Hi all,

I have been doing Best Buy audits with the company for some time now. The 75$ is bad, but in my area, there were such few auditors, I could always get a 90$ bonus, no questions asked, making it worth my while.

I also traveled for them a lot, and when calculating my bonus took flights/hotels into account + 200$ a day for me to travel, otherwise I wouldn't accept a lower offer.

Now that they have moved to presto, we can only hold audits for 3 days. What I don't understand is how that works when I have to book a flight 1 week out for an audit. The travel request form is a joke. Not only do you need at least 8, but they cap the audit at 75$. Even if they did pay all my expenses, I am not taking a a 2 day trip for a net 75$. Also, they say they don't pay for food or other incidentals, which would mean I end up loosing money between expenses and my time traveling.

Does anybody have any experience with this new way of doing things? How am I supposed to schedule travel somewhere that has 3 locations, if the locations could get swept up a day before I can claim them in my 3-day limit?

I wish we could just go back to simply requesting a bonus that I thought covered expenses and my time, and it could either get accepted or rejected. They are already so short on auditors, and I feel like this is only going to make it worse.

At least 3 in my area were snapped up within one week of being on Presto. They used to sit on the job board (at $75) for months. So it doesn't seem like there is a shortage of new auditors. They'll get plenty of the app using gig workers who are used to making much less per gig. Frankly, I'm suprised you were getting $90 bonus in addition to the $75. Also very suprised that they paid so well that flight, hotel and rental car expenses still made it worthwhile.

As for "I feel like this is only going to make it worse", yes indeed, it is worse for you financially. They're finding people who will work for much, MUCH, less than what you were getting. No doubt there are people who would drive on their own dime to pick up 8@$75, add the $5 Presto gig that pays for a gallon of fuel and sleep in their car at a rest stop or Walmart. And please don't "feel" anything. It's just business. Leave the emotions out of it and don't sell yourself short.

That is a good point. Don't sell yourself short. This will come around eventually as all lower fee changes seem to do. People will come and get burned out. The best thing to do is diversify and keep an eye on it.

Thanks for the input. "Feel" was not intended as an emotion in this context, rather an opinion on the audit structure.

I don't understand the refusal to pay for some kind of meal allowance. Have they told you why?

@shebawoofnose wrote:

Hi all,

I wish we could just go back to simply requesting a bonus that I thought covered expenses and my time, and it could either get accepted or rejected. They are already so short on auditors, and I feel like this is only going to make it worse.

By switching to Presto for 2022, these Best Buy audits are now available to the over 1,200,000 people who have so far downloaded the app. Now you are competing with millennials like my daughter, who knocks them off on her lunch hour. It’s a Brave New World, time to sign up with some more companies.

@ColoKate63 wrote:

@shebawoofnose wrote:

Hi all,

I wish we could just go back to simply requesting a bonus that I thought covered expenses and my time, and it could either get accepted or rejected. They are already so short on auditors, and I feel like this is only going to make it worse.

By switching to Presto for 2022, these Best Buy audits are now available to the over 1,200,000 people who have so far downloaded the app. Now you are competing with millennials like my daughter, who knocks them off on her lunch hour. It’s a Brave New World, time to sign up with some more companies.

Lunch hour? Is it really possible to drive there and do this under an hour?

She works from home as a paralegal. The attorneys don’t care what hours she actually works as long as she hits a set number of billable hours weekly for them. I should have been more specific. I think it takes her about 90 minutes to do one now, more or less.

Exactly. There is now more competition so the MSC can get stingy with the perks. Something similar happened with the gas station audits. When the MSC was bought bought, all of the bonuses disappeared. That made it impossible for route shoppers.

@ColoKate63 wrote:

By switching to Presto for 2022, these Best Buy audits are now available to the over 1,200,000 people who have so far downloaded the app. Now you are competing with millennials like my daughter, who knocks them off on her lunch hour. It’s a Brave New World, time to sign up with some more companies.

I like Presto and the other apps. The lack of a middleman, the fast pay and using my iPhone as a paperless home office really do appeal to me.

I hated the old days of emailing schedulers (or, god forbid, calling them) and then waiting 4-6 weeks for payment. A couple times when I was first beginning I had a few shops removed and given to a route shopper; I figure that this is Karma giving back.

@ColoKate63 wrote:

I like Presto and the other apps. The lack of a middleman, the fast pay and using my iPhone as a paperless home office really do appeal to me.

I hated the old days of emailing schedulers (or, god forbid, calling them) and then waiting 4-6 weeks for payment. A couple times when I was first beginning I had a few shops removed and given to a route shopper; I figure that this is Karma giving back.

