@Delights79 wrote:

Wow goldengirl, what a lot of support you are. I am still shopping, I found some highly bonused shops in my area that I picked up and I'll continue to do this as extra income. I'm glad you make over 1000 a month. This is, however, not my full time job. Pretty awesome that in 7 years you've contributed 7 posts to this board and they're almost all bashing on people or complaining.

Interesting take on goldengirl's comment. I went back and read goldengirl's 7 posts, and I can definitely say that, yes, two of her posts complained about Beyond Hello and their editor Kara. The one to this thread is neutral. The other 4 are extremely positive posts. Your statement "almost all bashing on people or complaining" is a total misrepresentation. In fact, none of her her posts were bashing.

Welcome to the forum, Delights79. I get that your nose is out of joint because another forum member posted something that you feel is not tremendously supportive , but let's keep it real. Attacking someone who doesn't support you as much as you believe you deserve is not the way, especially when the attack misrepresents.

Keep in mind that when you post on an internet forum, anyone who reads your post can make a comment. The comments may not all be what you want to hear.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2015 01:54PM by AustinMom.

@Shop-et-al wrote:

Update: my equipment is going kablooey. First the camera (likely abetted by a well-meaning other) had an issue. Then, the computer slid off of its perch and got trapped under a downsweeping recliner. The recliner stripped away about half of the characters and their attachments. It will take awhile to acquire pieces and reassemble this laptop.

Mercury is in retrograde until October 9th.

I started only making a few bucks and now I do this full time - because I love it, want to and can't go back to doing much else (that isn't freelancing work). This is how I pay for my home, invest in my kids education, emergency funds and retirement. I never thought in the beginning that it would be like this. I just started as an occasional shopper looking for something to do since family schedule was too complicated to get a second job outside of my business (not MS). I didn't have a stack of cash to start off with and I've spent the last year turning my finances around. I couldn't remember anything three years ago let alone organize before I started MS. I was a horrible businesswoman. Now I have noticed I have way better organizational skills and I remember everything. I still cheat I guess by copying the shop guidelines to my calendar but nowadays that is just to be safe and not be sorry.

You can do anything you want if you put your mind to it. It's cliche but true. You kind of have to try different shops and figure out which ones you like, hate and would never touch with a ten foot pole. Maybe start off with non purchase shops.. do you like the latest gadgets? Try a cell phone or computer shop. Driving luxury cars - do a car shop. It gets so much easier as time goes on and you gain more experience. You learn so much about yourself as well and you are always in control no matter what.

Wow guys, Today I am ready to throw in the towel after 12 years of shopping I have had 4 shops back to back that something very, very wrong happened and none of them was in my control. The first shop that went horribly wrong was a well known MSC that had high end restaurants and is know for really long narrative, in my case I had 128 questions that they wanted a ton of detail and literally second by second interactions with everyone I encountered and a observation of the bartender who was awol the majority of the time so I couldn't observe her. Something went horribly wrong with their site ad the info wouldn't save and submit. In order that I not lose my reimbursement on my $80,00 meal and $30.00 payment I had to submit the 128 questions and 128 narratives 9 times and then they came back twice wanting revisions literally down to the second and I still may not get paid because I couldn't observe the bartender. Then I was supposed to wire money to Mexico which would then be returned to me 20 minutes later. except it wasn't, and after 3 visits to a office on the opposite side of this big town, where I had to spend hours trying to talk to Mexican wire transfer agents who often just hung up on me which I could understand if I was being rude, but I wasn't. All the customer service reps at the grocery store who tried to help had the same experience. Finally they came back and said I couldn't get y money back, Mexican government regs. I am counting only mystery shop to reimburse or I am going to be really pissed. Then my grocery shop emails me and say that the receipt I submitted is for the wrong shop. I have shopped about 6 of their stores this week so I thought I made a mistake, but no, the research showed I was right and they apologized, and lastly the package I am supposed to be paid to ship and reimbursed for came in an less than 2 ounces short of the required poundage. We own a 600 dollar scale that is certified every year by the Arizona Dept of Revenue and if it wasn't accurate they would confiscate it ( Because my husband is a retired gem dealer and we used to sell in Tucson at the big Gemshows there. No one wants to lose a six hundred dollar scale to the government so I assure you that thing is calibrated to the T, but the postal system doesn't give a s*** nor does the mystery shopping company that reps them so I probably won't be paid for that shop which I drove 46 miles to do because it was in a pretty tourist town that I wanted to hang out in...But so did every other rubber necking tourist so it took me so long to just get up there that I had 35 minutes to eat lunch and explore before my next appointment the day which was about real money and my re-starting my long term career that has been on hold since I moved to Denver. So that has been my weeks folks. And I am not a lifestyle shopper. So this is the way I am currently making my entire income Whew!!!!

