Those shops make me want to carry a cardboard sign that says, "Will Work For Food." LOL

Yesterday was fair. Dinner cost $215, but I should be getting back $180 of that. The report was not bad, abour 2-2.5 hours.

Okay, here we go. I too love the restaurant jobs, especially the fine dining ones. Have done loads for Coyle and ACL. Always looking for more. We too have our favorites. I don't find Coyle tiresome. We have our little system and have it down pat. We did the new asian one, that I found a bit difficult because it was so short. I was used to writing more. We're in the NYC area.

As far as reimbursements go, just give me enough to get the required items. The fee is a bonus. I look upon it as a little road trip. I don't have to cook, we get out of the house, can go the the nearest Dollar Tree or shopping center. A different area. Reimbursement of tolls would be nice. We loved the Brazilian Steak House job. Get me out of the house, pay me to eat and we'll do a great job on the report. I don't do it to pay the bills, but just for a nice evening out.

Any companies besides Coyle and ACL that do fine dining?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/29/2018 07:31PM by vloglady.

@vloglady wrote:

Okay, here we go. I too love the restaurant jobs, especially the fine dining ones. Have done loads for Coyle and ACL. Always looking for more. We too have our favorites. I don't find Coyle tiresome. We have our little system and have it down pat. We did the PF Changs one, that I found a bit difficult because it was so short. I was used to writing more. We're in the NYC area.

As far as reimbursements go, just give me enough to get the required items. The fee is a bonus. I look upon it as a little road trip. I don't have to cook, we get out of the house, can go the the nearest Dollar Tree or shopping center. A different area. Reimbursement of tolls would be nice. We loved the Brazilian Steak House job. Get me out of the house, pay me to eat and we'll do a great job on the report. I don't do it to pay the bills, but just for a nice evening out.

Any companies besides Coyle and ACL that do fine dining?

BARE International has a number of hotel "fine dining" shops, vloglady. I have done them a few times. I've never felt the reimbursement gave me enough to get what I wanted (but you can probably order the mid-tier meals), but the locations are quite nice. One restaurant I did had a window seat view that literally overlooked the beach in front of us. I actually enjoyed that shop a lot. I would do that one again.

The restaurants are usually inside of nice hotels in various cities and the reimbursement is for a dinner for two. I had to pay for valet tip out of pocket, though. It was only $3.00, but when you're poor, it matters.

ACL is hit or miss for me. I only do one shop for them consistently, due to the short report. The problem with ACL for me is that their reports have so many sub-comment sections. Their questions tend to be quirky too. With other restaurant shops, you tend to have a generic report that asks mostly the same things with just a sprinkle of unique restaurant-specific questions. That makes learning them easier. I feel like with ACL you have lots more of those quirky questions. I'll sometimes forget to make the observation.

I will say this. I respect ACL the most of any MSC, because they have a disclosure form. I really love that you can admit mistakes upfront and they encourage it. This contrasts with a few other MSCs I've worked for where they encouraged me to leave out things on purpose or submit things without being sure if they were accurate or not. It felt shady shady!

Try BARE if you don't already do their hotel fine dining shops!

Maybe one day when I'm retired or have a more secure fixed income stream, I could learn to enjoy these shops. When you're shopping to try to make money or reimbursements that "count" (i.e., grocery shops), having to take half a day to do one of these for just a free meal doesn't seem worth it. I'm sometimes out mileage and parking expenses too. But, I'm in a different financial/economic situation.

Good luck to you!

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/24/2018 07:52PM by shoptastic.

I got the same email asking me to restate all my timings. I just wrote back, Are you serious? Those times are accurate. I just spent 20 minutes going over the minutes and seconds.

That is kind of a stupid way for the pizza shop to figure out their timings anyway. A camera would give them all the timings they ever want to know.

@BetteL wrote:

I got the same email asking me to restate all my timings. I just wrote back, Are you serious? Those times are accurate. I just spent 20 minutes going over the minutes and seconds.

That is kind of a stupid way for the pizza shop to figure out their timings anyway. A camera would give them all the timings they ever want to know.

Did you really reply with "Are you serious" in an email? I would not have done that. I would have, if I had checked them twice told them "I have checked and rechecked as you asked, and the times are accurate. If the customer is still questioning them please ask them to review their own video to confirm."

I try very hard not to put anything into a reply to an editor that would come across as me being negative towards their requests.

@vloglady wrote:

Okay, here we go. I too love the restaurant jobs, especially the fine dining ones. Have done loads for Coyle and ACL. Always looking for more. We too have our favorites. I don't find Coyle tiresome. We have our little system and have it down pat. We did the new asian one, that I found a bit difficult because it was so short. I was used to writing more. We're in the NYC area.

As far as reimbursements go, just give me enough to get the required items. The fee is a bonus. I look upon it as a little road trip. I don't have to cook, we get out of the house, can go the the nearest Dollar Tree or shopping center. A different area. Reimbursement of tolls would be nice. We loved the Brazilian Steak House job. Get me out of the house, pay me to eat and we'll do a great job on the report. I don't do it to pay the bills, but just for a nice evening out.

Any companies besides Coyle and ACL that do fine dining?

I've done fine dining at Ace and Sentry while out of town. Confidential Consumer has some decent shops that I've done at home and in DC, they paid for tolls and parking. Customer Impact has fine dining as does Service Performance (at least in my area). Quite honestly though, one of my favorites is the steakhouse with peanuts that has no fee, but often a low bonus. We usually stay under the reimbursement and I could do the report in my sleep. I also don't do it for the fees, but more as a lifestyle. I've had $3,500 in reimbursements this year, but only $800 in fees. But I've enjoyed lots of restaurant meals, as well as coffee shops, car washes & oil changes, dry cleaning, online grocery orders and mini golf so I'm totally good with it.

@oteixeira wrote:

@BetteL wrote:

I got the same email asking me to restate all my timings. I just wrote back, Are you serious? Those times are accurate. I just spent 20 minutes going over the minutes and seconds.

That is kind of a stupid way for the pizza shop to figure out their timings anyway. A camera would give them all the timings they ever want to know.

Did you really reply with "Are you serious" in an email? I would not have done that. I would have, if I had checked them twice told them "I have checked and rechecked as you asked, and the times are accurate. If the customer is still questioning them please ask them to review their own video to confirm."

I try very hard not to put anything into a reply to an editor that would come across as me being negative towards their requests.

Nothing surprises me here anymore.

The client requires that any out of ordinary times are verified. Because I know this to be true, I take a photo of my notes from the timing, so that when I get the email or text from the editor the next morning, I can just send her the information immediately.

shoptastic, you are definitely overthinking it, just on the term "friendly". What about all the other observations? If you have to dissect each and every term, how can you finish the report?

Yes, as was mentioned it is not the client that is disputing the ACL pizza times. It is a reconfirmation to make sure any extreme times are verified before they pass them along to the client. When I fill out the form I take a quick screen capture of the timings section so I can easily re-verify them. I also take a screen capture of the stopwatch on my phone when I've just finished the shop. I continue to be surprised at how many people on this forum find the quirks of this shop to be burdensome -- but pleasantly surprised, since I can still get it bonused even after they've reduced the number of shops per location. Then again, I'm sure there are shops I couldn't stand to do that many others find easy and worthwhile.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/2018 02:18AM by NinS.