I am royally ticked....

First my girlfriend gets one of these Philipines calls from market Force, offering her an assignment 35 miles away to do a 12 hour reset and inventory on cards at a store. We ask how much they are willing to pay... The outstanding reply.... $8 for the completed assignment! Not an hour... No drivetime or mileage added.... Just $8.00 for the completed assignment. I told them we have gone and done these assignments before, but we require a different sum, and we told them the amount we have been paid to go this distance before... They say they cannot pay mileage, they can only pay the $8.00 for the completed assignment.

I called MF(good acronym, BTW) and pressed the usual "4" to get to scheduling.... I get a new recording that said there is nobody to take my call, and it wouldn't even let me leave a phone number... I called HelpDesk, and was told, "Yes, we are using an office in the Philipines to schedule our jobs now." I told them what occurred within the call, and was told that I must be mistaken. I told them that I was not that it was confirmed several times during the call, and I asked to have my number placed on "Do not call" from any and all out of the country schedulers. I was told it would be done. My GF and I share a phone number.

Guess who got a call this evening from the Philipines with the same MF offer... OK, get your minds out of the gutter, MF stood for Market Force. lol

Yep you got it.... ME!!! And the exact same offer they gave my GF earlier!!! $8.00 for the completed assignment and no travel fees... I told them, "Maybe in the P{hilipines, you don't have to pay for gas, and you work for $0.50 an hour, but I don't and neither does my GF. You need to look at what I usually get paid to go that far out before making insulting offers to me."
They say, "Ok hold on and let me look." They come back on the line saying, "Yes we see you used to get bonuses for making this run, but we cannot do that anymore... Oh, wait... I see you don't take calls from the Philipines........"

Can you say "Awkward?" I then yelled, "Then why waste my time and yours with these insulting offers." and slammed the phone down.

This is getting worse and worse. I filed a complaint with MF's VP over this BS. I hope they fire these I D TEN T's (IDIOTS)

Quisim....life is too short to get all worked about about this. I would suggest the serenity prayer. All you have to say is "no thank you" or just not answer their calls. The area codes are pretty obvious. I am not sure how long you have been mystery shopping but deep breaths and a good sense of humor makes this so much more pleasant.

I did many shops for Market Force last year and liked working for them, but this year, I cannot connect with a scheduler and plan a month's worth of shops as I have done in the past. In addition, there is no pay for the grocery shops anymore, just a few dollars for reimbursement. I am not sure that I'll be doing much shopping for them this year.

Companies constantly change the way they do things in an effort to do better. It's not personal, it's business. If their program doesn't work with my program right now, the best thing I can do is maintain the status quo and not draw negative attention to myself. There will be more changes along the way and I may want to work with them again. That would not be personal. That would be good business.

which is why i stop doing any work for any companies mf buys each year. They are the bottom of the barrel. Good for someone starting in the industry to learn the basic ropes, but nothing more.

I agree the offers they call with are insulting, and they do bug the crud out of you. But try not to get worked up. Notice the 925 area code and skip the call. You don't need the aggravation!

My problem is 925 is a local number for me. I can't just avoid it!

The thing that drives me batty is when they call with purple portal assignments, but identify themselves as Market Force. I am not interested in the merchandising side of things, but get calls nearly every day for these assignments.

Today I answered one of these calls, and declined a shop offer. She wanted to know why, "for my records." I stated that this was my first day off of work in 2 weeks and I have no intention of leaving the house for a job in another city today. She seemed shocked by this answer.

Oaklandshopper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Today I answered one of these calls, and declined
> a shop offer. She wanted to know why, "for my
> records." I stated that this was my first day off
> of work in 2 weeks and I have no intention of
> leaving the house for a job in another city today.
> She seemed shocked by this answer.

The asking "why" infuriates me. I usually just say "because I said so" or "it's none of your business."

I got a call from them at 8:59 SUNDAY MORNING! I heard her out, told her that I will decline, that I do not appreciate an early Sunday morning call - then promptly went to remove my phone number from my profile.