I've had my days where I want to quit. Lately I've been a lot more selective about the shops I choose, which results in a lot less assignments. It got to the point that I would almost have a panic attack a day or so before a shop. I've learned that scaling back, for me, means I'm happier and nicer to be around lolol

I have proof. I have a text message saved on my phone from the scheduler telling me to do it that day and the time was 2:02, exactly 2 minutes after the time when you are supposed to be able to do the shop. They don't care that their scheduler told me to do it after the shop had expired. I knew when it was supposed to be done that is why I asked her if I could still do it, Sometimes people rearrange things and it becomes a dinner shop. She knew what time the lunch shop was due, she could have said "Wow sorry it took so long to get back to you but no you can't do it now, we are over the time frame". She is texting me on a smart phone that has a clock on it. Why doesn't it surprise me that MDavisnowell agrees with you,,, Do you ever agree with a shopper M? Every time I see a post where you are refuting someones statements you're always on the side of the corporations. But when your OX is being gored it is such a different situation. Sometimes the shopper is right you know.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2015 07:37PM by aprilredbird.

@Sybil2 wrote:

Mercury is in retrograde until October 9th.

So that's the reason why my cats are going crazy.

@aprilredbird wrote:

Do you ever agree with a shopper M? Every time I see a post where you are refuting someones statements you're always on the side of the corporations. But when your OX is being gored it is such a different situation. Sometimes the shopper is right you know.

There is a really handy way to handle forum members such as 'M', which I highly recommend. Click on their name and hit 'Toggle to invisibility'. Generally you will find forum reading more of a pleasure and less requiring TUMS if you just toggle the obnoxious.

@aprilredbird wrote:

I have proof. I have a text message saved on my phone from the scheduler telling me to do it that day and the time was 2:02, exactly 2 minutes after the time when you are supposed to be able to do the shop. Sometimes the shopper is right you know.

This is not meant as a judgment one way or another about whether the shopper is right, but you do know that the time on an e-mail is not definitive proof of anything, right? The time on an e-mail you receive may not reflect an accurate time for your time zone. If I receive an e-mail from Hawaii at 2:45 p.m. Central Standard Time, the e-mail will reflect 9:45 a.m., which reflects the time the sender sent the e-mail. It I receive an e-mail from Florida at 2:45 p.m. Central Standard Time, it will show 3:45 p.m., which reflects the time the sender sent the e-mail. It will still be 2:45 p.m. Central Standard Time when the e-mail was sent, but there can be a vast difference in what is shown, depending on where it comes from. And, all e-mail systems do not necessarily display the same way. To make it more complicated, if I wanted to forward an e-mail I received to someone else, I can easily alter the time and make it show whatever time I want it to show.



edited because I can't spell and Spell Checker is not my friend.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2015 07:59PM by AustinMom.

@red-is-my-color wrote:

I understand exactly how you feel, we all have those kinds of days, although some days we have more of them than others. I am currently trying to decide whether to continue to shop for Beyond Hello ever again, they don't pay very quickly and it's a lot of work for the $$. I am especially frustrated with them for a non payment issue. An unexpected family crisis caused me to drop a scheduled restaurant, although I gave them over 24 hours notice, the scheduler doesn't contact me until the day after the event asking me if I could still do it that day. This is at 10:29 in the morning so I am feeling bad that I let her down and even though it's inconvenient and I know I have too many shops that day to be adding more, I emailed her back about 10:45 saying "Yeah sure I can do that today".It's a lunch shop that ends at 2. She doesn't respond, so I email again, still no response. Around noon I call the offices both east and west coast, no answer. Finally I text her about 12:30, by 1:30 I give up, but I have now lost a possible lunch shop that someone has offered me that i told them I couldn't give them an answer until I heard from Beyond Hello. About 25 minutes later her text comes through telling me to do it but by now it is really close to the 2:00 cut off time for lunch. So I text back and ask if it is still ok to do it that day as I won't be back in this town for awhile and if I don't do it that day, it's not going to happen for me because I am not driving 50 miles for a reimbursable shop, particularly to eat at a restaurant I would never choose to eat at outside mystery shopping. At 2:02 she texts back and tells me to do it. I am still 35 miles away from the shop, and now it's going to cut into my dinner shop, which I will have to do late although I can do it up to 11:30 pm. Long story shorter, they refuse to pay me because I did the shop after 2 pm even though their own scheduler told me to do it. Now I have a $15.00 bill for a salad and coke that I am stuck with, and I get to bed at 4:53 am because I had to do all my shops so late, that I am doing the forms in the early AM because it was a 60 mile drive home, and one of those shops was for a long winded car salesman( Yes I know this story is a little long winded). I was trying to do a good thing and righting the wrong of having to drop a shop 24 hours before it was scheduled, but as it stands right now I am boycotting shops from Beyond Hello who is also a slow pay, and not especially generous unless they are down to the wire. Too bad for them because I was a shopper who would do last minute shops for them.

