No wonder they have a hard time scheduling a shop. Right now they are scheduling for May. They have a shop open and it says you must select a day before the 20th and it has to be a weekend. No problem. I selected the weekend of 10 & 11. The I get one of the auto emails that states I will notified after the 7th if I was selected. So I'm supposed to wait until a few days before to plan my schedule. Oh yeah, it may become available before then for self assignment so I should check. Just seems like a screwed up way to schedule but what do I know?

I just cancelled the request.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2014 02:03AM by gogogirl.

gogogirl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No wonder they have a hard time scheduling a shop.
> Right now they are scheduling for May. They have
> a shop open and it says you must select a day
> before the 20th and it has to be a weekend. No
> problem. I selected the weekend of 10 & 11. The
> I get one of the auto emails that states I will
> notified after the 7th if I was selected. So I'm
> supposed to wait until a few days before to plan
> my schedule. Oh yeah, it may become available
> before then for self assignment so I should check.
> Just seems like a screwed up way to schedule but
> what do I know?
>
> I just cancelled the request.



I shopped for them once, I swore that would never happen again. I have never seen a report that extensive in my life. Love the company, can't take the reports.

Oh i was just wondering about the report. I was thinking of applying but was thinking about how long the report would be. Thanks for the headsup pammie8223

ChineseChick Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Oh i was just wondering about the report. I was
> thinking of applying but was thinking about how
> long the report would be. Thanks for the headsup
> pammie8223


You are very welcome, however don't not try them because of me, since you know that the report is daunting take a shop, go have fun just be prepared to ask yourself over and over WHY???WHY????WHY???? As you are weeping at 2 in the morning lol!

But seriously it might not be that hard for you so don't let me discourage you from doing something that you may enjoy :-)

I have completed 4 shops for Amusement Advantage. Each time I ask myself why I subjected myself to this misery again. The reports are long and very detailed. Not just a single narrative but several. And there are specific instructions that you cannot repeat any comments.

Never again.

I enjoyed working with the company but the payment being tickets to return to an amusement spot does not typically work for me.

I cancelled the application for the shop and decided I would rather pay $25 for admission and not have to eat at 8 different places.

Sometimes it's a fine line between "worth it" and "definitely no way." Having to hold my weekend open until 3 days before would make almost any assignment less desirable for me. I also would not be motivated by payment in tickets to a future event.

The report length, the instruction length, and the fact that is comes out to a reimbursement only shop = I not doing it.

I applied over a week ago and when I checked yesterday the job was still open. I emailed last week asking what was going on and got a forward to the scheduler who never contacted me. I know they joined up in some fashion with Sentry a few months ago and this is the first time I ever contacted them without hearing directly from the owner so I wonder if that has something to do with the changes. Or else, the vendor has not yet decided whether they want their place shopped yet. This is one that usually starts in the spring. Many other vendors are already scheduled.

Remember too they are the ones who often require FOUR times in and out of the parking lot to get 4 different employees just in the lot. And that money comes out of your PROFIT. No thanks.

I guess you have different jobs. I have done quite a few different ones here where I live and none of them require you to enter the parking lot more than once. For this company the jobs which are in my area they give you a flat fee which is enough to do all of the required things with a small amount extra. If you happen to figure out how to get things cheaper you get to keep the difference. I use 2 for one coupons which is allowed for the venue and get to keep the extra. At the gift shop I will look at the sale table or if they have it buy a pencil to fulfill that requirement. For the food vendors I do a moving feast and buy one item at each vendor putting them together to become a meal.

They have the local Dome with BIG events often here.
Circus for example..... Every single one at that location they offer has the four parking lot rule.


sandyf Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I guess you have different jobs. I have done quite
> a few different ones here where I live and none of
> them require you to enter the parking lot more
> than once. For this company the jobs which are in
> my area they give you a flat fee which is enough
> to do all of the required things with a small
> amount extra. If you happen to figure out how to
> get things cheaper you get to keep the difference.
> I use 2 for one coupons which is allowed for the
> venue and get to keep the extra. At the gift shop
> I will look at the sale table or if they have it
> buy a pencil to fulfill that requirement. For the
> food vendors I do a moving feast and buy one item
> at each vendor putting them together to become a
> meal.

I have been considering doing a shop for them in my area, I was wondering about the paypal pay, does paypal take a % when companies use them as their payroll source? And if so does anyone know how much I will be charged thanks

Paypal does not take a fee for Amusement Adv.
Just got the job I applied for by the way and it does not include parking but this location has a free lot so no attendant to report on. I did a circus job for a different company last year. It was a lot of fun! At my venue parking was not one of the things I had to do so I took public transportation.

