Does anyone else find Maritz Research irritating to work for?

Most people

It is definitely different than the rest.

Thanks guys, glad to know it's not just me!

I've been thinking about registering with them since they're advertising shops in my area. What's so irritating about them?

oh were do we begin. Ok I'll start they don't normally bonus till the shop is a few days from deadline or past deadline and most of their base rates are not worth it.

They're technologically inept in practically every way possible. The ladies are super sweet but there's a wide gap between the ones that can be helpful and the ones that just have no idea what they're doing. You have to fight for every nickel but when they commit, they commit.

The one thing I've come to realize about Maritz is that they're very trustworthy and forgiving, but you have to "pay" for those qualities in annoyance and frustration.

I disagree with everyone about Maritz. They keep me so busy with bonused shops I don't have much time leftover for other companies. I find almost everyone nice to work with.

Technolgoically inept? I look forward to their many calls, especially the ones where the scheduler tells me to wait because the computer that they are using has frozen up. I like waiting... and waiting, for the computer to come back on line, because I get to enjoy the uncomfortable silence while we wait...

The thing I find most annoying about them is their constant haggling. Offer to do a shop for $20 when they're willing to spend $30 to get it done and they'll still try to talk you down to $10.

They're good folks for me, I've been shopping with them for 20 years now.

No bonuses to speak of in my area. But they call me constantly to tell me about shops that have been sitting on the board for weeks, which I have consciously ignored - too far, too little money, etc. They tell me all about the shop and urge me to let them assign it to me - at the current rate - telling me all their "other" shoppers are willing to drive a long way for no bonus "because they want to help us out." They seem to be able to say it with a straight face, and the same conversation is repeated over and over with the same reps, who seem to have no memory of having the conversation with me ever before. Go figure.

Maybe a lot of shoppers in my area agree to help them out. I'm in it for the money. They seem quite confused when I ask if they are willing to work for a dollar and a half an hour.

I'm glad that some folks are in areas where they can get lots of bonused shops and do well with Maritz. There are lots of shops in my area, but the base pay is pretty awful and only rarely does Maritz have to add bonuses that would make the shops worthwhile. I guess there are quite a few folks in my area who are willing to work for well below my state's minimum wage (currently $9.15/hour, headed up to $10.10 by 2017). Maritz has nice people and an antiquated website and system. If the money worked for me, I'd put up with it. But so far only a few jobs have been worth it for me.

@jilummer wrote:

Technolgoically inept? I look forward to their many calls, especially the ones where the scheduler tells me to wait because the computer that they are using has frozen up. I like waiting... and waiting, for the computer to come back on line, because I get to enjoy the uncomfortable silence while we wait...

I like it because it allows me to finish my lunch while I'm on the phone. I just nom nom nom while they're sitting in silence on the other end.

Even better is how if you get a job sent back, the email says to call and ask for an editor but when you ask for an editor they tell you that editors don't talk to shoppers.

@Cettie wrote:

They're good folks for me, I've been shopping with them for 20 years now.

I think that their schedulers are some of the nicest people that I have ever had to deal with. They don't bother me too much with extra questions that are already in the report and they are consistent. Now they could get a better system of payroll the submitting the report with the receipt then submitting the receipt again can be a bit tedious if you are doing a lot of shops in a day but other than that, they are okay with me.

They are very nice people, but I think some of their closets are short a few hangers, if you catch my drift.

I don't like many of their assignments, but the schedulers are very nice. I had a full day of image audits for them, and the scheduler called to check on me to see if I were doing okay or if I had any questions.

I like that they pay quickly. I like that they willing to reschedule shops, and they are understanding about it. When they have shops that I enjoy, I find that the pros outweigh the cons for me.

They sweetly ask how much of a bonus I would have to get to do XYZ shop in a certain location quite some distance away and I reply with "oh $300 plus the fee and reimbursement would do it" and then 5 minutes later give me a return phone call saying "it's yours". I was rolling down my driveway less than 10 minutes later to go do it.