This wasn't an email though, she and I were texting in real time back and forth. Even if she was in Pacific time, she knows the shop and I are on Mountain time. I mean seriously shouldn't the schedulers be expected to know the time zones of the shops they are scheduling for..... and where their shoppers are especially when they solicit them and when they do a lot of shops for them. I probably did about 7 Beyond Hello shops in August alone. I don't go to the boards usually, the schedulers contact me either at random through my email or they call. More and more often they call with a little enticement.

When I mess up a shop and lose it, I always agree with the corporations if it was my mistake. I do not hold them responsible for my failure to execute the guidelines.

Good one, Sybil2.

Well, Flash, that's sneaky and indirect but I got the message. Apparently we do not admire one another and that's okay. Even though you may think differently, it's not necessary for everyone to share your "us against them" mentality when it comes to the MSCs. You are an extremely valuable member of the forum because you spend the time to share methodology with others and I appreciate everything you do to be helpful. I've always admired your willingness to share and you've been an inspiration to many of us to do what we can for the newcomers. That said, what I see here is an extremely valuable and appreciated member who has decided I (M) am obnoxious. Well thank you very much for sharing that little tidbit with us. Just couldn't help yourself, could you?

@Flash wrote:

There is a really handy way to handle forum members such as 'M', which I highly recommend. Click on their name and hit 'Toggle to invisibility'. Generally you will find forum reading more of a pleasure and less requiring TUMS if you just toggle the obnoxious.

@MDavisnowell wrote:

Well, Flash, that's sneaky and indirect but I got the message. Apparently we do not admire one another and that's okay. Even though you may think differently, it's not necessary for everyone to share your "us against them" mentality when it comes to the MSCs. You are an extremely valuable member of the forum because you spend the time to share methodology with others and I appreciate everything you do to be helpful. I've always admired your willingness to share and you've been an inspiration to many of us to do what we can for the newcomers. That said, what I see here is an extremely valuable and appreciated member who has decided I (M) am obnoxious. Well thank you very much for sharing that little tidbit with us. Just couldn't help yourself, could you?

Obviously I have not toggled you or I would not be seeing your post. My comment actually has nothing to do with you personally or otherwise. It rather is a statement that when a poster is upsetting to another member they are free to toggle that member and not have to be exposed to them further. You are making much to much of something that actually was not aimed at you or MSC or anything except this poster again complaining of abuse.

I encourage certain people to toggle me. It will give the Sensitivity Police a break now and then. I wish we had the self-toggle feature on this forum.

I didn't misunderstand a thing here. I got it. Exactly.

Sybil2, I tried toggling myself and I can tell you it's overrated. Also, I don't see any reason to give the Sensitivity Police or the Grammar Police or anybody else a break. I think we should take up a collection and buy them badges to go with all that authority.

@Sybil2 wrote:

I encourage certain people to toggle me. It will give the Sensitivity Police a break now and then. I wish we had the self-toggle feature on this forum.

You did, but if you don't see it, too bad. I really bear you no grudge. We disagree on some things but we agree on more than we disagree. I just didn't realize you disliked ME that much. Tough breaks.

You guys are not really mad at each other. Mercury is in retrograde until October 9th.

"Since September 17, Mercury, that tiny grey orb 48 million miles away, has been in retrograde - an astrological phenomenon that occurs when the planet's orbit intersects with Earth's and it appears to be moving backwards in the sky.

The retrograde happens three times every year - we've already had one in January and May - and is known in astrology circles as a black spot in the calendar, when chaos, confusion and MISCOMMUNICATION reign."

Thanks for that explanation.