I never want to receive calls - email me and I will get right back to you.
Sheesh!LOL!

I got a call at 8:23 on a Sunday morning once and a 9:45 p.m. on a Saturday night. I didn't answer the early morning call, but I did answer the nighttime call. All I said was "Are you kidding me, calling at 9:45 at night?" and hung up. I'm generally a nice, polite person, but calls from MF brings out my nasty side.

o

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2017 10:46PM by cosj.

If you are tired of getting lowball offers from this company, why even be registered with them in the first place?

I USED to have an awesome scheduler who gave me $30 for every ff shop I did that was out of town. If I was heading out on a route, I could call or text and she would set me up with about $120 worth of easy 15 min. shops. I would also be able to do more than one shop per meal period because these were hard to shop areas. That is a thing of the past. I have no idea what happened to her. I never get answers to my calls, texts or emails. I assume she was replaced by the Philippines schedulers. I don't shop for them much anymore unless I need to eat lunch anyway. It is very hard to go from $30 to $5 a shop. When I got a call from the Philippines they told me this shop could never be bonused more than $6. I informed them that I had a shop offer from Samantha offering me $10 for the same location. The guy had the nerve to tell me that wasn't true and there was no such thing as "Shop offers from Samantha" so I told him I would just go to my email and schedule it online myself for the $10. I hung up and immediately went online to look it up, clicked on the link in my email and had a message saying I was no longer eligible for the shop! There are no other shoppers in that particular area, I truly feel this guy got ticked and banned me from the shop.

Funny, I must be lucking out. I do shops for MF and have never received a call from them.

All the calls I receive have been from people in the US at reasonable times. I love negotiating a nice bonus.

I only receive calls from GA for the blue. Sounds like the problems are with the purple portal shops. In 3 years, I have only recieved one call about work for the purple portal and she said she was calling from Market Force. As soon as I found out it was for certified, I told her I don't do those shops. The person who called did not have a foreign accent and there was no canned speech.

Save the obscenities for MF management. Those people in the Philippines are just doing what they're told and trying to make a living like the rest of us.

Meanwhile, do what I do. Don't answer your phone if you see a long distance number you don't recognize. Then check your voicemail after (the callers usually leave a message) and press delete. Problem solved.

Oaklandshopper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My problem is 925 is a local number for me. I
> can't just avoid it!
>
> The thing that drives me batty is when they call
> with purple portal assignments, but identify
> themselves as Market Force. I am not interested
> in the merchandising side of things, but get calls
> nearly every day for these assignments.
>
> Today I answered one of these calls, and declined
> a shop offer. She wanted to know why, "for my
> records." I stated that this was my first day off
> of work in 2 weeks and I have no intention of
> leaving the house for a job in another city today.
> She seemed shocked by this answer.

This is why you need to put down an all zeros phone number. I use a magicjack number and they all just go to voicemail. I can feel my blood pressure rising everytime these people call and waste my time, so I never answer them anymore. Mine always come from a 571 number.

I spent the weekend in the hospital and missed my deadline on 2 simple jobs on the purple portal. When I checked on Tuesday they had "deactivated" my account. No phone calls or emails from them checking on me. I sent an email and they said my account is deactivated "due to your cancellation history". I think the only other time I cancelled a job was about 3 or 4 years ago when they changed the date on a project and I had a prior commitment and couldn't do the new date. Yes, I won't miss the evening and weekend calls either. I do like them when they have a big bonus, but those jobs were few and far between. I won't drive 15 miles for $4 or $5. I love the Blue portal. They are a little bit more reasonable and give you the opportunity to reschedule a job. I do this kind of work because it's flexible but don't understand how 2 differrent divisions of the same company can be so different. The puple portal East coasters are very rude!!

Shop 'N Check was a different company from Certified about 3 years back (someone will correct me if I'm off a year or two). Three msc merged at the time and the name was changed to Market Force. The third company involved was using sassie and (senior moment) I can't think of the name. They were the one who had the cafe shops and roller skating ff. Certified was a good company to do work for and the pay was reasonable. I had some really interesting jobs like taking pictures of signs of shopping malls and writing down all the store names. I also did liquor audits that paid extremely well. I still love the blue portal and parying I don't get deactivated. I don't do any work for the purple portal.

