This is the mileage I looked up for one of the 40 or so shops I was sent in an email that said they pulled all the shops within 30 miles of my home. I shook my head at 30 miles to Palmdale and more to over half the other locations but I see now where it is 37 miles by plane. The map did not copy and paste but 30 miles is a route only a bird or plane could use as it is over unpopulated roadless mountainous areas. And even this one shop is not the furthest on the list. Many are 80 or more miles away. At least it is closer than many of the San Francisco area shops 450 miles away i get offered from this and other msc's.
To make issues worse none of these shops offered a bonus or any fee at all, just a modest reimbursement. And if traveling during rush hour which is almost any hour might double the travel time.
I know these companies hope I am headed in that direction or better yet willing to drive 900 miles with no mileage for a $12 -15 shop but it is frustrating to get an email directed to me. Yes I know I can turn off email or texts but then I would not see the hundreds of shops withing 10 miles of my home. Frustrating.

Distance from Los Angeles, CA to Palmdale, CA
Distance
62 mi

Time
1 hour 6 mins

Gas Cost
$8 - $16


There are 37.15 miles from Los Angeles to Palmdale in north direction and 62 miles (99.78 kilometers) by car, following the CA 14 route.

Los Angeles and Palmdale are 1 hour 6 mins far apart, if you drive non-stop .

This is the fastest route from Los Angeles, CA to Palmdale, CA. The halfway point is Canyon Country, CA.

If its always from one company, they might have their filters set wrong. This happened with Customer Impact and the CEO reads the posts here and I believe he told his schedulers to dial it back on the mileage. I was getting emails for $10 stuffed animal visits for stores two states away.

They're still just as bad about it, joanna. When I get a job 200 miles away that says $15, I reply back with an innocent, "That's $15 per mile, right?"

Depending on which part of Los Angeles you can probably go to Palmdale by going thu the mountain with that Angeles Forest hwy....that should cut your distance by approx 10mi.

But yes...I agree that the way the calcualate the distance is basic Point A to Point B with a straight line. They are not calculating the distane via "driving distance"

And no...it is not feasible to drie all the way there with ICE car.....it's only an option if you drive an EV and do home charging

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/07/2025 11:03PM by kisekinecro.

@kisekinecro wrote:

Depending on which part of Los Angeles you can probably go to Palmdale by going thu the mountain with that Angeles Forest hwy....that should cut your distance by approx 10mi.

But yes...I agree that the way the calcualate the distance is basic Point A to Point B with a straight line. They are not calculating the distane via "driving distance"

And no...it is not feasible to drie all the way there with ICE car.....it's only an option if you drive an EV and do home charging

Just to clarify, not meaning that Kisekinecro misunderstood my point, was to out this process of deciding whether or not they should include a location based on mileage. I have no interest in driving to Palmdale 62 miles away or 52 miles away to do a job at base rate there. As I said I just picked out Palmdale as I happen to know it is not within 30 miles from me which is what they supposedly used as the limit. But many of the other locations they sent me were much much further. I have seen this from various mystery shop companies. I am just venting. I will not even drive 8 miles in LA area traffic to do a job at base unless I happen to be headed to a doc or other appt nearby. As for road warrior mystery shoppers living in areas with few shops they might want to do a route. I have never seen any shop worth driving out of my way from Los Angeles for. Even with a big bonus if it is in a far place there is another biggish California city much closer than mine whose shoppers it might make sense to drive to. Palmdale is a sizeable city right next to Lancaster another sizeable city. Combined they have a half million people. They probably can fill this job if they offered a bonus of $5 to a local.

@sandyf wrote:

This is the mileage I looked up for one of the 40 or so shops I was sent in an email that said they pulled all the shops within 30 miles of my home. I shook my head at 30 miles to Palmdale and more to over half the other locations but I see now where it is 37 miles by plane. The map did not copy and paste but 30 miles is a route only a bird or plane could use as it is over unpopulated roadless mountainous areas. And even this one shop is not the furthest on the list. Many are 80 or more miles away. At least it is closer than many of the San Francisco area shops 450 miles away i get offered from this and other msc's.
To make issues worse none of these shops offered a bonus or any fee at all, just a modest reimbursement. And if traveling during rush hour which is almost any hour might double the travel time.
I know these companies hope I am headed in that direction or better yet willing to drive 900 miles with no mileage for a $12 -15 shop but it is frustrating to get an email directed to me. Yes I know I can turn off email or texts but then I would not see the hundreds of shops withing 10 miles of my home. Frustrating.

