Sorry all, once again the system has not sent me emails when more comments have been made. Ugh. I tried "following the topic" once again.


Also, some of you are not familiar to me, so you probably do not know me. Please know that I respect and listen to each comment that is made. Also, a few times a year I take the comments from the forums and put them before my SVP and our entire team so they can see the feedback from the shoppers. Coincidentally that is happening next week so I have plenty to share with them.

A few things from the comments:
1. Sorry on the repetitive emails yesterday. We had email issues over the weekend and IT kept telling us our emails were not going out and then all of a sudden they were: after we sent out a boat load of repetitive emails. Ugh. I apologized to each person who emailed me about that and if you did not send me a private email then publicly please know...I'm sorry.

2. For the OP and a few others, I had asked someone on another post to send me some info on this. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I am looking into this (and still am). I am sorry if I was not clear enough that I am seriously looking into it. I just did not want to make any promises I cannot keep. But there are concerns that have been raised here that are causing me to take a look at things. I will report back, like I always do, when I finish reviewing. I am sorry if I was too flippant in my note that made everyone think that I was not taking this seriously. Really I can truly understand your frustration over that.

3. DanteinOH. I apologize, I do know know you, so I am assuming you probably do not know me either. Many people can tell you that anytime you have a fee dispute with one of my schedulers that if you send me the documentation on completed shops, then I will adjust your fee and speak to the scheduler. We honor fees even when it means we lose money. We're not perfect by any means, but we own our mistakes when we make them. Email me: donna.goodwin@gfk.com


OK sorry, I have to get back at it, but I at least wanted to get a few comments going here. My apologies, for not cross posting more info and not checking back on this one. Several people have been PMing with me and so I thought I was addressing all the issues.


Donna Goodwin
Operations Manager
GfK Mystery Shopping
GfK | 200 Liberty Street | 4th Fl | New York | NY | 10281 | United States
Donna.Goodwin@gfk.com
ww.gfkmysteryshops.com

Sorry one follow up question that I think I asked on the other thread....


Is everyone here clicking on and downloading the "printable questionnaire" or are you just printing out what appears on Sassie? From what I can tell on the other post it never dawned on us that people would not use the printable questionnaire as that most definitely has every question you are asked on it. It sounds like some people were printing whatever showed up on the "sassie" screen instead and that never, ever, has all of the questions on it. Anyway, if some people could let me know that too it will help so we can provide warnings on our program that you must downloade the printable we provide in order to get the full question set. Sorry I guess this is sort of obvious but it just never dawned on us that people wouldn't be downloading the questionnaire we provided via the printable link.

Add me to the list of people who assumed that the two versions of the questionnaire would be the same.

Ishmael Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Add me to the list of people who assumed that the
> two versions of the questionnaire would be the
> same.


Thanks Ishmael! Like I said, I guess this should have been really obvious for us, but unfortunately it was not. Wow, I can understand why so many people have been so frustrated!

At least it's a wonderful thing that Donna is communicating with us. I wish more MSC's would take a page out of her book.

And she's trying to FIX problems and be helpful as opposed to just trying to do spin and damage control.

chigirl777 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> nycrocks Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > It cost me $10 to get to these shops via public
> > transportation!
> >
>
> I assume you completed other shops along the way
> of your $10 fare, or your net starting pay would
> have been $4 for each shop.

I meant $10 for both shops, $5 for each. Sorry! Thanks for pointing out my error. And no, I had no other shops along the way. NYC/Manhattan is a very competitive market for shoppers and it's not easy to schedule shops within walking distance of each other. Since the majority of us are not driving cars in Manhattan because it's very impractical due to the lack of street parking, it's a very different kind of thing from most of the mystery shoppers who can do a route. It costs $2.50 each way per trip ($5.00 round trip) unless you can justify buying a monthly pass for $112, which I can't, and I don't want to work more just to be able to get around town. GFK is in NYC. They know what it costs to get around.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 12:41AM by nycrocks.