When I started shopping around 5 years ago, I did MF shops like grocery, liquor, baby clothes, pet stores.
I had no problems.
I like that they have an invoice - it helps with recordkeeping. I have my first MF shop tomorrow since coming back from hiatus. This is after the merger so kind of like a brand new company for me. We'll wait and see how it goes. I have yet to be paid for any of my shops done in April (4 companies).

k

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2017 10:44PM by cosj.

I never had an issue with Market Force that I didn't solve with a couple of e-mails. Oh, they took me off the FF I was doing regularly, and I never found out why, but other than that they have been fair and honest.
Certified is another story. I was doing a fair amount of merchandising for them and enjoyed most work. But, their estimates of times for work got out of hand, and every job took 2x or more than they said it would. I asked to be taken off their database, and they did.
So, blue okay, purple not. It happens.
Now there is a certification test for a shop I do all the time. I passed it right away, but it's an extra issue for me. Their qualification test at the start of every job is nonsense and now certification! They'll want your fingerprints next.

Hey guys, I'm completely new to this and was wondering what company to start off with first. I really am hoping to self-assign because I'm nervous about how to approach this and would like to just dive in and get started right away. Is Market Force a bad place to start then? Someone mentioned it's good for new people only, but I have no idea what this blue portal/purple portal stuff is about. What are the portals?

You aren't the only one confused about the portals One is still called Certified Field Associates and has some mystery shops, but primarily works with merchandising. They were absorbed by Market Force and it gets confusing when a call is received just saying they are MF and providing no further details. The side that is called Market Force focuses on mystery shops and some announced audits. It is normally one of the first, if not the first, for many shoppers. They can be difficult at times and the pay has gone down, but when it comes to getting your feet wet and learning the ropes there are very few that are as good. Besides self-assign they usually offer a wide variety of dates. Plus their instructions are very detailed.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2012 02:51PM by LisaSTL.

Certified Field Associates=Purple Portal

Market Force=Blue Portal

Wow, Market Force was the first I signed on with. Have done all blue portal work so far, though I do my first purple portal job on friday. I do not think the purple portal one is paying enough but I took some other jobs in the area to even it out a bit. I need to find more companies to sign on with. I keep forgetting which ones I have passed up due to wanting liability insurance which I can not justify at this point in my MS career. I am signed up with 14 companies. Only 3 have had work for me. I'm in Missouri on the west side.

@ Katherine -

Liability Insurance? Interesting. I'm signed up with over 130 companies and to date, I don't recall any of them asking about insurance.

A couple of things to help you out here on the Forums:

1. You MAY want to change your username. Keep in mind, this forum is PUBLIC. You are now easily identifiable to ANYONE who visits - this includes Schedulers, Editors and MSC Owners. One negative remark may hurt you. To change your UN - look for the User "Jacob J" - (first post, Mystery Shopping Company Discussion Forum) and send Jacob a PM with a username change request.

2. The blue portal - MF - is decent for beginners. I still do some shops for them, but I gained weight getting my feet wet with their FF places; so now I am more selective with their shops.

3. Keep signing up with multiple companies. Shoot for "3-5 New MSC's per day"; you may not have a job with these companies today or next month, but maybe at one point they may have something in your area.

4. ORGANIZE your MSC's. You said, "I keep forgetting which ones I have passed up" - that tells me that you possibly do not have a Spreadsheet set up of a list of all of your companies. Things like: Company Name, Log In URL, Username, Password, Pay Schedule, Date Signed Up, etc...

Do you also have a spreadsheet set up with your jobs? If not, now is the time to get yourself set up since you have done just a handful of jobs, before it gets out of control. You'll need to know all of this stuff for tax time.

Katherine - if you look for the UN "r@inyDayZ3" in the "Member Introductions" there's a post I normally send out to new members. It has beginner tips in it.

**Back to the OP Topic!!**