I am with Cettie, I enjoy the phone calls. Brenda called and asked how much I would need, I told her the same $65.00 incentive I got the last time. She called back moments later, and said our fee is lower this time, would you want the exact same amount. I told her yes, same distance. Though I did not get the shop, Brenda did call back and tell me she found someone else to do it. I appreciated the call back, and told her so.

I love Maritz. What other company gives out their phone number and actually has people there to answer it? Yes, they're a bit behind the times but I find it a refreshing change from the impersonal emails and the non-answers I get from most other companies I try to contact.

I've gotten huge bonuses for remote shops and the two times I made a mistake (shopped wrong bank once and the wrong time period on a gas station) they did not deactivate me over it as some other companies might have done. The shops and reports are simple. The pay is on time. The people on the phone are nice, respectful, and helpful and if they don't know an answer they find someone who does.

If you don't like Maritz -- don't shop for them. I have companies I don't like and I just don't shop for them. I don't come here and bash them. There are over 200 companies to shop for. If you don't like one, ignore it, don't bash it. Different strokes for different folks. One size does not fit all.

I don't think anyone in this thread is really "bashing" Maritz. I think Maritz could improve their computer systems and the schedulers at Maritz agree that they can be improved. I agree with complaints about haggling over bonuses. It wastes time. They instead could publish the bonus the supervisor is willing to pay on their job board and be done with it, instead of trying to find a shopper who will do the job for less than what they will pay for the job.

Here is a case in point. I just submitted an invoice for a gas station audit. The job was accepted for $11 and came with a $12 bonus. The job was "evening elligible" so if it was done at night, Maritz agreed to add another $5 to the job. I performed the job at night. So my total payment for this job should be $28 (not including the fuel and merchandise reimbursement).

When I submitted my invoice, the only incentive that Maritz' system shows me is $5 for the night time incentive. Nowhere does their system show me the original $12 incentive. So when I submitted my invoice a moment ago, the Maritz system tells me that my shop only pays $16, and not the $28 dollars it should pay. This is because the nighttime bonus of $5 replaces the $12 bonus in the database field that I can see.

When I call their accounting department, I am always told that "they can see both incentives" but the system won't allow me to see both incentives when I submit an invoice.

Why not? Why can't they just fix their system so that when I submit an invoice I see the total amount?

It is frustrating and should be simple to fix. But I was told that it's up to their programmers to fix it.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/2015 04:51PM by jilummer.

Yeah so if those "other" shoppers are willing to drive a long way for no bonus then why aren't they calling them instead of me? Honestly, I was getting so many calls for shops in another state that I went in and deleted my cell number because that's what they started calling when I didn't answer my home phone.

@AustinMom wrote:

telling me all their "other" shoppers are willing to drive a long way for no bonus "because they want to help us out." They seem to be able to say it with a straight face, and the same conversation is repeated over and over with the same reps, who seem to have no memory of having the conversation with me ever before. Go figure.

Maybe a lot of shoppers in my area agree to help them out. I'm in it for the money. They seem quite confused when I ask if they are willing to work for a dollar and a half an hour.

Kimmie - I have actually asked them why they didn't call the other shoppers, and they told me that they had called the other shoppers, but they weren't available. This reminds me of a VERY old joke.

A woman goes to her butcher shop and looks at the price tag on the sirloin steak (it reads $0.45 / lb, it is a very old joke).
Woman to butcher: "Why is your sirloin steak priced at $0.45 a pound? The butcher down the street is selling it for $0.35 per pound."
Butcher to woman: "Why didn't you buy it from the butcher down the street?"
Woman to butcher: "The butcher down the street is out of sirloin steak."
Butcher to woman: "Well, when I am sold out of sirloin steak, my price is $0.25 per pound."

i thought their merger with that cx company was going to take them into
the 21st century from the 18th centruy.