Hello and thanks for the interest and spirited conversation about our company. I wanted to clarify a few topics mentioned here and provide some additional information about our company that may not be common knowledge:

- When you request a shop that you are unable to self-assign in our system, our schedulers see your request right away and will review it right away you would likely be scheduled in the next 1-3 days if your dates met our requirements and there wasn't another shopper who requested it with either better dates or a higher grade in our system. Immediately after we release a new shop for the following month we will also wait up to 7 days to conduct our fast past of scheduling of all shops. So the 7th day that was reference here is the 7th day after the shop was released, not the 7th of the following month. We would never expect someone to keep a weekend open for us beyond say 1-7 days from when they put in a request. Generally speaking you can assume if you haven't heard back on a request within 7 days that you weren't scheduled, but you can manually check if a shop is still open anytime by just logging back in and searching the open shops. We do keep all requests for the entire month so that if we have a cancellation we can contact those other shoppers who requested the shop to see if they are still available based upon their earlier request.

- Many shops can be self-assigned by shoppers with experience with our company or who have MSPA certification. Some shops however are never eligible for self-assign by new shoppers or any shoppers depending upon the client. We don't generally schedule shops past the 20th until we are past the 20th of that month or when clients specifically request dates past the 20th. - The length of the report is often commensurate with the pay or reimbursement provided. We do require extensive narrative, but most shoppers find the report get's much easier to complete with additional experience and understanding of what we are looking for.

- Our shops typically involve reimbursement of expenses (for a fun time at an attraction) or free tickets because our clients what us to utilize shoppers who are or would be normal customers of a location and are genuinely interested in going there for the experience and not just going to make a buck on the shop. We generally do not provide a large profit type payment to discourage individuals aren't interested in the actual experience at the location, but instead simply looking to make money as they are not as objective and do not represent the clients target market.

- We work with many, many different types of exciting clients all across the US and Canada including different attractions and vendors who service or manager various operations at different attractions. Even if we don't have something in your area right now, chances are we will have something near you in the summer as the number of shops we offer typically doubles in the summer due to our many seasonal clients. Sometimes there will be unique requirements of a shop such as multiple food purchases or more than one parking or gift purchase. All shops include some type of reimbursement for all required expenses whether that be direct monetary reimbursement or a trade of additional free tickets (typically worth far more than the cost of the required purchases). When multiple food items must be purchased they don't all have to be consumed, just at least tasted. Please understand, clients request unique requirements for their shops to understand or focus on specific areas of their operations. The better we are able to provide them with actionable data that is critical to their operations, the happier we are and the more shops they give us and the more clients in turn we have the opportunity to partner with through referrals and industry references. This in turns allows us to offer more and more amazing and fun shopping assignments.

- We did previously have a recruiting partnership with Sentry Marketing to encourage shoppers from both companies to also sign up with the other company if they weren't already. We have no direct affiliation with Sentry Marketing, but again do encourage everyone to sign up with both Amusement Advantage and Sentry Marketing directly.

- We pride ourselves in providing prompt friendly service to all shoppers through our dedicated and extremely available project manager schedulers. You can always email the scheduler assigned to an open shop right from the job posting in our system with any questions. Please don't hesitate to follow up with a scheduler if you feel you don't hear back in a timely manner. We expect our schedulers to always respond in proper timeframes. You can also call us anytime 9am-midnight eastern time 7 days a week with urgent questions about an assignment you are currently scheduled on.

- We provide fast, flexible payment options via PayQuicker (10-17 days), PayPal (21-28 days) and checks (45-60 days). The fee's taken by PayQuicker and PayPal will vary based upon the actions you do with funds in their systems, but in general you won't be charged a fee just to transmit the money into their systems.

- Even if our shops aren't for you, we encourage you to apply in our system and earn $10-20 for each new referral you can provide to our company. Our enhanced referral program allows you to submit your referrals directly on our website and we email your referral and encourage them to apply explaining to them that you referred them and tracking the referral so you can automatically be issued a payment when they complete their first shop. We also offer those individuals interested in doing higher-volume recruiting with the opportunity to become Recruiting Partners and have access to additional tools and resources to supplement their income as a recruiter.

Hopefully I have answered a number of questions about our company, but please don't hesitate to advise if you have more questions and we look forward to working with you on an exciting shop near you soon!

Scot A. Carson
General Manager

Amusement Advantage
www.amusementadvantage.com

*REFERRAL PAY* - Refer friends, family and co-workers and earn $10-20 for their first shop!

