GfK's major/primary client is not renewing their contract for auditing their electronic stores following the current jobs in progress for Jan/Feb 2012. Those should be finished up by early Feb.

They sent out email announcements today. No hints about who has the contract now, but GfK states that there is a new vendor.

So... any ideas about who's going to be doing these in the future? Should be a company trolling for auditors by March, when the next round of audits are due. For GfK, qualifying included a drug test and background check, so it might take a few months for a new company to get people set up for the job.

I thought that one big client was soon going bankrupt?

From what I've read bankrupt is not going to mean going out of business. It's likely to be a reorganization. Speculation is they will also close some stores and it will probably be the ones in dire need of some renovation.

That one big client has realized that many of us use their store as a showroom and then go purchase on line for a whole lot less. As a result they have opened their own on line store and I suspect will be reducing their footprint wherever possible. Unfortunately many of their stores are stand alone or custom built mall anchors where there probably is a long enough lease that bankruptcy is probably the most efficient way to break or modify the lease. I don't think they have any intention of going out of business, just using bankruptcy to get a better deal.

As for GfK, I really felt they lost their way when they took on and focused on this particular client. I hope that they can return to the really pleasant to work with, lower stress company they used to be. Shoppers are not the enemy though since they took on this client you would think we were.

Now that I know this I will sign up with them again. I got so tired of those same emails constantly begging for those audits to be done.

Does this mean that I can't apply to GFK as a mystery shopper anymore?

Not at all, Napoleon. It means that GfK will need to get their sales force out there to drum up new business if THEY are to stay in business. AND they are going to need to offer attractive prices for shoppers to do the work. Their focus over the past couple of years has been these audits that were a PITA for the price offered and many of us pretty much walked away from GfK. Now they need to woo us back.

One manager last week told me about the change in company, although I was never told what company would get the contract.
There will be audits, but from what he told me, they will be segmented...ie, only a few portions will be done each week. Something about not fatiguing the auditors. I think what they will find is that with gas prices going up, no one is going to want to keep going back weekly. Or at least not to any but their own absolutely local store....I certainly cannot see the benefit to go back and forth to many stores each an hour away.

I'm curious why someone at GFK would know how the new company plans to conduct audits. You are absolutely right that going back to the same store each week of the month would be much less cost-effective.

It was not GFK that told me, it was the big box store manager. Apparently it was in a news bulletin on their employee computer network. In the past another manager informed me that the audits would be going from monthly to every two month a few weeks before GFK told any of the auditors. So history shows that the corporate stores get told about their audit programs before we the auditors do.

That makes sense. I misunderstood and thought the info was coming from GFK.

I don't see how that would work out well either. The travel costs are just part of it - you also have to re-familarize yourself with the store lay-out, meet more with the managers, etc...

It's rare that the managers read the news bulletins regarding the audit. Most don't ever go in and learn about the scoring weights of the various audit components or see when their store is due for its next audit.

I personally enjoyed the audits as GfK had them performed. The way it sounds that the new company has it planned will cause more fatigue. One store over two days for about 8 hours work at $65 a day was fine by me. I could do two stores a week if available so that would be 4 stores a month since most visits were the first two weeks of each month on rotation. I don't know how BM will be implimenting the audits since they don't have a board to choose when you do the visits, etc.

Don't forget, GfK just got a new restaurant client that ACL had. The pay is a little less and they seem to want young men more than women even though it's not a Hooters-like establishment. However, I think you can go alone if you want, which doesn't quite make up for the lowered fee but if you do that, then you won't go so far over the reimbursement amount.

As far as "bankruptcy," I rarely believe that line, especially with furniture stores. When a few stores went out of business here, their "going out of business" prices were barely below regular retail. Rosa's was the latest that did that. On the other hand, Crawford Furniture really DID go out of business. They had great American made but pricy furniture. On their last day, I did get a $1200 dresser for $135. Now THAT'S a going out of business sale price! If only I'd had a truck and extra money, I'd have bought a lot more.

Still haven't gotten the bonus GfK owes me, so I am not likely to do any more shops for them. Too much a PITA. And...I am dense. I cannot figure out which client is going bankrupt or out of business. I am a tool! LOL

Mongo Wrote:
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> It's rare that the managers read the news
> bulletins regarding the audit. Most don't ever go
> in and learn about the scoring weights of the
> various audit components or see when their store
> is due for its next audit.

Yes they do, but is the PPM who is responsible for the audit, not he GM, or the other managers. The store fals and goes under district supervision and retraining if they have more than 3 audits in a row that they score below 95. In one of the stores I audit, the PPM hired an employee to do specific tasks every week in order to comply and pass.

jettoparty Wrote:
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> I don't know how BM will be
> implimenting the audits since they don't have a
> board to choose when you do the visits, etc.