Distance from Los Angeles, CA to Palmdale, CA
Distance
62 mi

Time
1 hour 6 mins

Gas Cost
$8 - $16


There are 37.15 miles from Los Angeles to Palmdale in north direction and 62 miles (99.78 kilometers) by car, following the CA 14 route.

Los Angeles and Palmdale are 1 hour 6 mins far apart, if you drive non-stop .

This is the fastest route from Los Angeles, CA to Palmdale, CA. The halfway point is Canyon Country, CA.

I feel you. I get them too, and delete anything offering less than $20 without even reading because they won’t even cover gas. I won’t pay to work.

Used to work in filming out of LA/Ventura County running all over and know those roads. Traffic is awful 24/7 now as well.

Interesting observation to note about how they do the miles. Tested and came up with the same figures, which are very inaccurate when it comes time to add up them up for the annual report to Uncle Sam.

I became accustomed calculating my own miles and keeping logs when I was scouting locations…often hundreds/day. Gas prices are still stupid here but government mileage rates are a 2x what they were then.

Don’t miss the LA grind at all, but the Bay Area traffic is almost as bad.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/09/2025 12:00AM by SBP.

One of the websites.. I'm gonna say Trendsource probably, posted a mileage clarification. I don't remember if it was on the news page, or on one of the shops? But they said clearly that the mileage they post is straight line mileage, not actual road mileage, and that you should understand that they "may" be different when you are scheduling your shops.

I keep getting emails with nothing in my state from the biggest company out there.

I once got a huge list of shops for the wrong state. I mean, the abbreviation is similar so they must be geographically close, right?

But mostly I roll my eyes because they use as the crow flies mileage and there is a large body of water with only a couple bridges in between me and some of these "close" places. If only I had a jetpack.

When I was living in Florida, a scheduler contacted me with a very urgent end of the month shop she desperately wanted done. I think it paid a couple hundred bucks.

The shop was in Indiana.

She knew I was in Florida.

Now that is desperation.

I've been saying for a while that this industry has a lot of inefficiencies.

It happens. You've been around long enough to know that it happens. Delete and move on.

@BayShopper22 wrote:

It happens. You've been around long enough to know that it happens. Delete and move on.

All deleting and moving on would do for me would be someone else would take all the jobs as I would not know they exist. So just letting all you out there know that the above advice from a seasoned shopper might work in your world but would not in mine.
The msc fixing the issue would be a much better resolution than no one reading their emails.
I also know many schedulers read this forum so perhaps bringing up this issue may alert a scheduler to the fact that they are publishing as the bird flies mileage info rather than road miles which is very easy for them to get unless of course they are hiring birds now to do these jobs.
And I would like to add to this another annoying issue that for the msc that have jobs with large chains in big cities it would be great to list the area of the city the job is in rather than a list of 25 jobs that simply say Los Angeles.many of which could be 30 miles from where I live or more. on crowded roads. This may be true of other geographically big cities like New York City. At least there I hope they at least list the borough and not just NYC like they do here in LA.

That would be insanely time consuming for the scheduler to figure out what area of the city each location is in.

@sandyf wrote:

@BayShopper22 wrote:

It happens. You've been around long enough to know that it happens. Delete and move on.

All deleting and moving on would do for me would be someone else would take all the jobs as I would not know they exist. So just letting all you out there know that the above advice from a seasoned shopper might work in your world but would not in mine.
The msc fixing the issue would be a much better resolution than no one reading their emails.
I also know many schedulers read this forum so perhaps bringing up this issue may alert a scheduler to the fact that they are publishing as the bird flies mileage info rather than road miles which is very easy for them to get unless of course they are hiring birds now to do these jobs.
And I would like to add to this another annoying issue that for the msc that have jobs with large chains in big cities it would be great to list the area of the city the job is in rather than a list of 25 jobs that simply say Los Angeles.many of which could be 30 miles from where I live or more. on crowded roads. This may be true of other geographically big cities like New York City. At least there I hope they at least list the borough and not just NYC like they do here in LA.

