I think it would be nice to know what MSC services what companies and what areas of the country. Would it be nice to be able to just register with the best MSC companies in your area?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2019 06:19PM by bmttinman.

And are you offering to provide such information ? Doing so, even in a PM or an email is a violation of the ICAs we sign, as well as of thee main forum rule.

You are in excellent company. Many other people would like to know this. Unfortunately, it is against forum rules and our Independent Contractor agreements to link the names of MSCs and their clients. However, there are ways to streamline the work.

1. Check out the job sub-forum at this website. Schedulers often list the locations of their jobs.
2. Check out aggregated job boards such as Volition and Jobslinger. There, you can search by state, city/state, zipcode, etc.
3.Sign up with multiple companies so that you have access to their job boards which you access from your shopper log.
4. Check out mystery shopping apps.
5.Do the kind of work that makes you memorable in a good way and might make it easy for schedulers to want to offer you other types of assignments.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/06/2019 09:23PM by Shop-et-al.

Sure, as a dream, it would be great to only register with the best MSCs that have shops in my area but there are a lot of practical reasons why that would be a bad business decision even if there were lists somewhere. And it would be great if clients never ended their MS programs and never changed MSCs. But life happens. Who determines "the best MSCs?" I make that determination for myself, and I have many MS friends and some of their "best MSCs" are on my No or my Never-never list. Some of my buddy MS competitors hate and avoid my two favorite companies. And what about when a company gets a new client? If I only registered with companies that a list or another shopper told me had jobs in my area, I would have missed out on a lot of opportunities over the years. Many of the companies I am registered with do not currently have shops in my area. But every few months, particular in January-February of each year, new programs roll out and I get shops from companies who previously did not have clients in my area. But suddenly they do. Because I'm signed up with the companies already, I'm right there and I jump on the new opportunities. On those same timetables, clients shift from one MSC to another. Since I'm registered with so many, I immediately see those shifts and I make the transition to the new MSC without missing any shops or time. From my point of view, it pays to register with a lot of companies regardless of whether they currently have shops in my area or not.

I don't really understand concerns with registering with companies who may not have shops in my area. Because most of the registering is a very short questionnaire, my browser fills in a lot of my personal info. I have 3 narratives already prepared and I paste one in, using the same narratives I use for all the companies I apply with. Most don't have tests. If I'm concerned about my SS#, I can avoid providing that until I perform a job, at which time I would need to provide it if I want to be paid. I can register with a new company in about 10 minutes. In a couple of hours a day for a week, a new shopper could get registered with at least 50 new companies, and they could probably get registered with 100. I'm more than willing to spend the time as an investment in my business.

Good points Rofl
The company that basically paid and set me up video shopping no longer has any shops in my area that I am interested in. The MSC that I shop for most now, came out of nowhere. Now I shop almost exclusively for them. MSC clients come and go. MSC's come and go. Shoppers come and go. Time moves forward.

When I first started mystery shopping and I found the forum and I saw the list of all of the companies, that's the exact thought I had - it would be so much easier if one company had my entire area. If I go to the mall and see 20 shops, there are probably at least 15 MSCs that handle them. But then I realized that all of these shops are chains and the chains are all over the US and the MSC would handle all of them, not just my area. Of course, franchises may be different. So, yes, I agree it would be nice just to register with the MSCs in my area but unfortunately, that's not how it is. And as others mentioned, clients change MSCs all of the time so one MSC may not have anything in your area right now but they could in the future. Perhaps set a goal to sign up with 5-10 new companies a week. What I found was helpful was after I signed up with them, I would make a note in my spreadsheet about what clients they had based on what I saw on their job board, then if one moved into my area I would already know who shops them!

@bmttinman wrote:

I think it would be nice to know what MSC services what companies and what areas of the country. Would it be nice to be able to just register with the best MSC companies in your area?