I use special tubes for nickels, dimes and quarters, and when each is full, you can slip a coin roller in and turn it upside down. But the money gets used in leaner weeks, and doesn't get put away.

However, I just started an account at Capitol One for my MSing teller shops, and I'm trying to put a little away for even rainier days.

This is a concept that we must all learn. Saving money is even more important now that ever before. With the state that our economy is in many are losing their jobs and homes. Who really knows who may be next?

modario Wrote:
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> Just reeling over the passed events of this year
> and all that the new year may bring.
>
> How do you think any of this will effect the
> mystery shopping industry??
>
> I am always optimistic but would like to hear what
> the MS community has to say.


Well, as I suspected the economic decline has reached me. I had three shops cancel this week due to lack of positive sales over the holidays and the MS companies client's want to hold off on all shops. I, also, have a part time on call job that has not needed me for three weeks now. I really do hope that the new president and his staff can and will turn this around.

I did 4 shops today. At one location there was an official sign on the door closing the business with a "Vacate Immediately" instruction because it had no running water. The notice was dated 12/26 and I guess the proprietor doesn't have enough $$ + incentive to catch up on his water bills and reopen. They obviously departed in a hurry because inside I could still see coffee in the coffee pots though it would appear that the electricity was off now as well.

My age will show with this one. In the early 60's when money was tight folks would go to the movies or pay a utility bill with silver dollars. My aunt would collect the silver dollars at the gas company and pay her property taxes with them every year.

My pennies are in a large wet wipe container (without the wet wipes) . My other change is in a water bottle. It all adds up in the end.

I have not seen a drug shop in two months.

HAPPY NEW YEAR

A restaurant where we ate last week (on our dime), was closed today, 5 days later, when I went to shop it. I could see pens at the host's podium, napkins on the bar, glasses and rolled silverware readied for tables. There was a handwritten notice of closure on the door thanking patrons for their business. 73 employees.

My business was hit hard by the recession. That's why I'm MSing, but it doesn't come near making up the difference. Luckily Social Security kicked in this summer.

I don't want to even go here; for my family, we are close to pitching tents on te far beaches of the island.

Sneakers, I'd ask for the parking money. The MSP may not be fully aware that you have to pay.

Dee, how many students do you have?

I have been thinking about grabbing everything I see, but I had been getting so much work within ten miles that I didn't want to drive to the city again, especially since I have another job now. During breaks, I think I will anyway, but I'm more inclined to take all-day temporary assignments rather than try to string things together. I also have to consider how tired I'd get and whether that would affect my day job.

One of the local clothing chains cut hours of their employees, including the manager. An employee was going door to door selling tamales. The grocery store and Wal-Mart still have the crowds.

I had heavy merchandising work in September and October. I could barely keep up with it. One of my companies gives me regular work almost every day of the week. Last week and this week, though, it is way down. Are they just taking a breath? I have been looking for mystery shopping assignments. I looked as far as 60 to 100 miles out, out of curiosity, and I'm not seeing much. Last fall, I had a lot of phone assignments, but they have dwindled. I'm hoping that it is just January, when many businesses recoup anyway.

Eventually, I will try to take every assignment I can. I still worry about wear and tear on my car if I go to neighboring towns. After all, I can't afford to replace it.

Do any of you think that a lot of this economic downturn is media-driven? I won't post all my examples here, but I just think it would have not been so bad for the people who are experiencing it if the media hadn't scared so many people.

While the media has made us more aware of what is going on than perhaps we would have been in the past, my impression is that if it has had a role, it was minor. That the media was and is used to encourage overspending--which has played a large role in this debacle--it was the greed of banks and mortgage brokers to write loans to the unqualified buyers who clamored for them that started the ball rolling this time down. When those started going bad--because buyers were allowed to make false asset claims on applications, appraisers were happy to collect their fees for stating 'market values' of real estate to be whatever a buyer had been willing to contract for and banks were writing Draconian mortgage terms they were representing as 'doable'--it took down the financial industry. As financials fell, so did the stock markets. As stock markets fell, uncertainty spread. Combined with the high price of fuel which consumers saw every time they took their car out of the driveway and higher prices in the stores both due to shipping costs and corn shortages leading to higher animal feed prices, consumers began cutting back. Ours is a consumer driven economy and when consumers are uncertain about the future, they don't spend. I certainly don't need the media pointing out to me how high the "fuel surcharge" has gotten on my electric bill, making it mid $100 range each month rather than its previous highs of around $95. Nor do I need them to point out that a good sale on chicken quarters these days is 59 per pound instead of the usual 29 per pound sales of a couple of years ago with occasional sales as low as 13 per pound.

Sandra Sue, Merchandising slows down in Jan. and Feb. Things usually start to pick back up in about mid March. This year it will be wait and see. Some companies are not renewing their contracts because of the economy. A lot of other companies that would have had merchandisers are doing the work in house. With all of the business closures this last year merchandising work is getting harder to come by. We just have to hang in there. I work for several merchandising companies so that I have more work available to me. Being to busy is preferable to not having any work.

