@BlueMoose wrote:
I followed the shop guidelines to the letter, the MSC denied payment, and I have no doubt whatsover that they sold the shop data to the client and simply pocketed the money.
I wish I had a dime for every time a new mystery shopper posted that he followed the guidelines to the letter and has no doubt his report is being used after being denied. And, of course, they never provide any details. Even though I have never had a report denied that was not due to me not following the guidelines, I used to anxiously watch the posts and ask questions to try to figure out which MSC and why it would have happened. And the result has always been that it didn't happen. The newbie did NOT follow the guidelines to the letter. Usually it involved a "little" mistake the newbie made that he thought didn't matter. Or something required that the newbie didn't feel like doing.
Reputable MSCs deal with thousands of mystery shoppers across the country. The cost of one mystery shop is a drop in the bucket. A mystery shopping company does not select one shopper and one report and say "Gee, we've been paying all our shoppers for the last ten years. Just for the heck of it, let's avoid paying BlueMoose and save a couple of bucks." When a company is paying thousands of shoppers, why would the company just randomly pick a shopper to rip off to save a couple of bucks at the cost of their reputation?
Go back and read the guidelines again, very carefully. What did you not do? And, if you think you did it just perfect, did you contact the company to discuss it? If you contacted the company, what did they say?
X2 to what SunnyDays said: Take responsibility. Learn from your mistakes.