gfk Audits

There were many things that needed to be corrected when GFK first started the audit program. Has anyone done any of their audits recently? Have they improved? Originally they were paying $150 now I see they are paying only $110.00.

Create an Account or Log In

Membership is free. Simply choose your username, type in your email address, and choose a password. You immediately get full access to the forum.

More Discussions About GFK Mystery Shopping (All Companies)

More About Audits

If you take a good look at what they want you'll see that they lowered their fees, plus they enforce the 2-day visit by not giving you the day 2 material until you've reported the day one material. Then they want you to pay out of your pocket for a background check plus out of your pocket for a drug test and they will reimburse you only after doing two of these audits. When you add that up along with (in my case here) TWO round trips of 80 miles each time to go to the store where these take place and all the hours spent doing the audit you'll see that the @&%%*($@ audits don't even break even here.

Her Serene Majesty, Cettie - Goat Queen of Zoltar, Sublime Empress of Her Caprine Domain

Thanks. I saw that about the drug test and background check. I know in the beginning the paperwork was a bit much from what others stated. Apparently they must have had problems, to be enforcing drug testing, and specifying that you pay for it yourself upfront. I did not feel it was worth it in the beginning. I thought my now, they would have many of the previous problems corrected. Those are a lot of hours too.

lol...problems corrected... no no dear the problems only get worse... find someway else to waste your time.... lol

shopping north west PA and south west ny

Gfk also bombards me with gazillion e-mails about the same job. Now I have set them up such that all their e-mails go to junk folder. Once in a while I would go to their site and see if any new thing is posted.

I am of the opinion that one is taking quite a gamble devoting several days to the performance of these audits. I've edited this after concluding the MSP might object to the detail offered earlier. However, I will say that I know of instances where people have spent several days in the store and not been paid.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/20/2011 01:02AM by annie727.

For any shop I do for a company, I like to only sign up and complete one before accepting a bunch just to make sure I feel it is worth my time. You are reimbursed for some of the background checking until after completing the second audit, which is enough to make me steer clear because I would feel like I have to do the second audit even if I didn't like it.

When they were first doing this shop, acceptance of the job was doing it twice anyway. I don't remember if it was 2 consecutive months or a skip a month thing. In any event, assuming that you accepted the first assignment (that included two rounds of shops) and didn't flake, you would get reimbursed. But I agree with you Shelly, if I do a shop once and it is fine, I'll do it again. If I do it and it was a PITA dog of a shop I will not do again I would hate to be out the cost of the background check.

I'm not sure if this went out to all Gfk shoppers or just to "qualified auditors" but according to an email from the program staff, 94 audits have been marked invalid in a little less than 3 months due to "missing or incorrectly loaded forms". My own experience has me arriving at stores where one or more audits have just been done and deemed "invalid". With no warning from Gfk, I've had to cope with upset managers and disgruntled store staff. In one case, Gfk cancelled the assignment. In the other, I told them to find someone more experienced who could be sure that the store did not suffer a third frustrating experience. I don't know what the client thinks about this but it seems that it would reflect very poorly on Gfk to be contracting with people who are repeatedly failing to do the assignment correctly.

I'm hearing a lot of negative stuff about GfK. I was approved for a mortgage shop, but then never heard back from the scheduler even after writing twice. That's just rude.

Gfk must be a technologically backward company. They don't support IE 8 or 9 or Firefox 4. Too much trouble to do business with them and the constant annoyance of half a dozen e-mail/day about the same jobs.

I used to work a lot for them but somehow got on someone's list, I guess. Now they bombard me with those 2-day audits, which I can NEVER see myself doing,but they don't offer anything else anywhere near me. I have mainly just written them off.

I have opted out of the shops that I'm not interested in, but with limited success. Email still finds its way to my inbox.

I have been doing these audits since they began ( last year). Te pay has dropped in some stores to $110, but the store (or stores that I have done) still pay the $150)
My problem with them this month was I was questioned by the manager "Why are you here so soon? We have three done in the last 4 weeks" sure enough in the log book there were 4 different auditors listed for the company. Two days each.
I did the audit, submitted, Then I get a nasty letter telling me that it was not successful. That my scores were higher than the others and I would not be paid. HIGHER? I can only report what I saw. Perhaps the things that needed to be fixed were fixed before I got there. In the past if there was a problem, say trip hazard, I pointed this out to the manager, took a picture, and it was fixed before I left the store that day.
I see that they were looking for some one to the audit before the 1st of Aug. That would make 4 audits for the month of July.
Well, they are on the back burner for me for a couple of months. Not getting paid really bend me. And with the temps running about a 100 degrees before 12 noon, I will stay in my air conditioned house and wait for cooler weather.

Hi purrff -- it sounds like you may be in my area and we are doing the same stores. I've also been stiffed for pay by GfK because I supposedly uploaded one (one!) incorrect form. Has anyone else been told by a scheduler to take a three hour lunch to lengthen the audit time?

Sorry, only registered users may post in this forum.

Click here to login

gfk Audits

Create an Account or Log In

Official List of Mystery Shopping Companies

Mystery Shopper Magazine