Thanks, Mo. I have been merchandising for two years, and my best company hired me in February. I have been mystery shopping off-and-on for years. I had come to expect that big check from my main company and others filling in, so when it didn't come, I had to reconsider whether my family can travel to two weddings this year. I think putting the furkids in the kennel will be the deciding factor. It would be traumatic for all three of them.

It is your fourth and fifth sentences that I was asking about--whether we really know what is happening.

Flash, I think that the media do provide a platform of fear for many of us as consumers. If I am not losing my house and am not aware of anyone else locally who is, I might not think that the bad economy is going to reach me. What happens then if I and all my neighbors continue to spend? Isn't that what the experts say the economy needs? That's why I think that all of the interviews with experts and the average person on the street are partially causing this. Around here, no one trusts the Appraisal District. There have been lawsuits, and one person won at the state's highest court. They have valued our house at $10,000 higher than our mortgage holder has. Our house is over 60 years old and badly needs repairs. Yet we have high taxes.

This was all I was going to say. Something weird just happened. There was a flash and the computer took me back to the original email announcing there was more to the thread I read before I came to this one. I saw a minimized pop-up, which I didn't minimize or even see before, clicked on it, deleted it, and all of a sudden, this came up again. I know, I know, I'm not supposed to be typing directly onto this, but most of the time, it saves time. Technology can have its quirks!

Sandra Sue Wrote:
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> Flash, I think that the media do provide a
> platform of fear for many of us as consumers. If
> I am not losing my house and am not aware of
> anyone else locally who is, I might not think that
> the bad economy is going to reach me. What
> happens then if I and all my neighbors continue to
> spend? Isn't that what the experts say the
> economy needs?

We are soooo beyond a local economy that you can not stay isolated from what is happening in the rest of the country and the world. Your local grocery may be selling only local produce, but chances are they are importing melons from Guatemala and tomatoes from Mexico. Your price of gas didn't stay low because your community is exempt from the worldwide price increases on a barrel of oil. Your meat prices won't stay low because you aren't aware that feed prices are going up as feeder corn is being turned into ethanol. You can certainly decide that there is no crisis because neither you nor your neighbors is in foreclosure, but the banks with whom you do business are in a crisis at least to some extent because of the nationwide/worldwide crunch on credit even to good lenders. If you look at your credit card statements you probably will note that your stated interest rates have risen sharply even if you pay your balance in full each month and have a great credit rating. With fewer and fewer goods you purchase being locally made or sold by purely local retailers, events in the world will cause changes in the prices you must pay and even in the existence of your current retailers. And if your current retailers are big companies that are in difficulty, your stores may be closed and the local employees unemployed even if the stores in your community were doing good business.

There was a once upon a time when your stores were all locally owned and operated, you had produce in season that was all locally grown, your horse grazed on your field when he wasn't pulling your wagon, you sewed your own clothes with an occasional store-bought item, cooked on a wood stove, went to bed shortly after dark to preserve the candles and you or a local carpenter built your furniture. The dollar you hoarded lost less than 1% of its value each year so saving it in the local bank at 2% interest per year was a good thing that also helped your neighbors. We are so far away from that scenario that it almost feels like it is time to go full circle and return there. But that is not going to happen short of a worldwide disaster. We are too intertwined with the rest of the world and too accustomed to a variety of products and services that are not all available through local industry.

I'm in western New York and the stores actually did better during the holiday season than last year. The grocery stores were jammed! Our housing market is not great, but not bad either. Of course, it never goes way up either. But I have noticed that there are a lot fewer jobs here this month. There were also fewer in December. So because companies are national, not local, I fear that MS will not be good for a while. Too bad.

Shop numbers were not great in Dec. in the Carolinas either. I wasn't sure if they were snatched up immediately upon posting, or reduced due to the holidays. January postings and emails seemed to net about-average numbers of shops.

I don't know if the health of mystery shopping follows housing starts/foreclosures, but my community, so far, has not suffered. Unemployment here also is well below the national average.

I wandered into the Circuit City that opened about a month ago and now has a "Grand Opening" banner high on the building and "Going Out of Business" signs on the front doors. The sign on the space being built next to it that it was to be the future home of a new Carrabas is now gone. Another space in that mall now has a "Famous Footware" sign over the door but it does not appear that building out of the interior space is continuing.

I have the magical answer. I,too,save my change but I went to Ocean State Job lot and purchased a coin roller. Put the money in, it sorts it, puts it into paper rolls and saves a lot of work. It costs $10.95 and well worth it. All discounters have them for sale. Beats the old cookie jar...

Yeah, but there's the surprise element with the old cookie jar. (In my house, it's a coffee can, and it's not transparent!)

Nice to see you again, Dr. Lloyd. How's MSing been?

I do the coin rolling too, and collect daily from my pockets.

