After receiving dozens of emails begging us to help with their project I asked the Scheduler "Can I see the instructions and read the questions so I can better gauge what it is going to take to finish this project"? The Scheduler has replied to my emails consistently replying like:


1. "When can you this job, we need someone like you for six of our stores"?

No instructions just that statement from a Scheduler who is looking for someone to fill up jobs no shopper has shown up for.


2. I send another email asking if they are willing to send the instructions because their job description is very vague, one thing I learned from MSF Pros is never accept "Vague Instructions" because you might end up making nothing.

A reply "Would you do this shop if we add a $5.00 Bonus"?

Still nothing about the instructions, either they blanket statement all their emails or they do not read anything?


3. Second Month of sitting and their job is up to $30.00 making it appear worth the job but how can we know if we have no instructions. After sending almost a dozen emails their inability to respond is crazy.

I ask for instructions, explaining why I want to review the entire assignment explaining I will keep all data confidential. All the other companies have been good about providing anything related to job duties but not this company that landed a chain of interesting stores.

I send another and another and another, my final response was:

"If your worried about money or time, the job takes care of itself, its a good job"!!!!

Would you work with a company that will not provide you with their instructions? Their website is like using Myspace when they first developed their program versus using Facebook now. What is the best way to get information when phone calls do not get picked up and emails do not work?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2016 01:25AM by GuyFawkes.

Op
My thought is either they are stupid (good chance) or they are hiding something (also good chance). I would avoid the assignment.

Two options. Tell the scheduler in the writing they can assign you the shop, you will look at the guidelines and report right away and if the pay/work ratio is unacceptable you will cancel. Or just start a thread about the shop and ask for other shopper's opinions.

op, how r we supposed to give answer when we dont know which shop its for? if u give client but not msc maybe we can answer question better.

@Bubbabubba wrote:

Dude just sign up read and cancellif you wish ! They will neven even know.

wrong answer. mscs keep track of applications & cancelled shops.Y would U think they would never know? pretty naive of U.

I always call a MSC and speak to a scheduler. You can just look up the corporate number. I think they just don't have time to read all of the emails, as every job you input it, make changes, and submit it generates about five email notifications alone to their Sassie.

@LisaSTL wrote:

Or just start a thread about the shop and ask for other shopper's opinions.

Great advice! I've learned so much about individual shops through this forum, and I'm sure it's saved me a lot of spinning of my wheels and lost money by taking a shop that was much more time consuming than the MSC made it sound, and there wasn't full disclosure of all shop materials before having to self-assign it or apply for it.

I gave up on Maritz over this. When you request a shop they call to review the guidelines over the phone. They refuse to provide a copy, they insist on reading them verbatim. It is not even clear if or when they actually release guidelines.

I encourage shoppers to go paperless as much as possible. First is the obvious environmental benefit. Second is the huge amount of money sucked out of your business by ink/toner & paper. Guidelines can be downloaded, notes can be made on smart phones/tablets and audits can often be reduced from dozens of pages down to a one or two page cheat sheet. I felt like I had gotten a raise after not having to buy a ream of paper and an ink cartridge every single month

Just this morning I sent an email to a scheduler with the same concerns you have. I have heard from the scheduler several times and the last time she told me how to see what is in the job. I thought I had missed something on her site but when I checked it out it was the same place I had clicked which basically told me the # of questions in the report,the fee and the physical location of the shop. The first time I emailed I got a response that the shop I was referring to must be at a different msc as they have no shops at that company. This particular job was at a vendor inside a store I would not mind shopping. The job said the name of the store I would like to shop. Turned out the vendor inside the store carries a brand I cannot use myself and there was a purchase required with reimbursement but none of this info was in the few shop notes. I cancelled the shop and advised the scheduler that they might have a lot less emails if they at least let you know who was to be shopped and that a purchase was required and what the reimbursement would be. I doubt my note will get any changes but I can only hope the company will consider my email suggestions.
Schedulers and msc owners, if you are reading this please provide some infor in your shop advertising so that we have some idea what the shop is all about. Most companies do so but a few do not.