Thanks Scot for your reply. It did clear up some things for me.

jan37 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have completed 4 shops for Amusement Advantage.
> Each time I ask myself why I subjected myself to
> this misery again.
> Never again.


I definitely chuckled when I read this. I have a lot of respect for Scot, but I have never had to work so hard for such a limited reimbursement. I withdrew as a shopper a couple of months ago. I just wished their reimbursement/pay schedule was commensurate with the amount of work involved for their reports.

I haven't done any shops for them but an experience with a scheduler soured me. I signed up for an event maybe ~3 weeks before it was due and was told it was filled, and asked if I could do it another weekend. I said no, and assumed that was the end of it, the equivalent of a "shop closed" from a Sassie system shop. So I was very surprised when in the very early morning of the day I requested the shop I get it assigned to me. Nothing makes my blood boil more than schedulers who assume I can drop what I'm doing and re-schedule for them. After I told the scheduler I could not do that shop (which would take the better part of a day, it wasn't just a hop, skip and a jump over) she asked if I could do it the following Sunday. Which was a holiday that many people spend with their family.

Schedulers, if you want me to do a shop for you, PLEASE confirm me at least a day or two ahead of time.

scotc1t Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> We generally do not
> provide a large profit type payment to discourage
> individuals aren't interested in the actual
> experience at the location, but instead simply
> looking to make money as they are not as objective
> and do not represent the clients target market.

Scot -
Thanks for the excellent explanation of your company's policies and practices. Kudos to you for refraining from defensiveness and offering a reasoned response.
I would respectfully challenge you, however, on the rationale provided for the relatively low pay or value-in-kind reimbursement policy. Based on your explanation, it would seem that you or your clients are looking for the perspective of already committed patrons, which I would think would be sympathetically skewed towards the positive. Would there not be great value in seeking the perspective of those who may not be de facto favorably inclined towards the clients' offerings? Further, might not low pay negatively impact the objectivity of the shopper?
As an example, a nearby AA venue requires admission of one adult, one child, parking and a purchase, a minimum of four hours on site, and about three hours of reporting. Out of pocket expenses are conservatively $40, with total pay being $55 if the report is filed by 10 a.m. the next day. While I may enjoy providing the child the experience, my enjoyment of the four hours on site would certainly be degraded by the 16 required interactions and observations, those four hours on site being more like work than play for me, with another three hours of narrative writing waiting for me at home, leaving me with, at most, $15 in my pocket.
In the end, completely not worth it to me, and my objective observations will thus not be contributed to this project. Then whose perspectives will be collected? To those who already love the venue, who would be repeat patrons of the venue anyway, and who go into it already seeking the positive. If the client is looking to enhance the experience of current customers, then perhaps this is an effective payment strategy. However, if the client wants the perspective of the ambivalent or neutrally inclined (with a goal of converting them to return customers), then I don't know that the compensation strategy is effective.
I'd welcome any response, Scot, and thanks again for taking the time to explain the practices and procedures of Amusement Advantage to the benefit of us shoppers.

In response to elcarev68, personally I do shops for this company and enjoy them. There are a few I have done and found it difficult to find the information needed so I have not done those again. I do not go to these venues often, in fact most of them I went to once or twice before. And having a season pass does not save money as you are usually required to purchase a ticket. But I do generally enjoy the types of venues AA has. I feel I can be completely objective in the mystery shop. I am not being asked if I enjoyed the day but instead the regular service related questions I get in all mystery shops. I recently did a mys shop for a high end restaurant I have liked and thought I would like again. The service was just awful, the food was mediocre at best and not worth the higher cost for a dish I could have gotten at half the price elsewhere. I was happy to be the mystery shopper so I could report these findings to the client and could be objective. Had I not been a regular customer of higher end restaurants I would not have known what the service could have been like. The same is true for AA type shops. A true mystery shopper knows what the client is looking for and can distinguish between good and bad service even in a place they enjoy. If my ice cream was soft and melted when I got it my response would not be colored by the fact that I loved the venue. I do not take the shops that pay with additional free tickets only since my family is grown up now and these places are an hour + drive away so visiting them once in a while on a mystery shop would be enough for me. I only take the type with reimbursement. But when my kids were little I might have done one for tickets so I could take the whole family and kid's friends on a later date with my "pay" thereby saving, as Scot said, a lot more than the reimbursement jobs pay.
Now I will leave the floor to Scot who gives eloquent responses.

Just saw a posting for our local zoo. $130 reimbursement but you have to evaluate 3 gift shops, 11 (yep, eleven, that's not a typo) food vendors, parking, yada yada. It states you should spend 5-6 hours at the zoo, and then 3-4 hours on the report.

