There are shops in my area, and the ones for earlier in the month had a much higher fee than the ones now. I was wondering if you could negotiate back up to the higher fee or not?

Of course you can try to negotiate just like the MSC can say no Were the shops earlier in the month actually leftover from December? The longer shops sit the more likely the fee goes up or the MSC is more motivated to negotiate. A lot of shoppers don't realize, but part of being an IC is sometime negotiating. If the MSC doesn't want to budge right now, you have the options to wait them out or work for less than last time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/29/2016 07:16PM by LisaSTL.

You can try to negotiate. Whether you succeed or not will depend on how desperate the scheduler is and how 'greedy' you are (I can be very greedy). A scheduler telephoned me this morning asking me to do a grocery store shop tonight and to name my price. I declined to even give him a number because I didn't have a good experience on the first grocery shop I did for them under similar circumstances and didn't particularly want to do another. After thinking about it for a while I reconsidered and went to the Mystery Shopping Company's (MSC) web site and submitted a request for the shop with "PAD" (that MSC's term for bonus cash). A couple of hours later another scheduler called to see if I would take less than what I'd requested. He was willing to pay a bonus, but only about a third of what I'd requested. His offer wasn't high enough to convince me to take on that task. I hope they find someone to do the shop for a price they are willing to pay.

I'm a novice shopper and I've got lots to learn. One way to learn the limits of a price negotiation is to be willing to walk away. In this case I don't think I lost because I didn't want to do the shop in the first place. However, I do have a price for doing unappealing tasks (i.e. I can be bought), and if they'd been willing to pay it I'd have done the job to the best of my ability. That's one thing I like about mystery shopping, I'm not required to take on any particular project unless the pay (in some form) is high enough to make it worth my while. By the same token, the MSC isn't required to meet my price, they can search for someone else to do the task for less money. It's the law of supply & demand in action.

I always ask for a few more dollars. Those overages are built into the shop. I also won't do a shop for no pay, just reimbursement or those not paying a minimum of $10-$12.

Dennis, what made your Grocery Store experience such that you felt it was not worth your energy and time to do the Shop? Some Grocery Stories don't care how they treat customers and probably don't have a MSC doing MS because they pay their employees nothing. Can you imagine Walmart using a Mystery Shopping Company to evaluate their service? Where I live half the employees did not speak English and never showed up when looking for help. The Grocery Business use to be a good place for high school and college kids to work and pay off their college debt, now because of the push towards the lowest wage possible people don't care because their employers don't care about them.

@Pennies4Shops

As it happens, the Walmart Supercenters are shopped in my community. Perhaps it's a competitor shop, the reimbursement is lower than the store I shopped.

However, the circumstance I'm referring to was a different grocery chain. I first had to circle the store and count the employees in each department, taking note of how many were interacting with customers; then make a second trip around the store to interact with employees in several specific departments. Finally, evaluate the cashier & bagger while watching to see if there was a manager at the front of the store. For me it was more work than I wanted to do on a single shop. The normal pay for the shop is $5 and the reimbursement is $12 for a total of $17. In that case I received a $33 bonus, taking the total to $50. It was enough to convince me to try something new. I tried it, and wasn't thrilled with it. If I did a few more of them perhaps I'd learn how to do them efficiently and wouldn't shy away from them.

Today the offer from the MSC maxed out at $50 total ($33 bonus). That wasn't enough (today) to get me motivated. I probably should have taken it, if only to force me to get up from the computer and get my lazy body in motion. From the point of view of the MSC I'm more greedy than hungry. On another day that may change. However, I think I can safely say that for those grocery shops, a $33 bonus is probably the maximum they'll pay. So perhaps I've learned one thing today. If so, it's not a total loss.

In our area, those shops are rarely bonused. When they are bonused, it is a max of $5. You would never get more than $5 PAD in our area. They called me the other day about a shop, but they said that at best, they could offer me $2 PAD. So it's all about the location.

Having said that, I can usually complete each visit in 25 minutes and I spend another 20 minutes on each report. While it isn't great pay, I love not having a grocery bill if I do a few each week.

I negotiate when I get a call to do a last-minute shop. I throw out a number that seems high and the scheduler will usually say, "I can only go up to <$>". If it's enough, I take it. I do a lot of end-of-month emergency shops, always with a good bonus.

@Pennies4Shops wrote:

Dennis, what made your Grocery Store experience such that you felt it was not worth your energy and time to do the Shop? Some Grocery Stories don't care how they treat customers and probably don't have a MSC doing MS because they pay their employees nothing. Can you imagine Walmart using a Mystery Shopping Company to evaluate their service? Where I live half the employees did not speak English and never showed up when looking for help. The Grocery Business use to be a good place for high school and college kids to work and pay off their college debt, now because of the push towards the lowest wage possible people don't care because their employers don't care about them.

I did a grocery store that was a combo mystery shop/audit and the pay was $10 with a $2 comp for a purchase. It took me an hour in the store to do the mystery shopping part and take all the photos they required for the audit. It then took me two hours to re-size, re-label and download the over 40 photos due to all the missing items and violations. In total it took me almost 4 hours for the complete shop for a payment of $12. The scheduler called me for another one and I explained what had happened. It is a new shop for them and she was shocked at how long it took. One of the problems was the out of stock issue. For example, if there was less than six grocery items missing, you just had to report the number. If there were more than six, you had to take a photo of each empty shelf. Every area had more than was allowed so I had to download photos of each missing item. Each photo had to be relabeled with a specific format of the shop number and question number. This shop is now on my 10 foot pole list unless they pay me at least $50. I have noticed these shops sitting on the board and few people seem to be taking them now.

siamese, I would want $75 for that shop, wow, that must have been awful. We live and learn, huh?