I have been doing gas station audits for Maritz for the past five years. I currently do about 400 shops per year for them--mainly the yellow emblem, the man with the star and the navy rank insignia.
Up until this year's series of shops, I could do the yellow emblem shops in 20 minutes or less as they only require two photos of each required shop plus a photo for the "no" responses. The star/insigna audits required 25-30 minutes if it was a day shop because you also had to get photos of all line-of-sight competitors as well as certain aspects of them (gas price, amenities, etc.). If it was night shop you still had to get the aspects but no additional photos were required and those shops usually took 20-25 minutes. Of course the online reports would holler if you entered times less than 30 minutes without an explanation.
This year the roles are reversed. They've enhanced the requirements of the yellow emblem shops with a lot more questions on the mystery shop (initial) portion of the shop. It now takes 25-30 minutes to do one of these shops. The star/insignia shops have removed the competitive requirements including photos so most shops, days or nights, only take about 20-25 minutes and it appears that they have relaxed the online report to accept times of 25-29 minutes versus 30 minutes.
On the yellow emblem shops, I love the way the MSC wastes money by sending out the gift cards to the shoppers. I got an initial package of 50 cards when the quarter's shops were released and I had signed up for the maximum of 50 shops. Thereafter, every time I requested more shops, the MSC would send a FedEx package with the same number of gift cards as shops I had requested. If I only requested one shop, I got one gift card. They were spending $4.50 to send a FexEx package containing a single gift card. To date, I have done 84 of the these shops this quarter and I have given out perhaps 6 gift cards.
I just wish I could find more gas audits that required gas purchases. I used to do shops for the company that had the big Gulf oil spill two years ago but after I signed up for some shops 250 miles from my home, my car's transmission failed and I had to cancel the shops. Afterward, the MSC removed me from that client and I have been trying ever since to get reinstated even though I still manage to do 400 other gas station shops for them every year.
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One buzzard to another while circling high overhead (paraphrased), "Patience hell! I want to shop somewhere."