Reporting a bad shopping experience and impact on reviews

I'm fairly new to mystery shopping so I'd like to know if this is more common than just my observation--I get my worst reviews when I'm writing about bad service or shops where the associate didn't follow an expected scenario and possibly did something wrong. (Worst isn't necessarily bad, just a bit lower than when I report excellent service). Do reviewers have a bias against complaints? Do problematic shops just create more work for them?

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Great question! I want to know too! I find that it's sometimes easier to write the narrative and a not-so-perfect shop than a typical one. There are just only so many ways to say 'clean and well maintained'. Do we get graded lower because they MSC anticipates getting fall out from the client?

I also feel like the client really doesn't want to know what happens when their GM's and RM's arent looking....doesn't that defeat our purpose?

I gave a couple of really bad reports regarding service and cleanliness of the store, and after answering some additional questions from the scheduler, both were graded 9 or 10.

Both were for the same client and the same MSP, so YMMV.

I haven't noticed that I get lower marks on a less-than-positive shop, but I have noticed Quality Control will come back and ask questions. It's infinitely easier to do a good shop report, too bad they can't all be good. But I guess we'd be out of business then; if the companies were sure their employees were always good, would they need us?

In general, my response is no. However, I do notice a trend with one or two MSC's that will give me 10's all the time, until I write a report that the establishment did not do well. I make sure to spend extra time on those reports, but I dread them.

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“Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling."
~Gilbert K. Chesterton

I worry about those MSCs that don't show you your rating. There's no telling whether they like your reports or not. I personally get very paraniod when I don't get a shop I apply for from a company that doesn't show me my rating. I always start to wonder if it's because they didn't like my previous reports. I generally get good grades on sassie (9s and 10s), but different companies have different standars.

I hear you on that one shop-a-holic. I can only say that if shops continue to come your way with MSPs who don't show your rating, you're good in their book.

For me, I spend much longer reporting bad shops than good shops. I do believe they get more heavily scrutinized, and employee's jobs are affected.

I find it very difficult to write a bad report because it has to leave nothing to question or scores will be reduced because they 'had to contact the shopper'. So any negative must be clearly stated as observation only and I need to make sure I am not making mountains out of molehills. I probably would not have mentioned the 6" long strips of mature Romaine lettuce in my salad this evening (they had just chopped across the head of lettuce and dumped the stuff in a salad so most of my salad was tough, mature, huge pieces of lettuce) had there not also been a filthy grape tomato I could literally scrape the gunk off of with my fingernail. What I could not and did not say was that it made me wonder if proper sanitation had been practiced when preparing the salad. Luckily the overall shop was excellent so the negative was short and unemotional so I am unlikely to hear any followup. I don't know that there has ever been a shop so bad there were not some positives I could state, though they have sometimes been very hard to find.

As for ratings I generally figure that no news is good news.

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Reporting a bad shopping experience and impact on reviews

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