A lot of this really is nit picking. It's not Maritz hate, it's just water cooler talk about how Maritz could improve.

I think part of the "hate" is that they have so many shops that would otherwise be enjoyable, or at least worthwhile. If their shops sucked (and some do, don't get me wrong) then there wouldn't be any "hate." It would be kind of like the Swedish meatball company. We just laugh at them because they don't have shops we would do even if they didn't suck.

@jilummer wrote:

I agree with complaints about haggling over bonuses. It wastes time. They instead could publish the bonus the supervisor is willing to pay on their job board and be done with it, instead of trying to find a shopper who will do the job for less than what they will pay for the job.

They would make more money in the long run. They probably spend $20 in labor for every $10 they save on multiple calls and calling every shopper.

@jilummer wrote:

I don't think anyone in this thread is really "bashing" Maritz. I think Maritz could improve their computer systems and the schedulers at Maritz agree that they can be improved. I agree with complaints about haggling over bonuses. It wastes time. They instead could publish the bonus the supervisor is willing to pay on their job board and be done with it, instead of trying to find a shopper who will do the job for less than what they will pay for the job.

You're new here. there has been plenty of Maritz-bashing, insults against the schedulers, calling them dinosaurs because they prefer the human touch to an impersonal technology, maybe not so much on this thread per se, but plenty of other threads.

It's ironic that you state nobody in this thread is bashing them, and then you proceed to criticize them on every aspect of their business. It's their business model, either work with it or don't. But if I were a Maritz scheduler and saw some of the comments made here by people who shop for them I think I'd be making a list and putting those names at the bottom of my "bonus shop" phone call list.

Think about this: if they did just post the bonuses for all the world instead of selectively offering them to their best shoppers, what would happen? Yup, all those incompetent people who flaked the job at $10 would jump all over those shops and then flake them at $50. The bonuses are offered by phone to people they know will be reliable and not flake. The purpose of a bonus isn't to get the job "taken" it's to get the job "done right."

Their business model works for them. They have no reason to have a business model that works for a bunch of complainers who think they shouldn't have to talk to human beings on the phone and should get bonuses just because they want them.

Indeed, their business model does seem to work for them. I have discovered from experience that if I attempt to highball them, they will blow me off and still get the job assigned by brute-force phone calling. They have rarely had to come back to me begging me to get a job done at my offering price. If I offer to do a job for $75, they will have one of their $12/hour schedulers carpet-bomb the phone directory for 2 hours and will find someone to do the job for $50, and they will be in the black. Folks, this is the essence of capitalism. Sure, they have some obvious issues (lack of coordination among teams and inadequate investment in technology), but overall I respect their adherence to a core corporate mission. They are my favorite MSC since I was deactivated from Market Force.

I had massive frustrations with their website not working right, and only after the CX merger. Prior to that I had several shops I woudl enjoy doing for them - low paying, but easy and no purchase. What happened was the website kept erasing my answers, even after saved properly.

Literally, when I went to review all my answers before submission, they would look fine, then I hit submit and it comes back saying "You did not answer <a huge list of questions>." After several frustrating repeats, I noticed it was all the "No" answers - changed to unanswered, as if no selection was ever made. I go back, reselect, get to the review and all is there. Hit submit and it stops me saying all these questions aren't unanswered. Finally the last shop I did, I submitted incomplete and emailed them (Second time - First time was to notify that I was having this issue and ask how to resolve it - no answer). I let them know again of the issue, that all "unanswered were a 'no' and offering them screenshots of the issue in progress. I got no reply and the shop was removed without pay, no return email on it ever. I was pretty pissed.
Anyone else have that same issue?

Then I just got an email about a week ago telling me that my EIN is invalid (after all these years?) And that they need documentation. It is not invalid. I've double checked. They almost make it sound like I've been fraudulent. I'll scan my official IRS EIN letter and upload it on the site for proof, but I'm not putting it as a high priority on my Mystery Shopping To Do List.