There are perks for sure and I can't disagree with you on that. However, one thing we do not need is a lower barrier to entry. I would rather have to do a little extra work to make a lot more money then to take $5 jobs and work for less than minimum wage. I understand that the Best Buy audit is an exception here but let's be really honest with money making and mystery shopping apps. I earn way more from having communication with schedulers.

We will just have to agree to disagree on this; I saw $190-225 gas stations last month on the IPSOS job board ready for self-assignment, no scheduler contact at all.

The only caveat is that there was a 24-hour completion window and no re-self assignment possible. I grabbed three and got them done the same day, was paid 72 hours later. I do see high bonuses, especially in Q4 - but you have to be quick and ready to grab your car keys and go.

@ColoKate63 wrote:

We will just have to agree to disagree on this; I saw $190-225 gas stations last month on the IPSOS job board ready for self-assignment, no scheduler contact at all.

The only caveat is that there was a 24-hour completion window and no re-self assignment possible. I grabbed three and got them done the same day, was paid 72 hours later. I do see high bonuses, especially in Q4 - but you have to be quick and ready to grab your car keys and go.

I took two of the Ipsos gas stations at $100 each and built a route around them. The day before I was going to do them, I got an e-mail that they were cancelled.

Now a scheduler for three of the other shops I built my route around doesn't understand that I can't justify doing her $15 shops without the Ipsos anchors. She said she's not responsible for other MSCs.

I agree, but I can't justify driving 175 miles and writing up three reports for $45, especially when it will cost me about $21 in gas. I believe she is a new scheduler.

Any scheduler, new or seasoned would be irritated about this. You requested shops and now don't want to do them. The scheduler is right, SHE isn't responsible for any other MSC.
I have to agree completely with the scheduler, you entered into a contract to complete this work and should do so.

@wrosie wrote:

@ColoKate63 wrote:

We will just have to agree to disagree on this; I saw $190-225 gas stations last month on the IPSOS job board ready for self-assignment, no scheduler contact at all.

The only caveat is that there was a 24-hour completion window and no re-self assignment possible. I grabbed three and got them done the same day, was paid 72 hours later. I do see high bonuses, especially in Q4 - but you have to be quick and ready to grab your car keys and go.

I took two of the Ipsos gas stations at $100 each and built a route around them. The day before I was going to do them, I got an e-mail that they were cancelled.

Now a scheduler for three of the other shops I built my route around doesn't understand that I can't justify doing her $15 shops without the Ipsos anchors. She said she's not responsible for other MSCs.

I agree, but I can't justify driving 175 miles and writing up three reports for $45, especially when it will cost me about $21 in gas. I believe she is a new scheduler.

This is why I rarely do $15 shops, even if they are on the way.

@wrosie wrote:

@ColoKate63 wrote:

We will just have to agree to disagree on this; I saw $190-225 gas stations last month on the IPSOS job board ready for self-assignment, no scheduler contact at all.

The only caveat is that there was a 24-hour completion window and no re-self assignment possible. I grabbed three and got them done the same day, was paid 72 hours later. I do see high bonuses, especially in Q4 - but you have to be quick and ready to grab your car keys and go.

I took two of the Ipsos gas stations at $100 each and built a route around them. The day before I was going to do them, I got an e-mail that they were cancelled.

Now a scheduler for three of the other shops I built my route around doesn't understand that I can't justify doing her $15 shops without the Ipsos anchors. She said she's not responsible for other MSCs.

I agree, but I can't justify driving 175 miles and writing up three reports for $45, especially when it will cost me about $21 in gas. I believe she is a new scheduler.

@ColoKate63 wrote:

We will just have to agree to disagree on this; I saw $190-225 gas stations last month on the IPSOS job board ready for self-assignment, no scheduler contact at all.

The only caveat is that there was a 24-hour completion window and no re-self assignment possible. I grabbed three and got them done the same day, was paid 72 hours later. I do see high bonuses, especially in Q4 - but you have to be quick and ready to grab your car keys and go.

You are talking about more jobs going to apps and having over a million competitors and saying to sign up for more companies (assuming then more "apps". I find it hard to believe you can really agree that more shops going on more apps with those million competitors can honestly be a good thing. You can not use a self assigned bonused shop as an alternative here. You got this self assign status from doing grunt work for the MSC and proving yourself and now they trust you. I would also think that having this consistently would be a tough ask.

We can all clearly see what happens to jobs when they start hitting the apps. It is simply that the fees drop. Surely you can't be ok with that just because you don't have to talk to schedulers.

@jrj76 wrote:

@ColoKate63 wrote:

We will just have to agree to disagree on this; I saw $190-225 gas stations last month on the IPSOS job board ready for self-assignment, no scheduler contact at all.