This has got to be a joke, right? IKEA is starting to sound like a better option lol

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/01/2014 12:56AM by Phoebe70.

Hi all,

I am a new poster on this forum but an old shopper - been shopping since 2003.

I have only done one shop for this company, but it was a pleasant experience. The scheduler emailed me back promptly with answers to my questions. The report was not too bad, a little long but not as long as some I have done. They thanked me for my report and gave me 100. Everyone I communicated with was really nice. I would definitely deal with them again, they treated me like a real person and I appreciate that. They paid me quickly, I have already been paid and did the shop at the end of March.

I do several shops a year for AA. I get paid on time and the reports are not really that difficult once you get the hang of them. They are graded quickly and feedback is posted by the schedulers on shop boards so other schedulers get to know you for referrals.

I have a 6 year old grandson now and the ticket reimbursement shops are going to pay for his birthday party at a nearby attraction. It is a venue I would not normally visit more than once or twice a year. I remain objective with the vendors I have to visit and I have gotten very good at taking pictures with my cell phone.

I did a couple of assignments for Amusement Advantage a few years ago. At the zoo, there was so much to do that most of our time there was me saying, "Now we have to go ____." It was work, not play. There was little time left with the day, and I had to rush home to do the paperwork. Our family had been to the zoo many times. We also had a museum trip. It was more enjoyable but it was a type of museum that doesn't have enough change for a person to go often. So I have not requested another AA assignment. At this point, I am between having young children and having anyone else I can take to the zoo or museum. My husband and I work hard and rarely have time for things like that. I agree that if the pay were better or the questions more simple, I would try to find a way to take the assignments.

The reports are really not that bad. The first time you do a particular venue, it always takes longer. I have done many theme park type jobs for many MSPs over the years. You need a plan of attack. You have to plan out a strategy. I research the venue, determine a time line and sometimes, print out the forms.

One year, I had so many tickets left over for the amusement park, I took 15 teenage boys for my son's birthday party.

Scot is always available (any time pretty much) for questions. I doubt that he remembers, but he had an assignment where I completely fried my eyes in chlorine and had to get a driver to come pick me up and drive me home. I could not see, much less type that night. I didn't get the early bonus, but he was fine letting me get it in the next day. So, if he ever needed me to go the extra mile on an assignment, I would.

I haven't done much for them lately, as I have to pick and choose my jobs. I rarely do anything that has a fee lower than $25 (that includes casual dining). I'd rather do one job that pays $50 than 5 jobs that pay $10. My kids enjoy the jobs, and they are seasoned shoppers. They will go up to the team members and ask questions on demand. We get there early and stay late so there is plenty of time to do what we want to do in addition to asking the zillion questions. The jobs are really not that bad. It's not like filling out a fine dining shop for Coyle or anything like that.

Has anyone ever received a job from AA? I have been applying since April. What do you need to get up front with this company?

I am a Project Manager/scheduler for AA. We get many requests for our shops and we do try to be fair when scheduling. We look at a lot of criteria when having to schedule such as availability, shopper history, client needs, etc. Please email me and I can try to assist you in getting scheduled! Thanks!
Erika@amusementadvantage.com

I have experienced both positives & negatives with Amusement Advantage. I applied for an amusement park shop & promptly declined it when I discovered the reimbursement was only tickets to the amusement park. We are season pass holders & I did not want the extra tickets. I have been able to negotiate higher payment with other MSCs & thought I could negotiate with AA. I was wrong & that was fine; no hard feelings. It was worth a try though! I received an email from an AA employee asking why I had applied for the shop if I didn't like the reimbursement. I explained to the emailer my reasoning & everything was fine. The emailer was understanding, polite, & professional. Then about an hour later, I received another email from a different AA employee asking the same thing, but in a much ruder manner. I repeated my reasoning & referred to the email I had just sent to the previous AA employee before this email. I received an incredibly rude response. I was basically told that I "wasted their time" & I was treated as if I was an idiot. I guess my time isn't valuable, only theirs. I only complete shops for AA that offer a monetary reimbursement & I'm totally fine with that! I do think that their bowling shops that require the name of EVERY employee you interact with, even if the employee isn't wearing a name tag, to be a bit ridiculous. Over time, I have developed ways of obtaining the employees' names, but I still think it's ridiculous. I'm not a fan of having to risk my shopper identity just to complete a shop. Especially when that risk includes non-payment!

I sent an email and I am reaching out to you. I am willing to see if we can build a working relationship.