Hello,

I am pondering picking up a gas station (revealed) however I have never done one before.

I am always hesitant to do a revealed shop because when i have done them it was always just awkward, fortunately in the past they were for seasonal shops, but I am hesitant about doing it for a shop that i may want to shop again.

Since I have been shopping I have been tempted...but never done one. Can anyone provide more insight for them?

the more revealed shops you do the more
money you will make.

I always thought an audit or revealed portion of a mystery shop was the easiest. No need to try to remember anything. You just whip out your paperwork and clipboard and go to work. They are usually falling over themselves to cooperate with you, so no problem there.


My favorite is the ms where you get to reveal and reward! Those are fun fun fun. I love congratulating someone and handing them a check for $75 or whatever for doing a good job.

I like gas stations audits a lot. However, just for the record, you don't always people fall over themselves to cooperate. So far, and I've only been doing this a few months, I've encountered two varieties of resistance.

1: New employees who never heard of such a thing, and beg you to come back when the manager is there. So far, the closest I've come to having a refused audit was the young woman, very polite and conscientious, who phoned her manager and read the letter of authorization to her. Then she spent the rest of the audit time apologizing to me, every time I came back in the store. (And I kept telling her that she'd done exactly the right thing.)

2: This one is a story that hasn't finished yet. I had to return to a place to grab a photo that I had missed. As I was strolling away, all photos safely tucked into my camera, a voice called to me. I turned around, and met the owner. The owner, though he repeated over and over that I should not take offense, because he understood that I was just doing my job, had a message for me to pass on to [name of large oil company deleted]. I was to tell [name of large oil company deleted] that they can go to hell. The reason that the story has not finished yet is that I had already signed up to do it, next rotation time. I'm going to be asking for some advice in another month or so.

Haha..that's a good one.

I had the owner of a gs decided that he was not going to change anything (after apologizing) and that his windshield squeegee would remain where it was....in an empty kitty litter plastic bucket filled with dirty water. We're talking major gas station brand! OMG..hahaha

Ok!

No need to wait another month or so. I'll give you my advice now: Never, never, ever, never click "yes" to the "would you like to conduct a shop at this location per rotation rules?" question.

(heart)

stilllearning Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> No need to wait another month or so. I'll give you
> my advice now: Never, never, ever, never click
> "yes" to the "would you like to conduct a shop at
> this location per rotation rules?" question.
>
> (heart)


Why? I don't think I've ever seen that question. I'm guessing this isn't Gammy's MSC you're referring to...?

mysteryshoppinggurl -
Revealed GS audits pay better, are in many ways easier since after the reveal you're openly filling out the form as you go, and while I empathize with your first-time jitters, you'll get over it after your third shop. As potentially confrontational as it may seem, it's not. They have someone show up every month or every quarter and know the drill. You're just the someone of the month.

What is a revealed shop

A mystery shop is where you go in as a customer, do the routine, and leave and they don't know you were a mystery shopper. A revealed shop is where you go in as a customer, do the routine, then tell them you're the mystery shopper and go on to take photographs of stuff while they watch and worry about what you might say in the report.

Ohhh

Also, one drawback of a revealed shop is that you can't do the same location as a regular mystery shop later and expect to stay "mystery".

Sometimes, the same location (not always gas stations but can be other things as well) will be for one MSC as revealed and another MSC as a regular mystery. If you do the same cell phone location as a revealed every month or so then try to go in as a mystery shop the next month, it will be really obvious what you are doing. You can try to talk your way out of it but the talking is just extra work.

I don't mind the reveal Gas shops, jitters the first time, and don't even mind taking all the required photos, the part I don't like is the time it takes to download all the photos... my first time taking them was when I received a call to offer to do one, sounded easy enough.. nothing ventured nothing gained, so I took a few a fair distance away to make it worth it... ended up missing one pic of pump 2, lesson learned.

Camero, I mentioned in another thread that the best way to submit your pics is to go through the report and enter all your data but don't load any pictures inside the report. Get to the bottom, hit submit, continue on and you'll eventually get to one screen where you can input all the pics. Works like a charm, goes quickly.

Thanks MDavisnowell, I thought there would be something like that so I tried and it asked for just three pics, not the pump pics, but great to know, next time I will double check that all the way to the end. Thanks again!