Maritz called, should I do the shops

Maritz called me today and offered me overdraft protection inquiry bank shops at $9.50 each. $9.50 seems kind of low; are these shops easy?

Also, they said I could counter offer them an amount if I want to try these shops. What would be a reasonable offer? I have never worked for Maritz before.

Arguing with fools is like playing chess with a pigeon...
...No matter how good you are, the pigeon will s@^t on the board and strut around like it won anyway.

Not scheduling for ANY company.

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I did a route of them once.......9 shops, got all of them done in just under 3 hours. (They were all within relatively close proximity to one another.) Took me less than an hour to input all of them. The online report is probably the easiest I have ever come across to input. All multiple choice questions except for where you type in the banker's name. About 20 questions.

The only issue people seem to have is with the picture submission....which is actually REALLY easy. Take your camera with you and take the pictures in your car.....don't scan them, it takes too long to do that. You will need a picture of the business card, the 2 overdraft/protection brochures, both sides of the current rates sheet, and the big 'pamphlet' that they give you with the pocket in the back to put the other stuff into. You write the visit number and your ID on each before taking the picture. It should take you about a minute to do that in the car.

The 9.50 is up to you.....how far do you have to drive, how many of them are you going to do, are they close to one another, etc, etc???

Sometimes, the time is much longer if you have to wait for a banker. I agree that the photo uploading is easy. I don't think $9.50 is worth it. I find the scenario awkward and I used to do "10 minute shops" for $10 base pay with a better scenario and fewer questions.

I've had to wait more than an hour to talk to a banker on more than one occassion, so they can be time consuming if the bank is understaffed. I did most of the 9.50 ones in January with a 15.00 bonus, so for 24.50 they were worth it to me. I turned them down today because the amount they are currently offering isn't enough with the way the gas prices are rising. Give it time, they will call you back with better money at the end of the month.

I'm doing one that is less than 5 miles away at the $9.50 rate to show them my work basically. After that, I'm sure I will get asked to do more.

Arguing with fools is like playing chess with a pigeon...
...No matter how good you are, the pigeon will s@^t on the board and strut around like it won anyway.

Not scheduling for ANY company.

I found if you skip the lunch hour and all day on Friday's, you can usually get in and out of the branch quickly. If you wait, they will eventually bonus them, but they may also be gone.

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I could agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong.

Also, the first and last day of the month are bad. And, some locations seem to always have long waits.

I do a lot of banks for Maritz. I much prefer the $12.50 shops that involve a quick phone call before the visit. You can schedule these out over a couple of weeks. I will do the $9.50 shops that are close to the $12.50 shops as they can be scheduled A/O. You can do as many as 10 or 12 shops very easily and if within a close radius of your home I believe it is worthwhile. Once in front of a banker it is a 10 minute presentation and the report takes about the same time. Only twice did I have a long wait for a banker.

Maritz will offer bonuses when time is an issue.

Be sure that you understand the de-briefing and invoice submission proceedure. It's a bit wacky.

Good luck.

See now, it's threads like this one that make me wonder if I really *should* give Maritz another go. Then there's all the *other* threads. :/

Practitioner of the Nerdly Arts.

I answered the call today for 3 of the POP shops from hell. WHY???!!! Now I am in panic mode. I just could not refuse the magic number.

If you're in panic mode, perhaps the magic number wasn't high enough.

There are reasons that a body stays in motion
At the moment only demons come to mind

Didn't answer the first time today. Heard the message. Got prepared.
Answered the second time. Tomorrow I'll break my record for highest single payday ever.
Answered the third time. I turned down a POP from hell even though directly on route.
Answered the fourth time. Accepted the new offer for same POP from hell.
Grabbed two eat fresh sandwich shops off another board for this lunacy 450 mile route.
Pretty psyched with a little dread. Shouldn't have answered the fourth time.

I have done the ODP shops for both the $9.50 base pay as well as for a $15 bonus. It almost never takes me longer than 5-10 minutes in the branch. The report is ridiculously easy. The first few will take the longest until you get comfortable with the procedure but after that it is a snap. I always take them as part of a route unless I am doing one that is 2-3 miles from my house. It is so easy to do multiple ones in a few hours or less that you could easily make $28-$47 with less time and less work than one or two higher paying shops. That being said: a lot of it depends on your area. If you can get in and out in 10 minutes or less and have branches in close proximity of each other than IMHO it is worth it.

Thank you everyone for the advice! There's so many of these shops around me, maybe I will see about getting a few routes together if I like them.

Arguing with fools is like playing chess with a pigeon...
...No matter how good you are, the pigeon will s@^t on the board and strut around like it won anyway.

Not scheduling for ANY company.

StormCloud Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> See now, it's threads like this one that make me
> wonder if I really *should* give Maritz another
> go. Then there's all the *other* threads. :/

And then I remember the endless 'nice little old lady' pleeeease help me calls, the know nothings I got when I tried to call in and get a question answered who refused to escalate my call to a supervisor who could possibly answer the question. I remember the photo editor from Hades for whom no photo could ever be good enough (was she going to do a one woman show of gas pump photos at a local gallery???). The charmer who rejected my shop because photos from the public side of the barbed wire fence around a pasture with bulls could not show the entire canopy. And I know I am perfectly content without them.

I only do the bank shops but I never had any problem with them.

Flash Wrote:

> And then I remember the endless 'nice little old
> lady' pleeeease help me calls, the know nothings I
> got when I tried to call in and get a question
> answered who refused to escalate my call to a
> supervisor who could possibly answer the question.