I am not an astrologer but I have seen that phrase a few times in my eclectic reading.

I started by working just with one MSC that had two restaurants that my husband used as our date night. After the first shop I kept my payment and used it to pay for the next shop until that was reimbursed. We did this for years and had so much fun! About two years ago we were a little behind on some of our bills so I signed on with another MSC and started doing car shops. Many will say they are not worth it , but there are so many available in our area . I work with Bestmark and they pay quickly . The dollar amount is not huge per shop but I try to keep my eyes open for bonus or travel money. Since I do them so often they have become easy--I review the guidelines to make sure nothing has changed but in general it has been a help to "specialize" in one or two types of shops and know what I am doing. My check each month really has helped us out!

The bottom line is that it really doesn't matter whether other people feel the shop is worth it or not. When they stick up their noses, that means there are more for you and more frequent bonuses. Certainly the checks help out in a tight space and hopefully at some point in the near future things won't be so tight so you can rather apply your extra earnings towards something that will reward you well, whether it is a vacation you currently can't afford to think about or some other enjoyable endeavor.

@MDavisnowell wrote:

Sybil2, I tried toggling myself and I can tell you it's overrated. Also, I don't see any reason to give the Sensitivity Police or the Grammar Police or anybody else a break. I think we should take up a collection and buy them badges to go with all that authority.

@Sybil2 wrote:

I encourage certain people to toggle me. It will give the Sensitivity Police a break now and then. I wish we had the self-toggle feature on this forum.

Some days I'm the police and some days i get them called on me. Maybe MY name should be Sybil.

I can relate to almost every frustration and disagreement on this thread. Numerous times, I have stopped shopping because of disgust, family matters, or just because I want to. The beauty is that I can stop start stop start, and pick up where I left off, anytime.

Mystery shopping is not one size fits all. Some love reimbursements, for others, cash is king. I play with each, to benefit me.

Regarding toggle. Haven't used it, never will. I am perfectly capable of picking and choosing what/who I want to read, or not.

The reason I visit the Forum more often is because there is a Toggle feature. A few I originally toggled, I have untoggled because when some posters quote them, they actually were making more sense and have become a real information source or a joy to read. We do learn a lot from the Forum. So, keep the Toggle so we can enjoy the Forum.

Back to the topic, when I feel like mshopping is becoming too much for me, I take a break. Then I come back rejuvenated, That is the beauty of being an IC. I could not do that in my old stressful job.

It is wonderful and civilized to have these dignified options.
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Sometimes, you might just want to pitch a big ol' hissy fit.
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This might not make a mulish computer work, but it can make you feel better while you are agonizing over the three hours that you had to spend on a thirty minute report.
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I have been shopping as a part time job for 1 year. I have found that keeping a spreadsheet to track payments has been a big help to keeping my sanity. I am finding that I use the spreadsheet to track how busy I will be on a particular date as well as tracking when pay comes in for the shops.

I also find that using a rewards credit card is great because I am getting points that I can cash in for dollars at some point.

I also try to hold out on certain shops that I know will be bonused at some point and snag them when they pay the most. I understand it's frustrating to lay out money and have to wait such a long time for repayment.

It sounds as though you are doing well, Antinater. I'm checking periodically through the day today because it is about time for a particular shop I am in rotation to do to get the bonus added.

With money laid out for repayments, hopefully that pain will just be in the first month or two of shopping. If you set aside the reimbursements as they come back to you to recycle through the system over and over and over, that initial pain of laying out the money goes away. I run my 'shop kitty' at about 2X what my reimbursements are likely to be in a given month. If I start doing more reimbursement jobs, then maybe some earnings need to go into the kitty along with the reimbursements. I put everything I can on a credit card that gives cash back so I make a little money on the reimbursements and because of the card cycle, I have 'free use' of the bank's money for about a month before I need to pay off the card.

Gosh, how awful for you. As others have said, it does get easier. Do shops that you would do anyway, i.e. haircuts, food, movies, groceries, etc. Always, always, always find out when payment will be made before accepting the shop. Each company is different, and method of payment also varies. I have been paid in as little as two weeks to two months. Sign up with as many shops as possible to cast a wide net. If you live in a large city, more chances for better shops. And make up your own policies. If two months is too long, don't do them anymore. NEXT. If companies stiff you once, definitely don't work for them anymore. Once is once too many, and if it happened once, it will happen again. My husband and I normally go together because he has a much better memory than me. If you really don't like it, don't do it anymore. Find something else.