@LisaSTL wrote:

I encourage shoppers to go paperless as much as possible. First is the obvious environmental benefit. Second is the huge amount of money sucked out of your business by ink/toner & paper. Guidelines can be downloaded, notes can be made on smart phones/tablets and audits can often be reduced from dozens of pages down to a one or two page cheat sheet. I felt like I had gotten a raise after not having to buy a ream of paper and an ink cartridge every single month

Me too!! I love, and use, Evernote for this purpose. I can stream report forms, guidelines, etc from my desktop to the app on my tablet/phone. And it streams in the original format. There I can 'mark' on the form, great for BV and audits, then email it to myself for my hard copy. I rarely print anything, only forms that require an original signature. For guidelines/forms that are PDF's I use Foxit PDF. I can open it in Foxit, mark the form, view the form offline (PDF's in Evernote require downloading each time) and email it to myself.

I never used Evernote and will have to give it a try. Have you ever checked out SignEasy for things like LOA's that need to be signed? I got the app but unfortunately it was about the time Stericycle lost all their gas audit clients so it was never used since I won't work with the company that has them now.

Great information so far. I do see many references though to cloud storage. This can be useful after downloading a form so you can easily download it onto other devices from the cloud copy. If you only have a cloud copy, you run into the problem of not having access for any number of known or unforseen reasons.

Lisa, I do have SignEasy but have never used it. I also got it for audits, or BV, that have a contact signature page, but the MSC's I thought to use it for were not technologically advanced enough to appreciate it or accept it.

Is there a way they would know the difference? My understanding was it could download either a PDF or JPG, then allow it to be signed, saved and uploaded to a website. It has been a few years since my experiments with it so my memory could be foggy. I also may have been experimenting with CORI/Stericycle docs and I haven't a clue what types of docs the other MSCs use.

Well... You're right they probably wouldn't, but I didn't experiment long either. LoL

@LisaSTL wrote:

Two options. Tell the scheduler in the writing they can assign you the shop, you will look at the guidelines and report right away and if the pay/work ratio is unacceptable you will cancel. Or just start a thread about the shop and ask for other shopper's opinions.

I hate how logical and reasonable you are Lisa, did you ever try working as a Scheduler or Editor? Every once in a while I receive emails asking if I would like to try or ask "Do you know anyone who can handle the fast pace of scheduling and handles stress well"? I worked several decades in high stress jobs, would like to finish this chapter reducing my stress level. I am blessed because the companies I accept jobs from have wonderful schedulers and editors. You know this business well, have you ever been tempted to try the "fast and stressful pace of Scheduling" Lisa or anyone else?

@sandyf wrote:

Just this morning I sent an email to a scheduler with the same concerns you have. I have heard from the scheduler several times and the last time she told me how to see what is in the job. I thought I had missed something on her site but when I checked it out it was the same place I had clicked which basically told me the # of questions in the report,the fee and the physical location of the shop. The first time I emailed I got a response that the shop I was referring to must be at a different msc as they have no shops at that company. This particular job was at a vendor inside a store I would not mind shopping. The job said the name of the store I would like to shop. Turned out the vendor inside the store carries a brand I cannot use myself and there was a purchase required with reimbursement but none of this info was in the few shop notes. I cancelled the shop and advised the scheduler that they might have a lot less emails if they at least let you know who was to be shopped and that a purchase was required and what the reimbursement would be. I doubt my note will get any changes but I can only hope the company will consider my email suggestions.
Schedulers and msc owners, if you are reading this please provide some infor in your shop advertising so that we have some idea what the shop is all about. Most companies do so but a few do not.

page



Sandy the scheduler knew exactly what I was asking for and dodged and evaded my question because the job was bigger than their Facebook profile cared to mention. They started the job out at $5 plus $13 reimbursement, when none of these got filled they finally saw action at "$15 plus $13 reimbursement" but than most of the shops popped back up on the Job Board. When twenty jobs get assigned and fifteen pop back in to the queue its because the job requirements are more lengthy than the MSC is leading us to believe. With Social Media making our questions about jobs more easier to get ideas why try to hide full assignment hoping were too dumb to ask friends here on MSF? Forums are impacting the payment in good ways, how else would we know the threshold for bonuses on companies screaming "We can't go that high"? Its thanks to the information and input from all the members, thank you to all the great members who help us out so much!