DonnaforGfK Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Lisa,
>
> No worries on the differing. I think we both just
> said that we know a lot of companies that are on
> our respective sides of the fence. I am not
> claiming the majority side as I do not know the
> practices of the over hundreds (thousands?) of
> mystery shopping companies out there, but I do
> know the practice of about 40-50 and we are
> simliar to roughly half of them.
>
> As to the reps availability, unfortunately this is
> retail. People do call in and reps are not there
> when they are supposed to be. I am not saying
> this is a perfect system or that we even like
> everything about it, but what I am saying is that
> we do communicate it up front.
>
> Donna
>
> Donna Goodwin
> Operations Manager
> GfK Mystery Shopping
> GfK | 200 Liberty Street | 4th Fl | New York | NY
> | 10281 | United States
> Donna.Goodwin@gfk.com
> ww.gfkmysteryshops.com

I saw in the guidelines that a closed shop fee was $3.00 but I knew the store was open. I don't see how this situation could apply. That these shops were scheduled to be done only on one specific date and anytime after 11:30 but before store closing, if that's not the hours and dates that any of the four manufacturer reps were in the store, sounds like negligence on someone's part, but I shouldn't have been penalized. It wasn't part of the shop for me to confirm hours or reps' attendance. It doesn't add up that all four reps would be out of the store (first shop was Friday and the second shop was Thursday) or on break approximately the same time and dates that I was shopping. What it could be is that they all leave more than 3 hours earlier than closing time because they have no supervisors watching them. Or maybe there never were any reps there. Maybe I'll call the store and ask if and when the manufacturer reps are in the store. Even though I shouldn't have to.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 12:43AM by nycrocks.

kamarkim Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Donna, I do not think the shops which the
> representatives are not present should be
> classified as "closed shops". In my experience, a
> "closed shop" is a location which is completely
> closed, as in the store is not open at all. And
> yes, MSCs I have worked with have stated
> explicitly a low fee if the store is actually
> closed, although not all of them. Some will pay
> the full fee if the store is truly closed. I have
> not encountered even a mention of a lowered fee if
> the location was open but the shop could not be
> completed because of circumstances beyond the
> shopper's control, i.e. the manager refused an
> audit, no one provided service within a certain
> time period, etc. Here is another point: most
> shops that require service state a much shorter
> waiting time in which you can leave after not
> being taken care of- 10 to 20 minutes rather than
> 40. If you really want these shops done, you need
> to 1) make sure the representatives will be there
> at the appointed time and 2) pay the full fee if
> no representatives are available after the full 40
> minutes OR pay a reduced if no representatives are
> available, but allow the shopper to wait a much
> shorter time, say 10-15 minutes or so. This would
> be fairest for the shoppers, as well as GFK and
> the client.


Thank you. This is fair. Also, it wasn't right for the scheduler not to communicate with me when I raised my questions.

Ishmael Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Here is another possibility. I have done these for
> another company whose instructions were to look
> first for the company rep. If I could not find
> that person in a given length of time, I was to
> look for the rep of any computer/tech company. If
> there were none of those, I was to do the shop
> with a store rep. That would require some
> cooperation on the part of your client, but it is
> another way to be fair.
>
> Note that for your shop there is no possibility of
> calling ahead to find out if the shop really is
> "closed." That's the type of circumstance where a
> $3.00 fee for a closed shop makes sense.

The instructions were very specific that store employees were not to be interacted with. That would've been simple!

I have done very little to no work for your company, but only because your offerings in my area are not something I am interested.

I have been a shopper since 2008 and will say the only time I have opened the printable form on a Sassie shop have been when there was a ton to remember and I used the printable form for cutting and pasting to make a cheat sheet. I can only think of a couple of times that there was a question I didn't remember, but assumed it was just brain fog. Luckily it was always something I could readily remember. I just assumed the printable form was the same as the Sassie online form in a slightly different format as that is typical on most forms I have seen. I have not been doing this to take a short cut, just because I honestly believed the info was the same.

What might be helpful to make sure shoppers get all the info is to have all the questions visible in the form and then those sections either collapse or auto fill with an n/a answer. I get that this would take a long time for the initial step up from a programming perspective, but would accomplish the same thing you are trying to do. Unfortunately, even with the warning, people are so used to not going there that people will miss it is the opposite of what so many companies do. This is probably especially true for the shopper who has done the shop a number of times and just doing a quick read through as a refresher.

I can't even imagine why a company would bother to produce two versions of the questionnaire in the first place. How much paper do you expect us to waste on one shop? I print out the first version of the report I encounter; if there's another one somewhere else I don't even look at it and I certainly don't print it. Why should I? I already have the questionnaire.

If you're abbreviating one of the reports to make it look like the report is "not that bad" then you're deceiving us. Just because "most" shoppers won't have to answer all the questions doesn't make it fair to leave those questions off and ambush the ones who do have to answer all the questions. You're not paying any extra based on the questions we have to answer.