Re: the economy. I'm, in one of the bedroom communities of NYC. In theory it's the 2nd most prosperous county in the country, but what hits the city hits us. I don't see anyone moving into the empty stores that have closed.

I;m in Michigan,Grand Raoids, and Ms seems about average,yet in the Detroit area there are so many shops you could make ms a full time job.

Sandra Sue,

I teach 4 classes, I have 50 students total across the 4 courses.

I don't think it will change the mystery shopping scene at all. Some companies will leave but others will pop in. I wouldn't worry about.

Just an update from my end of this MS world.

There has been a sharp decline in my area for shops. I used to get anywhere from 50-60 emails daily and now it is down to about 30. It could very well be the time of year and that's what I'm hoping. I've come to the conclusion that this industry is very much like advertising in that it would be the first expense a company would cut.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this month though!

I am in Eastern Washington State, and wouldn't even know there was a recession except for the news. We haven't been hit hardly at all here. Our housing market is stable and I am getting the same amount of shops I always have. I haven't noticed a decline in shops at all.

I am in an area that has a definite "tourist season" usually from November to April. This year I am seeing almost no license tags here from Canada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and other states that usually fill our roads during "season". Needless to say a fair amount of service sector employment here is in the tourism industry. Hotel parking lots are empty, the RV resorts have a lot of empty parking pads, the restaurants and outlet malls are similarly empty.

Last month we did a fine dining restaurant in a nearby city where there is significant first and second generation wealth. We passed many virtually empty malls on our way there. At the mall with the restaurant the lots were so full we needed to use the valet parking to get a parking space. The restaurant was full--luckily we had been required to make reservations. A purely mediocre dinner was around $175 for two. But the service was fawning, which evidently made it attractive to the clientele as the food certainly was not worthy of half the price tag. My point is that the money folks are changing little of their lifestyle while the majority of the population has curtailed their spending.

Mystery shopping created a few thousand dollars for me last year that was used for various overflow items in my budget. It was interesting and fun, until the bottom fell out of the economy and everybody, except for the rich and famous (those that bled the general public through there price increases),has suffered, while the so-called r&f has sat back on their coffers, smoking my cuban cigars, with my new smoking jacket on, in my new Lazyboy recliner, on my new 80ft yaught,driving my new 2009 Corvette, living in my 15,000 sqft home, trying to think of more ways to increase their prices at the pumps, groceries, utilities, insurance companies, health organizations etc. We shipped all our work to overseas companies. We brought people in from, Mexico,India, Japan, China, you name it, to replace our workers over here, so that their wages can be sent back to their respected families in whatever country they are from. Folks we put a knife to our own throats and believed these so-called politicians that change was coming. Well, even our own President has said basically, "We're screwed." So, whats that saying about "Mystery Shopping" in the future? It's done, over with. Companies have stopped posting their jobs, (car dealers, groceries, banks, restaurants, mattress companies etc) are all losing money and why pay you or me to audit these employees when they are just keeping their heads above water. Just this week, a bank that I worked for at $20.00-$30.00 per bank for maybe 3-5 minutes of work, sometimes 30 minute jobs cut their program. That was a big chunk of change each month. Others are no longer putting out work. So again, I believe that "Mystery Shopping" is just about to be buried, maybe only a few inches, then again maybe 6 feet. I hope your area that you live in is better then here in Florida. Me, I'm looking for another job (??????). Yeah I know, line up behind 200+ more that are applying for the same position. Times are bad and I believe that we haven't touched the tip of the iceberg as of yet.

During the past few weeks the jobs have started popping up a little in western New York.

Flash and TadPle - where in Florida are you? I lived there several years and the past two years split the year until we decided to live up north year round. BUT, the MS was better in FL than here. I was in the St. Pete area and had tons of jobs.

I'm South of the St. Pete area. And yes, a couple of years ago there were a ton of shops so you had the opportunity to be selective and meet a financial goal with 25-30 jobs per month. You targeted 25 and the extras were those so heavily bonused you couldn't justify leaving them on the table.

Last year and this year I am needing to do 50-60 jobs per month to meet the same financial goal. Not possible to meet the same goal with 25 jobs any more. Tough to make it with 60. Rarely are there bonuses that require less than about 100 mile round trip for an orphan shop.

Wow. Flash, do you attribute this to the economy or competition? Of course, the economy has led to an increase in shoppers. But, are this year's shops the same for less pay?

A large part of it is due to the economy and if you really get down to it, there is more competition because there are more folks unemployed who are trying anything to make ends meet--including mystery shopping. Just today I got word that a good paying bank is discontinuing shopping. That leaves only 4 banks in my area that are shopped and two of them have fees now so low it makes about as much sense to do a ff as a platform shop. There used to be about 8 shipping shops in my area with one company each month. This month there were 2 reasonably close to me. The list just goes on and on, but a major missing piece of the puzzle is that many of the casual dining shops have discontinued or seriously curtailed their shops since last fall.