@jeff406 wrote:
Joe,
. This is not fair to the sponsors by having to sift through these people to find the shoppers and focus on them. It's not fair to the shoppers by having the sponsor's attention monopolized by the Fill A Seaters. The people who were from Fill A Seat were going from sponsor table to sponsor table collecting pens and candy with no interest in becoming shoppers. This is a scam and if it has been going on for years, it seems to be a fraudulent presentation of the value of the conference. I would rather have an empty room than committing fraud and misleading the sponsors with bogus attendees. I have spoken to several sponsors who were astonished to find out that this occurred. The IMSC President only addressed this when confronted by people who had figured out that the had been hoodwinked.
Your continued efforts to defend this practice only serve to make you guilty by association. Let this drop. You are dragging this entire forum into the mud and there is better use of our time. Stop posting before you do irreparable damage to the industry that most of us love.
Jeffrey Crozier
CEO - Video Shopping Pros
Describing the process is hardly a defense of anything. I have no real opinion on this as I dont believe I have enough information. Just wanna clear that up first. I'm not nearly as comfortable as many other people at making assumptions and drawing conclusions without having complete information.
I'm not really convinced all of those local people wasted 5 or 6 hours of their day to trudge down to the strip for some free candy. It would be cheaper for them to go buy a bag from basically anywhere than do that. Most locals avoid the strip like the plague. It would be pretty illogical and a time sink considering how much locals try to avoid going to the strip in the first place. Im pretty sure there was a stronger motivation than candy, but sure, your idea is also theoretically possible if we dismiss any logic and reasoning from the equation. Not everyone acts in a consistent manner so it's definitely possible.
It does like your generalizing "them" into one large group though. Typically that kind of thing is never accurate.
At the end of the day, if none of those people were ever signing up for shops and citing the IMSC conference, then the same sponsors would stop paying due to no benefit. I find it hard to believe that for years nevada companies are paying for tickets for these people and then having it never convert into actual shoppers and that's what your suggestion requires if true. The IMSC can't exactly lie to company owners about who ends up signing up with them since they have direct access to that information and she doesn't. Money talks. People/companies dont pay for things that arent beneficial so clearly the nevada companies are getting benefit.
Fair point on the non nevada companies though. Seems like it's pretty easily fixable too.
It sounds like the problem is less with the practice of using a local provider to find local shoppers, and more with the transparency for the non-Nevada companies. I'm pretty sure she gave totals for how many seats were locals (at least at this years) and how many were non-local seats. I'm not sure how it was for prior years, but she definitely had them all raise their hand so people could see them.
If so though, then everyone has the information they need to make a decision. If not, sounds like a great recommendation to make since the vast majority of companies get no benefit from nevada shoppers. That would allow sponsors to know what their dollars get for outside of nevada.
How big of a deal is this really? It's not like there is any guarantee that any shopper there is going to be in a state or area that said sponsor has shops in the first place and there never has. There are sponsors who only have clients in some sections of the country and some that have them in nearly all. Should she be providing a state by state breakdown so each sponsor can see if the registrants has shoppers in their area before deciding to pay? I dont have an opinion on this either way, just curious what your thoughts are.
Have you ever had success telling someone to stop posting before? That's not very nice. Shutting down discourse is only best when it can't be civil, imo.
Joe
CEO The Mystery Shoppers Depot
US Wide route shopper with 12k+ shops completed over 48 states and 6 countries.
Airbnb host based in Chicago and 10% discount if you mention this forum
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/26/2018 09:15PM by jrossetti.
Removed for being a copy/paste of a post, with no new content.