Am I incorrect in being annoyed at schedulers who simply hit "ALL SHOPPERS" in their database? I'm fairly fed-up with what I see as 'laziness' when I'm getting shops from MN or NC or TX when I live in CA. Schedulers veering out of a 50 mile radius of the shop need to know that my time is also valuable, so please respect me and send only locale pertinent shops to me.
I get that shoppers may be travelling, however, when I'm travelling I check for shops from the location I'll be visiting.
Thoughts? Schedulers?

I agree. I get one scheduler that sends me an e-mail with ALL Canadian shops in it. I live in the US.

Also like you, if I travel, I will change the zip code I use to find shops with the companies I like or I have used in the same location before. An ACL scheduler texted me because I requested a shop 150 miles from me. I am traveling to that area over the weekend. I'm glad she checked though.

Unless it's in my radius, or even state, please don't clog up my inbox!

I don't mind that at all. Never know when I will be traveling in that area.

@Bikinirollerblader wrote:

I don't mind that at all. Never know when I will be traveling in that area.

How many MSC are you signed up with? If it's less than 50, I could see your point. I'm signed up with over 140. Some never have shops in my area but still send e-mails.

Also the same scheduler will sometimes send two e-mails with the same states but different cities listed back to back. Why not combine them into one?

The airport post security shops really get me. I know who does these shops and if I am flying, I'll check their offerings and see if they have any in the cities I'm flying to. Right now I don't plan on flying and I'll get up to 10 of these a day. Many of them repeats.

I guess if you still open and read every email you get it would be an issue but a 10 year veteran should pretty much know the contents of 99.9% of those emails from the subject line and email address it comes from. I would guess I open 1 or 2 of those emails a day at most.

REALLY? You mean you wouldn't check the area to which you would be travelling? You'd just wait, you're living in Idaho, and don't mind getting shops from Kentucky?

It's pollution. It's sheer laziness. Schedulers 'normally use' within a 50 mile radius from home. Am I missing something here? A MS company that PAYS you, a decent fee to travel more than 50 miles to a shop? Unlikely, it's a very off-handed way to "fish" for shoppers and clutters my in box and my time.

The last four emails I got:

$100 OBO from Seelevel for a utility vehicle to haul firewood. I know thus is a shop I'm not interested in and I also know the closest location is 30 miles away even if it's still available. I opened it just now to check, there's not one in my state, but either way I knew I wasn't interested and didn't need to open the email.

New opportunities from Ipsos. I know they basically have smartphones and shipping shops and that's pretty much it. Not interested in either one. About one a quarter I log in to make sure they don't have a new client. Just opened this one to include it in this post. It was for smartphones. I'm not interested in smartphone shops and so would not have normally opened this email.

TNS hotel check in shops. This chain does not have a location within 150 miles of me so I know not to open this one. If I'm traveling I would have already checked the job board to see if one was available as I hear they're great shops. I wouldn't have waited on an email. If I was interested I would have known before I got the email, so no need to open it.

Another new opportunities from Ipsos. Same as above.

I could repeat this for almost every email I get. A quick look at the subject lines of every email I have received today and yesterday yielded exactly 0 emails I was interested in opening.

I volunteer to accept the shops and take screenshots from travelocity and let them know I need to cover the $850 round trip airfare plus parking for a $8.00 shop. Surprised that I haven.t been scheduled yet. I even told them I'd do 2 of them.

I hope my life gets to the point emails offering me work are the most annoying thing I have to deal with daily. Like BG, when I find 50 or even 150 emails, 99% can be deleted en masse. It takes a whopping 10 seconds out of my day. All it takes is one offering me $250 to drive 20 minutes to make it all worthwhile. And yes, on occasion it happens.

BTW, you always have the option with most MSCs to turn off email notifications. Then you can check the job boards at your leisure.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2018 06:02AM by LisaSTL.

When I went to France in September, I had long layovers in Atlanta and Minneapolis on the return. I wanted to get some non-food shops in. I let the schedulers know my availability earlier in September. When my trip happened, crickets both ways. No shops available.

@wrosie wrote:

@Bikinirollerblader wrote:

I don't mind that at all. Never know when I will be traveling in that area.

How many MSC are you signed up with? If it's less than 50, I could see your point. I'm signed up with over 140. Some never have shops in my area but still send e-mails.

Also the same scheduler will sometimes send two e-mails with the same states but different cities listed back to back. Why not combine them into one?

The airport post security shops really get me. I know who does these shops and if I am flying, I'll check their offerings and see if they have any in the cities I'm flying to. Right now I don't plan on flying and I'll get up to 10 of these a day. Many of them repeats.

I get at least 200 scheduler emails a day. As I go down the list, I hold down the Ctrl key and highlight any (most) that are clearly of no interest. Then hit DEL. As Lisa said, 10 seconds. I have learned where the real money emails come from. That is part of the shopper's capital investment in this business; that's human capital, folks.

@Lainerz wrote:

I'm fairly fed-up with what I see as 'laziness' when I'm getting shops from MN or NC or TX when I live in CA.