That would be an unequivocal, NO.

@GuyFawkes wrote:

You know this business well, have you ever been tempted to try the "fast and stressful pace of Scheduling" Lisa or anyone else?

@GuyFawkes wrote:

@sandyf wrote:

Just this morning I sent an email to a scheduler with the same concerns you have.
Schedulers and msc owners, if you are reading this please provide some infor in your shop advertising so that we have some idea what the shop is all about. Most companies do so but a few do not.

page



Sandy the scheduler knew exactly what I was asking for and dodged and evaded my question because the job was bigger than their Facebook profile cared to mention.
Forums are impacting the payment in good ways, how else would we know the threshold for bonuses on companies screaming "We can't go that high"? Its thanks to the information and input from all the members, thank you to all the great members who help us out so much!

parts of the quotes were deleted for space reasons....sandy

Guy, yes you are so right. Why the companies that do not give us at least a glimpse of what the job is all about think that is a good way to do business is something I cannot comprehend. It only causes us, the shoppers, to get upset when we find we applied for a very different job than we thought we had. Some shoppers will cancel the job throwing it back in the schedulers lap at the cost of a bonus and/or late shop sometimes I would imagine. Other shoppers will just do the shop and then be very wary of that company afterwards and perhaps will not shop for that company again. So the msc might lose a good shopper. I myself will email and ask the details which means I may not get the shop as someone might accept it while I wait for an answer. I am reluctant to apply for a shop I know nothing about. I cannot see any of this being a win/win for the shopper or the msc. How has the msc won when they have extra work if a shopper cancels the shop after reading the rules? How have they made a good business decision not to reveal if the shopper then completes this shop but never does another one for them?

There is a shop for a high end local restaurant that sits on the boards every month. At the end of the month when it doesn't get picked up, they offer a small bonus. I've been dying to go there, and I once emailed the scheduler asking to see the questions or guidelines. The answer was an unequivocal NO and I was surprised. So, as tempted as I am each month - I let that ship sail for some other shopper. Makes no sense to me at all.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/28/2016 08:39PM by Chix.

GuyFawkes: It makes me feel (from the schedulers avoidance of what the job entails) like nobody wants the job anyway and you are not getting a direct answer as to why...because the job likely is pretty awful.

I was told by a scheduler once to accept the shop and I would see the instructions. If I felt I couldn't do the shop after reading them I could cancel. I countered with - but you penalize shoppers who frequently cancel shops. She basically shrugged and said, "take your chances." I did and cancelled the shop. No problems so far with getting other assignments, and it has been over a year.

@LisaSTL wrote:

I rarely print anything, only forms that require an original signature.

If you have a tablet, you could try PDF pen (it's an app) with a stylus. I recently started doing that, and bought a fine-tip stylus just for that purpose.

How do you save forms in Evernote, where you can edit it just like the original form?

@Kakita987 wrote:

How do you save forms in Evernote, where you can edit it just like the original form?

I'm not sure what you mean, but once you stream the document from your desktop, or wherever, to Evernote, it's saved within Evernote until you delete it. You can make changes to the document there. If you want to have 'copy' for yourself in another location, you click on the three . . . In the upper right hand corner, select share from the drop down menu, then select mail and email yourself a copy.

@SunnyDays2 wrote:

GuyFawkes: It makes me feel (from the schedulers avoidance of what the job entails) like nobody wants the job anyway and you are not getting a direct answer as to why...because the job likely is pretty awful.

There is this little "parking lot security shop" that shows up all the time and the pay is not all that bad. It sounds simple but has to be done in the wee hours of the morning. I emailed the scheduler to get more details. The response was she would provide more the next time the shop was available. That was two months ago. Meanwhile, the bonuses keep getting added. I have to think the details are much more demanding than just taking a picture of the exterior and asking where lost and found is. For the $15 plus bonus, I am willing to get up at 6 a.m. and drive 10 minutes to the parking lot. There must be more to it than taking a picture, finding a guard and asking a question. OK, maybe the problem is finding the guard?

LOL, after reading the other thread about Maritz, this made me chuckle.