Is this the new company doing the audit? I do not get which one it is, from the initial, without a board. Unless you mean the MS company that does the regular shops. That MS has just instituted ability to make date changes but with a penalty on the record. I wonder if the client will go that way. Most large companies use different MS companies do audits and regular mystery shops.

jersey07032 Wrote:
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> Still haven't gotten the bonus GfK owes me, so I
> am not likely to do any more shops for them. Too
> much a PITA. And...I am dense. I cannot figure out
> which client is going bankrupt or out of business.
> I am a tool! LOL

I finally got my last payments mid-week for the mid/late Jan audits - so don't fret if your bonused audits were later than that. I think Gfk lost some data from uploaded audit results, make sure you replied and furnished that.

The posters are claiming that the blue electronics store that Gfk was doing audits - not shops for, is going bankrupt - I see no sign of that frankly. They are looking to lease out portions of their largest stores, but seem healthy.

And for the preceeding posters, I don't know what MS company they are talking about either...

Mongo Wrote:
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> The posters are claiming that the blue electronics
> store that Gfk was doing audits - not shops for,
> is going bankrupt - I see no sign of that frankly.
> They are looking to lease out portions of their
> largest stores, but seem healthy.

An article posted today on Motley Fool about the company indicates that they have a lot of value in their "Goodwill" on the books as an intangible asset, but even after subtracting all intangible assets from their books they are still a $3 billion book value company.

Granted the company likely has some very long term leases on much of the property they occupy since these locations were built out for them to specs, but if they are renting out part of he space, that sounds like a sound move. They certainly have established an online presence so that hopefully they aren't just the electronics 'showroom' for folks who subsequently purchase cheaper elsewhere.

I was truly excited when we got our first one and truly disappointed with virtually every visit there . . .

Hey Mongo

The bonus is for a shop I did at the end of October. 1st they claimed they had no idea what I was talking about--even when I showed them their own emails! Then I received an email saying they were able to verify (I guess someone was hired to read) and I would be paid in 2 to 3 weeks. That was 6 weeks ago. As I said....PITA.

Mongo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> jersey07032 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Still haven't gotten the bonus GfK owes me, so
> I
> > am not likely to do any more shops for them.
> Too
> > much a PITA. And...I am dense. I cannot figure
> out
> > which client is going bankrupt or out of
> business.
> > I am a tool! LOL
>
> I finally got my last payments mid-week for the
> mid/late Jan audits - so don't fret if your
> bonused audits were later than that. I think Gfk
> lost some data from uploaded audit results, make
> sure you replied and furnished that.
>
> The posters are claiming that the blue electronics
> store that Gfk was doing audits - not shops for,
> is going bankrupt - I see no sign of that frankly.
> They are looking to lease out portions of their
> largest stores, but seem healthy.
>
> And for the preceeding posters, I don't know what
> MS company they are talking about either...

EDITED: No Hints, requests,etc...

I finally quit that company a few weeks ago. All they ever had was "easy" (haha) cell phone jobs and mortgage jobs, and I refuse to do any more cell phone jobs. I am not interested in the mortgage ones. They also emailed me incessantly! I might get 6 emails a day about jobs literally hundreds of miles out of the 25 mile radius I had in my profile, plus several a day about the same exact job. Oftentimes "desperate" was part of the subject line.

It seems that PeninaD was correct. The audit is split in different sections and it is done by Bestmark.

Funny thing is GFK still has several of those audits available on their job board right now in my area. Pretty sure nobody has hardly ever picked one up around here so I wonder if they will still sit there until they are done.

I know Bestmark mystery shops the big box store that requires you to go to 2 different departments so can someone confirm they are handling the audits. If they are that means more work and less pay.

The audits are listed on shadow shopper starting April and the payment is reduced to $100. Just do not forget, that both GFK and Bestmark pay bonuses for shops. GFK paid $500 bonus per audit in certain areas which shows how much they make for each contract so I really do not feel sorry when I read all these sappy stories how the schedulers give money out of their own pockets, etc.These companies make more than 10 million annually, so they can definitely afford to pay their shoppers better.

How does $100 per audit fit with splitting them into different sections? Wouldn't they pay each section seperately?

I also don't know where everyone is getting Bestmark. I've checked all the various boards and have seen nothing about this. I have to admit that dropping it by that much certainly fits with Bestmark's policies and considering the ways they like to ding people for MS reports it makes one wonder if they will be able to back off of those policies since these cannot fit in with the normal MS routine. The only positive I can see is the far superior reports through Bestmark which do not time out and allow for saving and returning to specific sections. If the time requirements on-site have not changed then we are looking at an expectation of working for $8 to $9 an hour as opposed to the whopping $10 to $11 that GFK was going for, LOL!