Happens a lot in NYC. "Oh, but it's only 12 miles away from your home location!" Sure, if I could drive or fly across the Long Island Sound (or the Major Deegan Xway traffic).

It's all fine until a scheduler gets huffy with you because you asked for more information about a "shop only a few miles from you" and then said no thanks when the details were provided. Scheduler suggested that I need to adjust the number of miles I am willing to travel on my profile. Turns out that I am willing to drive 45 minutes for a free, sit down dinner for two and $20 in my pocket but not for a cold sandwich, reimbursement only. I'm inconsistent like that.

@Deedeezthoughts wrote:

It's all fine until a scheduler gets huffy with you because you asked for more information about a "shop only a few miles from you" and then said no thanks when the details were provided. Scheduler suggested that I need to adjust the number of miles I am willing to travel on my profile. Turns out that I am willing to drive 45 minutes for a free, sit down dinner for two and $20 in my pocket but not for a cold sandwich, reimbursement only. I'm inconsistent like that.

Deedeez you hit the exact shop this was for when I received the email that annoyed me. The cold sub reimbursement only. Nope to 30 miles or 80 miles or even, like you 12 miles or at 12mph driving time in my city a 2 hour round trip for me. But maybe for a nice dinner with a decent fee attached! It happens with other msc too.

I shop in two different states which is 8 hours apart. I have one scheduler will text me and asks which weeks I will be in her state that month. Anytime she has jobs for those weeks I will get an email and if it’s not those weeks I don’t. I really appreciate her doing that because I get a ton of emails between the 2 places. However, I don’t expect the companies to know where I am going to be and when so I appreciate the emails so I can have a full schedule when I’m at each place. I also stop in between sometimes and if I do one in one state then I start getting emails for that state to.

Some companies have figured out how to do this. I live in LA which is spread out far and wide. They will not list every shop as Los Angeles so I have to open 25 Los angeles shops one by one to see where they are. Instead they have them labled.... So say , for instance if I get an email about all the shops for this Chinese fast food place , they are listed by the store location on the long list of shop so they might say not just Los Angeles 25 times but Los Angeles Vermont, Los Angeles Lincoln. I know Vermont is not a place I plan to drive to do this shop so i dont have to click to open the shop itself. But if it says Los Angeles Lincoln I know that is the location close to me.
These types of emails are usually for one client. In this case this fast food has 25 locations available right now all in Los Angeles. Other more prolific fast foods may have 40 locations or more all in this city so to see which ones are now available I have to open it 40x and keep track of where in the list I am. There are workarounds however they also consume time. They only need to figure out the correct labeling once per client and use that each time they send an email.

@viv0412 wrote:

That would be insanely time consuming for the scheduler to figure out what area of the city each location is in.

@sandyf wrote:

@BayShopper22 wrote:

It happens. You've been around long enough to know that it happens. Delete and move on.

All deleting and moving on would do for me would be someone else would take all the jobs as I would not know they exist. So just letting all you out there know that the above advice from a seasoned shopper might work in your world but would not in mine.
The msc fixing the issue would be a much better resolution than no one reading their emails.
I also know many schedulers read this forum so perhaps bringing up this issue may alert a scheduler to the fact that they are publishing as the bird flies mileage info rather than road miles which is very easy for them to get unless of course they are hiring birds now to do these jobs.
And I would like to add to this another annoying issue that for the msc that have jobs with large chains in big cities it would be great to list the area of the city the job is in rather than a list of 25 jobs that simply say Los Angeles.many of which could be 30 miles from where I live or more. on crowded roads. This may be true of other geographically big cities like New York City. At least there I hope they at least list the borough and not just NYC like they do here in LA.

YES! Huge fan of location notation. A zip code seems like an easy add to me. They don't have to know the area at all to give that valuable bit of information.

@sandyf wrote:

Some companies have figured out how to do this. I live in LA which is spread out far and wide. They will not list every shop as Los Angeles so I have to open 25 Los angeles shops one by one to see where they are. Instead they have them labled.... So say , for instance if I get an email about all the shops for this Chinese fast food place , they are listed by the store location on the long list of shop so they might say not just Los Angeles 25 times but Los Angeles Vermont, Los Angeles Lincoln...

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2025 03:35PM by Deedeezthoughts.