Just be honest with us. Give us the full report so we can decide if we want to do the job for that fee and so we know what we have to be looking and listening for.

I seem to recall running into this on the one shop I was finally able to do for you a couple months ago (a cell phone shop inside a megastore), where there were "surprise" questions on the report when I entered it. I fill out my reports immediately after the shop because I route shop and I don't want to be trying to remember things 6 or 8 hours later. When some questions aren't on what I filled out right after the shop, I count myself extremely lucky to remember those details three shops and a two hour drive later.

Dspeaks,

I can understand why you would question two surveys. And just so you know it's one of the reasons we do not have the "print your questionnaire" link that prints the Sassie looking generated printout like all other Sassie companies have -- we had ours turned off. Please remember while Sassie is a box software everyone uses it differently and everyone runs their companies differently. Every one of our questionnaires have to be approved by many people in many different respective positions. Since Sassie requires programming and coding experience to update the questionnaire, it is best for the "approval" process to happen with a Word document which is then pdf'd. Once that document is final, then the programming and coding people take over and program it all into Sassie. Yes, that's a pain, but it is what it is.

I have an office full of shocked staff that people were not using those printable questionnaire links. Sometimes something so simple can be that surprising and also that laden with the potential for misunderstanding. Since we had our Sassie questionnaire print link turned off and we provided the questionnaire link and have other documents written to help people know where to find that link... we thought we had done our due diligence to explain how we are different and what the processes for us. Unfortunately we were dead wrong. Everyone's feedback was very helpful and we will be getting the warnings up in our system. I hope you can also see it from our perspective too that we were providing you with the correct materials...they just were not being utilized. And if not, that's ok too. We just appreciate the helpful feedback.

Thanks,
Donna


dspeakes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I can't even imagine why a company would bother to
> produce two versions of the questionnaire in the
> first place. How much paper do you expect us to
> waste on one shop? I print out the first version
> of the report I encounter; if there's another one
> somewhere else I don't even look at it and I
> certainly don't print it. Why should I? I
> already have the questionnaire.
>
> If you're abbreviating one of the reports to make
> it look like the report is "not that bad" then
> you're deceiving us. Just because "most" shoppers
> won't have to answer all the questions doesn't
> make it fair to leave those questions off and
> ambush the ones who do have to answer all the
> questions. You're not paying any extra based on
> the questions we have to answer.
>
> Just be honest with us. Give us the full report
> so we can decide if we want to do the job for that
> fee and so we know what we have to be looking and
> listening for.
>
> I seem to recall running into this on the one shop
> I was finally able to do for you a couple months
> ago (a cell phone shop inside a megastore), where
> there were "surprise" questions on the report when
> I entered it. I fill out my reports immediately
> after the shop because I route shop and I don't
> want to be trying to remember things 6 or 8 hours
> later. When some questions aren't on what I
> filled out right after the shop, I count myself
> extremely lucky to remember those details three
> shops and a two hour drive later.

Makes perfectly good sense to me.

There's a standard rule in testing coding: the people who designed something should not be the ones who test it. They know how to do it right, and they'll never imagine all the ingenious ways that people will discover to do it wrong.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 04:16AM by Ishmael.

nycrocks Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

Thanks to nycrocks for sending me her info tonight. Unfortunately I was not able to piece everything together until I had that. So several things on this....

1. My apologies again for answering too quickly before and giving a simple "I am looking into this" answer and reiterating what the guidelines said. I sometimes forget that even though I have been in the business for a long time, not everyone knows that when I say I am looking into something I truly am. It was a good lesson learned for me.

2. You have to remember when I speak, I speak for a company. I am an employee. So I cannot swoop in and promise grand things will happen without first gathering all the facts and getting approvals from my superiors etc. I have always found that when I bring things back to my superiors they are as interested in making a situation right as I am. Honestly, I would not have been with GfK for over 7 years if that were not true and GfK would not have been in business for as long as they have been if that were not true about them as a company.

3. Please also remember that sometimes not everything presented online is everything that actually happened and unfortunately I have to be cautious about that. My hats off to nycrocks though for publicly posting exactly what happened.