IMO I don't think it's laziness. From what has been written on other threads, those schedulers have a pretty tough job. Trying to fill shops with shoppers who will A) not flake, Bee) turn in a useable report and C) accept as little pay as possible cannot be easy. They have parameters which may seem nearly impossible to meet sometimes so I can certainly understand why they would reach out to all corners of the earth to find shoppers. Yes, the abundance of emails can be annoying but they are just trying to fulfill their obligation to the MSC and earn their fees as we do.

I had to spell Bee above because the letter alone turned into a smiley face when posted.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2018 03:44AM by sestrahelena.

My issue is that there doesn't seem to be a way to turn off shops from outside of your area. I specifically signed up for email notifications WITHIN MY AREA. If it's not within my area, I should not be getting any emails for it. It's ridiculous to keep getting the same emails over and over from 12 states away that I'm NOT interested in doing. Pleeeeeaaaaaseeee stooooooppp.

And in Calif which is over 850 miles long.. I get emails from all over the state. I wish they would all put the general locations in the subject line. The emails with a bonus often do not say how much. Then I open up interesting locations and find it is $2. No all this takes much more than a few seconds when you live in a big city with few bonus opportunities to rely on and tons of cheapo shops. Maybe it's me but I cannot do an $8 shop that is 850 miles away. I do not care what state it is in. One newer scheduler keeps sending me a long list of shops. All of them except for one are in the north of the state. Only one is about 20 miles away. I have run across many schedulers who seem to have no idea of the geography of my large state and it is their territory. Maybe they can look at a map of their territory and study up on where the different cities are located in relation to each other. Is that too much to ask? I guess so. Schedulers seem surprised when I tell them their $8 shops will take me 2-22 hours travel time to get to and back.

@Lainerz wrote:

Am I incorrect in being annoyed at schedulers who simply hit "ALL SHOPPERS" in their database? I'm fairly fed-up with what I see as 'laziness' when I'm getting shops from MN or NC or TX when I live in CA. Schedulers veering out of a 50 mile radius of the shop need to know that my time is also valuable, so please respect me and send only locale pertinent shops to me.
I get that shoppers may be travelling, however, when I'm travelling I check for shops from the location I'll be visiting.
Thoughts? Schedulers?

Add to that, one email for every airport job all over the country..can't they send one with all jobs.....really bad.

Boy, yet another whining thread. Why not just filter them, I get same. So what.

I use OWA as my mail server. It only allows me to filter by sender name, not by key word or anything else. If I was using full blown Outlook, I would filter them by key word.

@sandyf wrote:

I get emails from all over the state. I wish they would all put the general locations in the subject line. The emails with a bonus often do not say how much. Then I open up interesting locations and find it is $2.

I bet shoppers would have a ton of ways for schedulers to make their emails more efficient; then again there's probably reasons for a few of the things they do based on experience.

I wish all the airport ones started with [AIR] or [POST-SEC] so I could filter those out for when I'm traveling. I wish the locations were listed succinctly at the BEGINNING of the email along with the pay, then putting the long descriptions after. I just got an email that said "Flying Retail shop no purchase required (Post Security)" which is a pretty good start. I'd still love pricing in the subject line though! What else would help make emails better?

@michaelfitz.gerald wrote:

Boy, yet another whining thread. Why not just filter them, I get same. So what.

This definitely doesn't count as a positive contribution. Perhaps try again.

@michaelfitz.gerald wrote:

Boy, yet another whining thread. Why not just filter them, I get same. So what.

Please toggle me, getting tired of your posting under me how and why you are annoyed with posts.
I'm not writing for you.

A few years ago, I decided to track all scheduler's notices that were quite detailed in all aspects except the fee. I concluded, after checking the jobs, the reason the fee was missing was that it was too low and that in the future I would not check any shop unless the money was clearly stated upfront.

I asked one scheduler why she kept sending me Canadian shops when I lived in the US. Her reply was "they are in your shopper radius".

Funny, using Google for distance, some shops are within my radius as the crow flies but not as the roads are laid out. I can't cross a Great Lake to to a Canadian shop that might be within my 75 mile shop radius.

I got this e-mail today:

"Hello!

We currently have shops in your area that we think you would be interested in performing.

XXXXXX - incentives have been added to select shops. Please go to our website and view all shops within 250 miles of your home zip code.

Shop Pay - $10.00

This project requires you to:

Conduct a mystery shop/audit
Capture photos of the location and
Make a small purchase for which you will be reimbursed up to $1.00.
Make a petroleum purchase of up to $5.00.
Please visit the Find New Shops page on the XXXXX mystery shopping website (https://mysteryshopping.XXXXXcom/#/FindNewShops/NearMe) to find new locations specially intended for you!

Thank you! "

First problem. I wouldn't travel across town for $10. Secondly, it says to search within 250 miles. The website only allows you to search up to 100 miles. Now you can move the map around to extend that 100 miles.

When I logged into their site, I found one shop available within my normal radius. When I extended the radius, I found a total of 11 shops in New York State, and that includes NYC. Only two of them were within 100 miles of me.

Lastly, it's especially for me not specially.

@shopperbob wrote:

A few years ago, I decided to track all scheduler's notices that were quite detailed in all aspects except the fee. I concluded, after checking the jobs, the reason the fee was missing was that it was too low and that in the future I would not check any shop unless the money was clearly stated upfront.

I guess the old adage, "If you have to ask, you can't afford it" works for shop fees as well.