The only caveat is that there was a 24-hour completion window and no re-self assignment possible. I grabbed three and got them done the same day, was paid 72 hours later. I do see high bonuses, especially in Q4 - but you have to be quick and ready to grab your car keys and go.

You are talking about more jobs going to apps and having over a million competitors…
We can all clearly see what happens to jobs when they start hitting the apps. It is simply that the fees drop. Surely you can't be ok with that just because you don't have to talk to schedulers.

As a test, I just pulled up a random Midwestern midsized city on my Presto App. I can see a handful of the $75 Best Buy Audits that are the topic of this thread. I also can find $85 car negotiations, $55 untargeted apartment shops, $35 ATV shops, $18 gas station audits. There’s some “chicken feed” stuff I wouldn’t touch (under $10 junk) but it would be completely possible for a shopper in this midsized city to earn $600+ over 72 hours, which is generally how long you can hold/self-schedule out work. I honestly don’t see what you’re complaining about regarding the migration of work to phone apps.

@HonnyBrown wrote:

Exactly. There is now more competition so the MSC can get stingy with the perks. Something similar happened with the gas station audits. When the MSC was bought bought, all of the bonuses disappeared. That made it impossible for route shoppers.

Add to that all the IT staff who can now permanently work from home. We wasted a good amount of time in the office pre-pandemic and can now use those hours to attend to dishes and laundry (which my wife loves) and mystery shopping.

I've seen two of these within a 30 mile radius of each other for $175 each. Others are still sitting at $100 with no other (purple, blue or orange pin) shops in sight. I guess they're still fishing for people who will accept lower payment.
What happened to the OP? Are they paying for overnight accomodations, lunch, flights?

IPSOS just did a webinar on these a few weeks ago. It was an run through the writeup by a IPSOS exec. They now have a route audit procedure. Here's the YouTube link if anyone cares to watch it.

[www.youtube.com]

I am not the OP, but I travel and complete about 25-30 Best Buys a month. Those that are priced more than $90 are high priority March audits. The price will go back to $90 next month. I took about 15 of them at $150 and $175 this week. To answer your question about expenses...yes, they will reimburse hotel up to $125 per night, up to a full size rental car, airline tickets and gas plus negotiate a travel bonus for each store, but will not reimburse for food or incidentals. No big deal on the food though, I eat like a bird and usually carry a small cooler with munchies and drinks in it. But if I do get hungry for a meal, I just search job boards for fast food shops and sometimes casual dining shops. I also pick up gas stations along the way for extra money and more gas. They just raised the minimum number of stores from 8 to 15 though for reimbursement. Anything less than 15 will not go in a private route with reimbursements, they will only negotiate a bonus for less than 15 stores. The process for requesting a route with expenses reimbursed has changed and is a pain in the butt process, but I travel at least 2 weeks a month so I deal with it so I can get my money back on gas and rooms. Hope that helps some.

@wrosie wrote:

I took two of the Ipsos gas stations at $100 each and built a route around them. The day before I was going to do them, I got an e-mail that they were cancelled.

Now a scheduler for three of the other shops I built my route around doesn't understand that I can't justify doing her $15 shops without the Ipsos anchors. She said she's not responsible for other MSCs.

I agree, but I can't justify driving 175 miles and writing up three reports for $45,

You got burned by the cancellations, but the reality is you committed to those shops. Best thing to do going forward is to communicate with your scheduler (if possible) that you are doing a route and its possible you may need to cancel things if something drastic comes up. Then immediately notify them if you cannot do the assignments so that they can get them back out there. Those statements really applies to any type of cancellation, though. I realize its understood by most shoppers, but communication is key and the more you communicate the less likely you will get negative marks or citations when a cancellation occurs. In my experience, I've rarely had a shop cancelled on me after being assigned. So if your experience is like mine, its not an event that will happen often.

@ColoKate63 wrote:

I like Presto and the other apps. The lack of a middleman, the fast pay and using my iPhone as a paperless home office really do appeal to me.

I hated the old days of emailing schedulers (or, god forbid, calling them) and then waiting 4-6 weeks for payment. A couple times when I was first beginning I had a few shops removed and given to a route shopper; I figure that this is Karma giving back.

Fast pay is always a benefit. I don't shop much anymore, but I used too full time in college. However, in my experience once you establish yourself with a few MSC's and inevitably, specific schedulers, they are much more willing to work with you on bonuses, pay increases and so forth and especially if you route shop. Those established contacts makes all the difference in the world if you rely on it for your main income and its not just a side hustle.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/20/2022 05:40PM by jdyeah.