4. While the closed shop fee was listed as including the circumstance of not finding the employees, it also had a further condition of having a prescribed long wait time. In every single one of our programs where we have required a prescribed long wait time, we have paid the full fee. This was the part of nycrocks posts that perplexed me most because I know this has been true of all our other shops/programs so it seemed very strange to me that we would deviate from that procedure. We are currently running a longstanding program that is paying that full fee for that same required long way time! However, we also have programs where there is no closed shop fee availlable so you have to interact with someone but you are free to leave and come back later if you do not get help immediately. So I assumed I had to be missing something here because that just did not seem like us. At the same time, I do not know everything nor every decision that is made so I had to make sure something had not changed. As I said before, I cannot promise things before I know the details of the situation and while I appreciate everyone's desire to see nycrocks paid, if we made a mistake on her shop for this program --then we could have made it on other shoppers for this program too! Which meant I also needed to follow up on other shoppers for this same program that do not have a forum to post on or know how to get their voice heard.

5. So the long and short of it is, we definitely made a mistake here. And behalf of our team, I am sorry for the mistake. As I said before, this has never been our policy before when we require a prescribed long wait time, so this should not have happened on this program. Nycrocks will be getting the balance of her fee (nycrocks it will get put into the payment process and you should have in 2-3 weeks) and so will 3 other shoppers.

6. Yes, I know that some will still not like that there is a closed shop fee for locations that are really "closed". We try hard to minimize those and we communicate it up front. And yes, I know some companies pay it differently than we do and some pay it similiarly to us. However, I will pass along the feedback from everyone.

Thanks for all of you who have PM'd me on the side and provided helpful info for me to track down and for everyone who posted here publicly too. I think the forums are an invaluable tool to reach out to a company when you do not know who to reach out to.

Have a great week,
Donna

PS. The follow topic thing is not notifying me all of the responses so if you do not see me following up, please PM me and let me know. The PM email notifications seem to come in just fine.

Donna Goodwin
Operations Manager
GfK Mystery Shopping
GfK | 200 Liberty Street | 4th Fl | New York | NY | 10281 | United States
Donna.Goodwin@gfk.com
www.gfkmysteryshops.com

Donna, I'm extremely impressed by you. Good work!

Donna, I feel much better about GfK now. Thank you for handling the situation and getting a proper resolution to it that is fair to the shopper.

I still don't understand why there are two versions of the report but I guess if I ever take another of your shops I'll try to remember this and be sure I'm printing the right report.

But if you think we stop and read whatever is on our log in pages every time -- guess again.

This: Please make sure you are using the links for the "printable questionnaire" on all of your assignments for us. The questionnaire that is found on the "printable questionnaire" provides you with all of the questions you could potentially answer for your assignment.

does not tell me where to find the "printable questionnaire" link. Nor does it explain why there's an abbreviated form floating around that I'm not supposed to rely on. If we can't rely on it -- why is it there at all?

Thank you, Donna! You are the best! I really appreciate the time and effort you've put into helping to resolve this issue. I am not surprised that there are other shoppers whose shops at this retailer were treated as closed. I do not see anywhere in the Sassie guidelines where it says if the reps aren't present the shop would be considered closed. I saw you mentioned above another printable guidelines source, but I must be missing something because I don't know where to find these other guidelines.

It's nice to know our voices can be heard via this forum. If any similar problems arise in the future where the scheduler hasn't responded, I will email you.

dspeakes,

No worries, you will soon see other notices on each individual program. We added that "announcement" last night and tweaked it a bit more this morning, but the real notices that I was referring to will go on each and every program and will be seen each time you click on "view/submit" for our shops.

Thanks,
Donna


dspeakes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Donna, I feel much better about GfK now. Thank
> you for handling the situation and getting a
> proper resolution to it that is fair to the
> shopper.
>
> I still don't understand why there are two
> versions of the report but I guess if I ever take
> another of your shops I'll try to remember this
> and be sure I'm printing the right report.
>
> But if you think we stop and read whatever is on
> our log in pages every time -- guess again.
>
> This: Please make sure you are using the links
> for the "printable questionnaire" on all of your
> assignments for us. The questionnaire that is
> found on the "printable questionnaire" provides
> you with all of the questions you could
> potentially answer for your assignment.
>
> does not tell me where to find the "printable
> questionnaire" link. Nor does it explain why
> there's an abbreviated form floating around that
> I'm not supposed to rely on. If we can't rely on
> it -- why is it there at all?

Kudos to Donna for stepping up quickly and correcting this issue in a very professional manner.

This actually makes me want to sign up for GfK. It takes a lot to stay cool and get stuff fixed for angry people.

