Sentry never paid me for a shop and when I inquired, they never replied and deactivated me. I was completely professional and polite in all of my communication with them. I believe their practices are unethical. I shop for over 20 companies regularly and have been for over a decade. This is the only company that I have ever had trouble with.

Shopper5298

If you completed an assignment for our company and we published the shop to our client, you should be paid. Please contact me at dave@sentrymarketing.com and I will promptly review the circumstances of your situation to determine why payment was not made.

We have never withheld payment from a shopper for a completed assignment that resulted in a shop report being published to the client.

Thanks

Dave

Shopper5298,

Please contact me directly at dave@sentrymarketing.com so that your situation can be reviewed and resolved. If you completed an assignment for us and subsequently submitted a shop report that was sent to our client, you will be paid for the assignment.

Thanks

Dave

Shopper5298 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sentry never paid me for a shop and when I
> inquired, they never replied and deactivated me. I
> was completely professional and polite in all of
> my communication with them. I believe their
> practices are unethical. I shop for over 20
> companies regularly and have been for over a
> decade. This is the only company that I have ever
> had trouble with.

BillBryaninCarthage Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Do companies like Sentry that take a long time to
> pay up have cash-flow troubles?
> For instance, Cori paid me in a week. GFK pays
> fast. Market Force will pay by the 10th of the
> next month for a shop I did on the last day of the
> previous month.
> These are all big companies.
> Then I read about Sentry taking so long, and
> Cirrus. They are smaller companies. Perhaps they
> have taken out large loans and have more debt to
> pay. Perhaps they have high-overhead. Perhaps they
> want to pay their own salaries first.
> Just wondering why some pay fast and some pay
> slow.


They are in the mid-slow range as far as payment. One of the tradeoffs for Cori, GfK, Marketforce's fast payment is that you deal with low pay, very strict shop parameters, and outsourced employees, so... communication issues with editors and schedulers. It's also hard as hell to reach a real, live person who can help you in an issue with your shop. These companies have BIG name contracts, but they do not have strong relationships with those clients. If one thing goes wrong, they'd rather have a re-shop than push your shop through. If it's a really negative report... you don't have stellar chances of getting the shop accepted. They'd rather reject it than give to the client. That's not a mark of a strong client/MSC relationship.

I have found Sentry to have a fairly decent relationship with their clients. They will work with you, and with their client, to get your shop accepted even if your shop did not go 100% perfectly. This tells me that they at least have a strong relationship with the client.

I would not base judgment on a company on how fast they pay. It is only a small part of what makes an MSC good or great. Have a good mix of fast-paying, low-paying shops, medium-paying, mid-paying shops, and well-paying, slow-paying shops... and overall you will be very happy.

N/A



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/2014 04:00AM by Shop2LiveinFL.

S2L, my favorite MSC pays between 45-60 days too.

When I got my husband into mystery shopping, he was of the same mind as BillBryan. "Show me the easy, fast-paying shops!!" He wanted to do nothing but Cori, GfK, Marketforce shops. I actually had to sit him down and make up a mock shop spreadsheet of nothing but those fast-paying shops, for him, complete with locations, pay, reimbursements. I used real locations, real reimbursements, real fees. I even threw a couple bonuses into the mix. As we went down the list of these 30 fake shops, I had him write down times... shop time + travel time + report time.

I then showed him my spreadsheet for the previous month's shops. We went down that list, wrote down times. Shop time + travel time + report time.

For an extra 7 hours of shop time + report time, my 30 shops made 3 1/2 what his 30 shops did. Travel time does not really change much... the places are still going to be the same distance from our house and one shopping center will still be the same distance from another. It makes so much more sense to stay at a bank for 30 minutes, an extra fifteen minutes, and make 5x what he'd make on a Cori shop for fifteen minutes.

I then pointed out all of the cons of his plan. Marketforce only allows two FF shops per meal period. Most Cori, GfK, Marketforce shops require outlay, so he's going to be putting out a lot of money, eating a lot of fast food, and not making very much in fees. Since he wanted to get into mystery shopping to pay for man-toys, he needed to work for fees, not fast food.

