What % of Shops Are Not Done

Hello and good morning.

I was curious if anyone knows what % of shops go undone each month? And I guess, more importantly, how sustainable is the business model if the % is high? I just started a thread on a convenience store that is being evaluated. At this time (they are due today) there are 101 locations in Texas alone that are still on the board (over 1,900 all together) I don't know what the starting number was but it sure seems that a large percentage are going undone.

Of course, there are some shops that get snapped up so fast, I am usually standing there with my hands on my hips wondering what happened...

Anyway...any data on how many shops go unstopped every month?

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I am sure that the MSCs know and that each contract specifies their required performance. I am also certain that no MSC wants to share that information with its competitors. There have been shoppers on this forum who say that for a particular shop "they know" what percentage must be done because a scheduler told them. Maybe yes, maybe no. There is certainly no table that reports this, and I am certain that there will never be such a table to look at.

Shopping Southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware above the canal, and South Jersey since 2008

@myst4au wrote:

I am sure that the MSCs know and that each contract specifies their required performance. I am also certain that no MSC wants to share that information with its competitors. There have been shoppers on this forum who say that for a particular shop "they know" what percentage must be done because a scheduler told them. Maybe yes, maybe no. There is certainly no table that reports this, and I am certain that there will never be such a table to look at.

Yeah, I didn't expect an exact number. There sure seems to be a lot that never get done. There is a very juicy evaluation at a hardware big box retailer in South Texas. I am not eligible to do it until the 8th of August...hopefully it's still around then. It pays mid-high 2 figures and is a NOOPE. Watching it closely. The "due date" is currently August 2. It has changed twice. LOL

Also, remember that many locations are only shopped quarterly, but the job board shows all of those starting at the beginning of the calendar quarter, along with ones that need to actually be done during that month.

Based in MD, near DC
Shopping from the Carolinas to New York
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Some programs are 100% completion, and those are the ones where the money can really be made if one is in the right place at the right time. Others have a certain percentage that have to be done each cycle. The huge money can only be made in those projects with locations that go multiple consecutive cycles without being evaluated. This is the case with most of the tech retail, tech hardware, and mobile phone company shops that clearly don't have to have all locations done in one cycle. However, I have occasionally seen locations for asuch as $70 out of the blue when they had never been hightler than $20 for months. They had not been done at all in several cycles.

Based on years of shopping and scheduling experience, I would guess a completion rate in the high 90s.

@thunderdeacon wrote:

Some programs are 100% completion, and those are the ones where the money can really be made if one is in the right place at the right time. Others have a certain percentage that have to be done each cycle. The huge money can only be made in those projects with locations that go multiple consecutive cycles without being evaluated. This is the case with most of the tech retail, tech hardware, and mobile phone company shops that clearly don't have to have all locations done in one cycle. However, I have occasionally seen locations for asuch as $70 out of the blue when they had never been hightler than $20 for months. They had not been done at all in several cycles.

Interesting. Thanks for the thoughtful reply. That fits into what I'm seeing on the ground.

So does this scenario sound right? ABC Restaurant contracts with XYZ Mystery Shopping and all 100 of their restaurants are on the board starting August 1. They want a percentage of those 100 locations evaluated...they are not insistent that all 100 get shopped in August. But if the location in Anytown is not evaluated in August, they may offer in inducement in September?

Yes that sounds about right.

I've also had schedulers tell me that their contracts make them pay a significant fine to the client if they don't get their percentages met.

I think that's also why sometimes there will be big bonuses on a bunch of shops, and then all of a sudden they all disappear. As soon as they hit their percentage, they take the rest of them off the board.

That's also why sometimes they will tell us that the client canceled them, even though we had already signed up and we're already perhaps working on them or driving towards them. They lie to us and tell us it's the client, but it's really because they hit their percentage. It's one way that they show that they could care less about our well-being.

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What % of Shops Are Not Done

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