Hello all. I am new to this forum, obviously, but not new to shopping. In my experience, and GFK is one of my favorites to work with, if you communicate to the scheduler the issue you had, they will try to make it up to you. I did one of the audit routes for them. 2 of the locations ended up being closed, so worth $3 instead of the full amount. I told the scheduler I was frustrated and she offered to bonus the next shop I did with them to make up the differentce...and she did.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/23/2014 10:51PM by Scheherazade.

Scheherazade Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hello all. I am new to this forum, obviously, but
> not new to shopping. In my experience, and GFK is
> one of my favorites to work with, if you
> communicate to the scheduler the issue you had,
> they will try to make it up to you. I did one of
> the audit routes for them. 2 of the locations
> ended up being closed, so worth $3 instead of the
> full amount. I told the scheduler I was
> frustrated and she offered to bonus the next shop
> I did with them to make up the differentce...and
> she did.

In my experience, schedulers have communicated whenever I have needed anything. In this instance, once the shops were completed, the scheduler did not communicate with me. I do not know why. Before the shop was completed, we were communicating. Obviously, not all schedulers operate the same way with everyone and every shop all the time. I am glad your experience was never like mine and that this is going to be rectified.

nycrocks, you might consider editing your first post here to remove the word "swindle" and maybe replace it with "misunderstanding" now that the matter has been resolved.

I am glad your issue was resolved. I have been shopping, sometimes more seriously than others and GFK is one of the companies that I have never had issue with that was not easily and quickly resolved. I just wanted to add my perspective, for what it is worth, to the discussion as I wanted to make sure the people who read this in the future have the other perspective as well.

Sorry busy couple of days again. nycrocks... you should now see what we call a "payment additionals" on your shop log that shows it's $22 ($11 each for the 2 shops) that you were not previously paid. I am not sure if the payment file has already been pulled for this week or not, so that will determine if you get paid in 2 weeks or 3 weeks. I am sure you already know this but just in case you do not: when the shop status turns to "payment pending" that means the payment file has been pulled and is being worked on/processed. That's when you know your payment is just days away.

For anyone else who may read this and who completed a shop on this same program AND had this same issue, you should have the same thing on your shop log as well (pm if you do not). When I researched nycrocks issue, I did find some others who were affected too. So everyone should be getting paid in the same timeframe.

Again, thanks all for everyone's help! And please do keep pm-ing me if you need anything. I follow this topic every time I login here but yet I do not get notices unless I get a pm.

Thanks and have a great week,
Donna


Donna Goodwin
Operations Manager
GfK Mystery Shopping
GfK | 200 Liberty Street | 4th Fl | New York | NY | 10281 | United States
Donna.Goodwin@gfk.com
www.gfkmysteryshops.com

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2014 03:22AM by DonnaforGfK.

Ishamael, Dspeakes, and others,

We have the announcement on our login page now and I think "most" of the programs have been updated with new text. Let me know if the big red, bold, text is enough . We may have gone a bit overboard. I know it's on the wings program now and they were working on getting them on cell phone programs today.

Thanks again for the feedback. And to all the others who pm-d with some helpful info too!

Thanks,
Donna

Donna Goodwin
Operations Manager
GfK Mystery Shopping
GfK | 200 Liberty Street | 4th Fl | New York | NY | 10281 | United States
Donna.Goodwin@gfk.com
www.gfkmysteryshops.com

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2014 03:21AM by DonnaforGfK.

Shelly,

Sorry I did not see your comment before. Unfortunately I cannot explain why we cannot do it the way you suggest: the reason is proprietary. So, I will just say, unfortunately we cannot do it the way you are suggesting. But I wanted to let you know that I appreciate you trying to think about this in a different way and you even took the time to offer up a very good possible solution.

That's what makes these forums so fun too. Many times we all make comments, provide feedback, share info, that helps us and so many other people.

Thanks,
Donna


Shelly Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> What might be helpful to make sure shoppers get
> all the info is to have all the questions visible
> in the form and then those sections either
> collapse or auto fill with an n/a answer. I get
> that this would take a long time for the initial
> step up from a programming perspective, but would
> accomplish the same thing you are trying to do.
> Unfortunately, even with the warning, people are
> so used to not going there that people will miss
> it is the opposite of what so many companies do.
> This is probably especially true for the shopper
> who has done the shop a number of times and just
> doing a quick read through as a refresher.

dspeakes Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> nycrocks, you might consider editing your first
> post here to remove the word "swindle" and maybe
> replace it with "misunderstanding" now that the
> matter has been resolved.


Thanks for the suggestion. I have changed the title of the thread.