He now does it my way. A good mix of everything.

Bbird you are right, I have cut down my Marketforce shops since Kern had me register with Maritz for a shop. And Maritz is always calling about shops they need done, I have gotten decent bonus shops out of them.

As for Sentry I have only done one shop for them. I read the documentation and the sample shops for it and missed one line somewhere. After the shop was rejected I reread everything but still could not find that line. At the time I thought the docs were confusing, this was years ago. I don't know how they are now, I am still registered and when a shop from them fits my work schedule I will grab it. Problem is I am a second shift/ weekend worker that kills a lot for me.

BBird0701 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They are in the mid-slow range as far as payment.
> One of the tradeoffs for Cori, GfK, Marketforce's
> fast payment is that you deal with low pay, very
> strict shop parameters, and outsourced employees,
> so... communication issues with editors and
> schedulers. It's also hard as hell to reach a
> real, live person who can help you in an issue
> with your shop. These companies have BIG name
> contracts, but they do not have strong
> relationships with those clients. If one thing
> goes wrong, they'd rather have a re-shop than push
> your shop through. If it's a really negative
> report... you don't have stellar chances of
> getting the shop accepted. They'd rather reject it
> than give to the client. That's not a mark of a
> strong client/MSC relationship.

Really? That hasn't been my experience at all. I had a FF shop for MF last fall where I spent 10 minutes in the drive thru and then forgot the receipt. They still pushed the report thru to the client and it had a $55 shop fee. So there goes your idea that MF FF shops pay less, that MF doesn't like negative reports, and that if something goes wrong they reject the report. All in the same shop. My average fee for MF shops last month was $36.60, so no, that $55 wasn't that much of an anomaly. On top of that one of those shops I accidently washed the receipts and was still allowed to submit the shop (and it was approved). And there are at least 3 live MF employees who know my number when it shows up on their caller ID. Admittedly I don't work a whole lot of gfk but my only shop for them last month was a wings shop with a $50 fee.

I think in your husband's case perhaps the problem was the type of shops he was doing and the fee he was accepting.

For me personally, I am very, very slow with narratives. I'm good at writing them, it just takes me a really long time. So for me the more narrative heavy a report is the more it needs to pay to get to the same per hour rate as a quick MF shop does.

Yep, really. I told him that MF can never be his bread and butter because over time, he will screw up multiple times. It happens to all of us. And when he hits so many screw-ups, clarification requests, etc...whatever their fancy algorithm decides, they will boot him and not think twice about it. Very few people get let back in after their algorithm kicks you out for writing too many negative reports, writing too many positive reports, getting contacted X amount of times for clarification requests, etc.

I've been with MF since I started shopping... they were my fourth or fifth MSC I signed up with... Eventually I am going to get booted too. I started scaling waaaay back on the number of shops I accept for them, and only when they are triple bonused or higher. I will, once in a blue moon, accept their casual burger shop at a low bonus when I am just in the mood for it, but that's very rare. I think this is lengthening my time with them, being very selective about the shops that I take.

Since he wanted to do pretty much nothing but Marketforce, GfK-type shops... I cautioned him on that, telling him that basically, the more he works for them, the higher his chances are of getting booted. I taught him to spread his shopping around so that if he got booted, he wouldn't be hurting for the shop money, and he'd have a good strong healthy relationship with plenty of other MSCs. Since this is an independent contractor business, he should have plenty of clients and not be so financially dependent on just one for income

I've found that GfK and Marketforce, err... how do I put this... DGAF about their shoppers. I'm very surprised that your receipt-less shop was pushed through.

I know what DGAF means! bad girlie, hahahah.

Love your post. Makes total sense.

I have been shopping only 2 years and in reading your posts I am surprised at the fees some of you say you are paid from MF and other fast food shops. I have slowed way down on accepting them because you can only eat so many burgers and fries and then have to do a report for them for $5.00 pay. How do you find great paying shops?

I travel further from my area to pick up great paying shops, since no one around here seems to want to do them. = lazy.