I've seen the bonuses as well. Still too much work for the money. Count every employee, stand near them. Go to 3 departments and ask stiff sounding silly questions. Find 3 other employees walking about and ask them a questions. Evaluate cashier and bagger. Do this all in the crunch hours of 4 to 8 pm. No thanks, I've had enough of them. I will do them on a Saturday or Sunday sometimes, because you have all day basically to complete.

Bonuses continue to go up but still have not reached my threshold for this shop.

yep

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2014 08:59PM by parkcitybrian.

I like the ones that Strategic Reflections has along with the ICCDS ones. Only one department to check and pay is about the same on each.

I saw these on the board, but they looked like the same shop that another MSC offered recently. The reimburse and pay were both higher, and they were still "just" enough to keep me interested. This is the only reason I am not requesting from the new MSC.

CRAP! I just accepted, not one, but two that are due tomorrow. I haven't even had a chance to print out the questions yet. At least, they are close and we need milk...and bread...and 4 other items.

TS keeps calling me, every day, multiple times a day, for these stupid shops. I'm at work during the day and can't answer my phone. One day I had 4 different TS folks call me 9 times!!!

I completed 6 grocery store Customer Service audits for Trendsource. The first took me 50 minutes of store time and 80 minutes of report prep.

After that, I hit the 30 minutes and 30 report time. Plus they add PAD for three of my shops. Not bad for a grocery shop.

Oh... Should have read here before accepting these grocery shops... Ack, took me an hour to complete and the form is just as bad! First walk through of the store was fruitless as I did the second walkthrough as suggested by the instructions there were lots more associates. Wondering why the two walk-throughs? I will hopefully be able to get these down a little in time, I accepted three... These are not worth it for only $5.00 pay. Yes, buying some groceries does help, but I do other grocery stores for more with lots less time.

I have learned to only do these if I actually need to pick up a few things as I only consider it as free groceries not as actual pay. If they are offering a decent pad I will do them also.

They called me to do a shop that is verrrry close to my home (about 1 mile) that needs to be done either today (Wednesday) or tomorrow (Thursday) between 4 pm and 8 pm and offered me the standard $14 ($5 shop fee + $9 reimbursement).

I got snookered into doing this a couple of weeks ago (no matter what anyone says it is quite labor-intensive with counting every employee in the store and interacting with 3 different employees and asking inane questions) and then a quite labor-intensive report.

All of this for a $5.00 fee?????????

I told the scheduler that I would do it for: $20 fee + the $9 reimbursement and please don't offer any counteroffer because I won't accept any less.

Hey folks...how about standing our ground on assignments like these.

I assume you didn't get the bonus you requested.

kenasch Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I assume you didn't get the bonus you requested.


Got a message about an hour ago and they are up to $22 ($13 fee plus the $9 for reimbursement) and they are still short $8.

And from my standpoint I'm about done with it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2014 04:08AM by parkcitybrian.

Joytron

How much was this assignment used to pay?

The pay was the same but the shop and report was much easier.

I did one of these just to see what they were like. I took the smaller grocery that I was going to visit anyway for my regular shopping. The shop is annoying but not hard. Its easy to mark notes on my "grocery list". The form takes way longer to fill out than it should. How friendly was everyone...? please describe.... jeezy.

The real joy I gained from the shop was being able to objectively call out the cashier for being a coupon nazi. Every single coupon she's asking the bagger to pull the item from my cart. She counted all the cans of dog food to make sure I bought the correct amount. She has to call the supervisor over to make sure it is ok to take the coupon. It says buy 12 of any but she got all different kinds... does that count? Not feeling very valued or appreciated at this point. And definitely not efficient.
*sigh*
That added some gratification to the small pittance provided for the shop. In my years of couponing, I have always wanted a way to call out this nonsense.

I did one of these on the last shop period for the $14 regular shop fee + $9 reimbursement + $40 bonus. Now that is definitely worth doing! It was an hour away from my home but they didn't know I was going to my boyfriend's house anyway and it was a half mile from that store.

lbw1000 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I did one of these on the last shop period for the
> $14 regular shop fee + $9 reimbursement + $40
> bonus. Now that is definitely worth doing! It
> was an hour away from my home but they didn't know
> I was going to my boyfriend's house anyway and it
> was a half mile from that store.




I have read all of the posts on this thread and I just have one question....did any of you leave the store feeling like you had been educated by the cashier?

I did a couple of discount grocery shops for a well known MSC. Pay was $5 and $4 reimbursement. Basically it is an out of stock audit with asking questions about an out of stock audit, customer service assessment, check the bathrooms, expiration dates, and more.

On my second shop, I listed more than 25 items out of stock. Report had only room for 10 and no other area to add on. Spent three days sending emails to MSC for additional items.

Sorry compared to this shop, Trendsource is a walk in the park.

I am so REGRET taking this assignment........
It was a really2 awful report with small pay..not worth IT

I try not to complain too much about MSC experiences because being a member of this board, I've read some things that make my experiences look like they should be considered blessings. But (there's always a "but"!), TS has really frustrated me on this one. Yesterday, they sent me an email offering me a PAD (bonus?) to shop a major grocery store location that I typically shop for them. The distance was further than I wanted to drive (although, not far enough to complain about!) but I was willing to go over there since I needed a few things from the store anyways. So, I went onto their site and found the shop but noticed that there was no mention of the PAD that they referenced in the email. So, I requested the shop and entered the request for the additional $$ and even put a note that I was requesting the PAD that was mentioned in an email that was sent to me. After that, I left to go complete some shops--because, that's what we do, right? While I was out, I saw an email that they had awarded me the shop and that I needed to go onto the site and confirm it. Since I was out shopping, I couldn't do it right then and there but figured I'd do it when I got home. A few hours later, I went on to confirm the shop and print out the paperwork. There's no shop. I go into my shops requested area and there's the shop but it's got me listed as a backup. The reason listed for why I don't have the shop assigned to me: someone else accepted it first. How can someone else accept the shop when it's been awarded to me?!

