the guidelines for a car shop before I left my regular job (planned on doing it over lunch), and had missed that you had to drive a certain age car or get it pre-approved. That day I had taken my teen's rusted out pickup truck to work--so I had to run home, swap cars, and head to the shop. The extra mileage home for my mistake was most of the profit margin on the shop. Liven and learn--but once you commit, do everything you can to hold up your end of the agreement.

@KevinE wrote:

If possible, reschedule instead of cancelling (if a car issue, etc)

Liven and learn--but once you commit, do everything you can to hold up your end of the agreement.

I agree. But I did ask to re-schedule, and the scheduler said no, that it had to be done by that day and not a day later. I was more than willing to do the shop the next day or the day after that. But she said it was impossible. However, I did note that the job went unfilled during that time and only got filled when a bonus was put on it. I had agreed to do it at base fee. It would have been cheaper for them to let me re-schedule than to cancel it and re-assign it. And they would've gotten it done in the same time frame. But I don't blame her--she had to get it done, and couldn't have known that she'd have trouble filling it. They usually all get snapped up here.

Yup, we do live and learn in this business.... And I have taken jobs and completed them, even when I realized that the fee wouldn't make them profitable. I sure try not to do that anymore!
'
BTW, I'm not one who posted that she cancels shops because they become inconvenient.... I'm in total agreement with keeping commitments (and I stated that earlier) unless there are emergencies or very unusual circumstances.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2016 01:04AM by BirdyC.

Canceling a shop is unprofessional, and should only be done in extreme circumstances. I've also found that it depends on the company. I accepted two gas station shops recently and found out though the paperwork that it involved a revealed audit. I wasn't comfortable conducting a revealed audit because I live in a very small town and would blow my cover for good. I called the scheduler and she encouraged me to cancel them if I was uncomfortable. It was no big deal and I conduct shops for them all the time. However, I had an experience with another company where I had to reschedule for the following day for personal reasons, and I almost got suspended by that company. I take commitments very seriously, and don't cancel if I can help it.

If you regret taking a shop after seeing the guidelines, my advice would be to just go get it done and then never take the shop again. It may end up not being as bad as you thought or could end up being on your never-again list. Either way, you've followed through and not flaked on a scheduler.

When I began mystery shopping, I was talked into five bank shops at the same time. I became confused and cancelled all of them. I was banned from the bank and have recently been reinstated. Since then, I never cancel unless I'm too ill to drive. I have had no problem with schedulers due to illness.

Hi mildredfortoon,

Most points are valid and useful to know from everybody so far. I would only cancel under a few circumstances. With each incidence it does not matter if I am punished. I would accept the consequence. A couple of times is when I was hospitalized. A few times revolved around caring for my mother (I used to be her caretaker). Other times are when I do feel I will not do a good job. This can be over the pay rate, amount of work involved or overbooking. If it is because of bad time management I reconsider my behavior. It really is unfair to the client and MSC for your lack of skill. When the rate is low or amount of work not acceptable it should not matter if you are accepted. You want to be paid fairly for your skill. I have had some incidents in a 20 month period. Maybe only a 2-3 of shops were cancelled at one instance. Most were able to be rescheduled. Always try that first.

All that being said you do want to do a good job. You also may want multiple types of shops from the same company. Sometimes you need to give a bit. Under these circumstances you do not want to cancel with some companies. With the situation you describe for yourself it is perfectly reasonable. You are your only advocate. You should always be able to express yourself professionally but bargain for yourself. Also it is best to avoid lying. You may state something may be too personal but lying can cause needless trouble. You an an independent contractor and not an employee. You get judged from numerous individuals. Employees are protected by their companies. Be free.

Good luck!