Yes! The schedulers look at the same paperwork we have when you ask them a question. And they are much less familiar with it. (and, really, you think I didn't check the instructions before trying to get an answer from you?)
The editors know the answers but don't deign to talk to us. It's madness.

DanteInOH Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm doing one that is less than 5 miles away at
> the $9.50 rate to show them my work basically.
> After that, I'm sure I will get asked to do more.

You probably will be asked to do more, and doing one that's nearby will let you decide whether you should say yes when they ask, and at what price.

I did one of the $9.50 overdraft shops. For me, personally, it was not worth it. I don't care for Maritz's website. There were several pages of documents to scan and upload. And since I didn't write the assignment number on each one (which I understand was totally my error), I had to rescan and upload again.

It simply was not worth it to me, but everyone's different.

If they stated to counter an offer, ask for $15 for the one down the street from you. I think $15 is pretty standard for bank shops with other companies. Try it, then you can decide if it's for you. And like others suggested, stay away from lunch hours, the first and last of the month, and Fridays. Also, I have found early mornings to be busy just after the bank first opens, and also the days before and after holidays. Typically, between 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. is a good time to go and between 1:30 and 3:30 p.m.

Don't scan!!! It is much, much, much easier to simply take a digital photo and upload that....takes a fraction of the time it does to scan each item!

I have one company that paid me $33 for account inquiry shops. Basically, I'm doing the sample thing; they can sample one of my completed shops for $9.50, when they like it, they will have to pay more to use my services.

Like I said, up until now I have never done a shop for them; however, once they see my work, they will find out that my services don't come cheap.

Arguing with fools is like playing chess with a pigeon...
...No matter how good you are, the pigeon will s@^t on the board and strut around like it won anyway.

Not scheduling for ANY company.

quilter Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Don't scan!!! It is much, much, much easier to
> simply take a digital photo and upload
> that....takes a fraction of the time it does to
> scan each item!

I did take a digital photo, but then received notice that Maritz thought it was too blurry (it didn't look blurry to me, but whatever....). So, then I had to scan and upload. I can't remember how many documents there were, but there were several and not worth the $9.50 fee.

Almost forgot to update. I completed my first overdraft protection shop. Easy report, took everyone's advice about using pictures instead of scanning, as well as using the mass upload part for the pictures; I'm impressed and like the system Maritz uses.

The down side was the location took 1 hour and 9 minutes to get done; 15 minute wait to sit down with a banker and over 45 minutes of a personal banker who just wouldn't shut up.

Overall I'm impressed. From now on though, I will need at least $15 for the close shops and more if I do distant ones.

Arguing with fools is like playing chess with a pigeon...
...No matter how good you are, the pigeon will s@^t on the board and strut around like it won anyway.

Not scheduling for ANY company.

45 minutes with the banker? really? That's way too much of your precious time. Sit on the edge of the chair with keys out. Tell him/her you already know which account you want because you looked online, but were confused about how the overdraft protection worked and what the fees were. That will reduce their desire to discuss the accounts, hopefully. I've never been stuck with a banker for that long.

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The more I learn about people...the more I like my dog..

Mark Twain

I do a lot of banks and have never spent anything close to 45 minutes with a banker. Ten minutes is an average time. If I get one that rambles on I do like MsJudi - fiddle with my keys, look at my watch, fold my arms and stop talking.

Good luck on getting them to raise the fee from $9.50 to $15 on a normal basis. If time is an issue and they are ready to bonus, that is a different matter.

OK, Dante, don't talk to the banker beyond presenting the scenario. If they ask me if I have any questions, I say no. If I say yes, then they talk more. Sometimes you can finalize by saying, "Are those papers for me? That would be great." Your goal is to let him/her make a presentation and give you the papers and a business card. Don't encourage details. You are not really there to participate, you are there to listen and report.

Mary Davis Nowell. Based close to Fort Worth. Shopping Interstate 20 east and west, Interstate 35 north and south.

She was extremely thorough, even took the time to introduce me to her branch manager. I asked very few questions and she was like the Energizer Bunny, she kept going and going and going....

I'm not new to bank shops, just new to this specific bank, and I'm new to Maritz. I have never encountered this before with any other bank shop I have done.

I will not do these shops for $9.50 again. If they won't raise the fee for me, I will get PSF (Prince Stompy-Foot for the people who don't know) on them and not sign up for shops. I'm not desperate and the world won't end for me if I skip those shops.

Arguing with fools is like playing chess with a pigeon...
...No matter how good you are, the pigeon will s@^t on the board and strut around like it won anyway.

Not scheduling for ANY company.

I still love those shops and consider them an easy in and out. I just can't bring myself to return to some of them again and again. Fortunately there are a boatload of 'em around here to grab on my travels. When the bonuses are right, I'll force myself to return, but some I've crossed off my list after hearing, "You look familiar, " a few too many times.

*****************************************************************************
The more I learn about people...the more I like my dog..

Mark Twain

Again, I agree with MsJudi. Easy in & out, easy report. I've done so many that I have an excell spread sheet so that I know who I've seen and when. I can get past "You look familiar" and don't go back for at least 3 months but I totally avoid bankers who say "Nice to see you again". I no longer auto-assign as that tends to put the visits too close together and spreads me out geograpically. Better than 1/3 of my visits are bonused, some very generously. I concentrate on the combo visits because they pay more and I can spread them out over two weeks or more and fill-in with the ODP's when they are close by. This company is on my list of favorites.

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Maritz called, should I do the shops

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