The kicker here is that I just (literally, JUST) got off of TS's website and a shop, at THAT location, is listed with a due date of today (which was the due date of the one that I was "awarded" yesterday). What???

I did only one of TS's grocery shops and it was because it has a large PAD bonus (also a $40 bonus as someone mentioned). It was a small store and it took me almost an hour of circling to find even half of the required employees, but some departments ended up with no employees during my time in the store. The grocery chain is overpriced and even buying just a couple things, I ended up spending way more than the $14. Honestly, unless the PAD is $100, I don't want to even consider another one of these.

New shops were recently posted and I picked up a few competitor shops. I'm avoiding the main client's stores (even though that's where I normally shop) because they're simply too much work for the money. The cool thing is that one of the stores isn't even a grocery store. It's a big box discount store with mostly dry, and a few fresh grocery items. No deli. No meat service counter. And, a very small produce area. For that, I'll take the normal fee.

tylerz - Often when they shoot out an email offering the shop for a nice PAD, it is sent to several people and first one to confirm gets the shop. I think if you go back and read the message they will tell you that in so many words.

I just saw one of these grocery shops come through with an $85 PAD. I was tempted but decided to pass. It isn't that I don't need the cash but just do not have the oomph to do all that the shop entails and the report to go with it.

Yesterday must have been some sort of deadline for the grocery shops. They were paying up to $100 in my area for the mainline grocery store! For $100 I would have done one or two, but I had other plans that I couldn't break.

I thought most cycles were monthly and fees typically went up toward the end of the month. For whatever reason, this one seemed to end yesterday in that the emails I saw were insistent that the shop be completed yesterday. One email even said, "Drop everything..."

I've done quite a few grocery shops for trendsource over the years and I think they've gotten a little easier than they used to be. They dropped a few things like counting the front end employees, documenting a front end manager, having to actually BUY something from the deli and a few other things. Now, I can easily do the shop while I'm shopping for groceries and it takes me maybe 10-15 minutes longer than usual. It's so easy.. you only have to evalute 5 people on the floor and 3 people at the service counters. And if your store doesn't have the service counters or enough people on the floor.. no biggie, you don't have to do it!! You evaluate all the employees the same and there aren't many things to look for, so it's easy to just stop and act like you're texting and records all the info. It takes about 30 seconds per person. AND... Trendsource just paid me a total of $75 to do ONE grocery shop the other day!!!!! They were really desperate.. So far, trendsource is my favorite company to work with by far!

Joytron Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Yesterday must have been some sort of deadline for
> the grocery shops. They were paying up to $100 in
> my area for the mainline grocery store! For $100
> I would have done one or two, but I had other
> plans that I couldn't break.
>

I will have to keep that in mind! A couple of weeks ago they called me and asked me to take a shop
THAT DAY and asked how much PAD I wanted. The store is less than 30 minutes away. I asked for $50.
Plus the fee and reimbursement. They didn't flinch. A couple of days later they called again about a location that would have taken me over an hour in rush hour traffic, so I asked for $200. They said they
would call some other auditors. Now I know that their cut-off is $100! (But I wouldn't have gone for
$100, anyway.)

Yup, Saturday was the cutoff date for the series, and Sunday began a new round. I did two on Saturday for $20 bonus each, and was offered another one for $30 but didn't have the time. I've never seen an $80 to $100 bonus though. There was one offered last round for $55 total. I would have taken it, but again it had already been awarded. That is one thing about them, they want you to confirm because they offer it to more than one shopper which makes sense from their business point of view, but seems unfair to us. Especially with the wordings like "Drop Everything!" Apparently the MSC's doubt that we have lives.

I've done the grocery shops for TS, and also many for another MSC. The ones from TS are so much easier, with less narrative. And the editors are less picky. I do wish they would change up the questions though. The desperate schedulers at the end of a round are also annoying, but I just say I'm unavailable, and they move on.

This is to several of the members that have been getting very low pay for shops. After a year or two of shops I smarten up. I do not apply for any shop that is less than $10.00. I had a list of 20+ companies that I applied to and when they all got smart and went online, you can go to their websites and apply for the better paying shops. The price of gas, insurance, and everything else, it is downright WRONG for the companies to expect us to continue to do the jobs for such low pay. I know most companies do NOT pay for mileage which makes it even worse. Fast Food places are trying to get $15.00 an hour, sorry, even I am smart enough to know if they get it most people will not be able to eat at the fast food places. I know that Michigan minimum wage is $7.40 an hour. Every time Minimum Wage goes up so does the cost of living. This whole system stinks! I have been married for 53 years, and when I went to the store I could get a basket FULL for $25.00, yea were only making like $60.00 a week in an insurance office, but we were able to live much better then we can now, even before I lost my full time job.

I still know that IF nobody does the cheap shops the marketing companies have to get them done or lose clients, they will offer bonuses to get them done. If they can pay $15 or $20 to get them done, and turned in late, it would be much smarter to pay more and get them done in a timely manner. Well that is my 2 cents.

Just be pickier, I know that in a lot of areas that you have no choice due to shortage of shops. You just do what you can to make a living. Like everyone else I like to be able to buy Rx and Food too.