I have done some schools, fast food and gas stations for them. They were easy and fun. The reports were fairly easy. They pay right on time by direct deposit. I wish all companies did this.

Yes, they are absolutely like clockwork on payments. Well, perhaps not like clockwork because sometimes the money hits my account a day earlier than expected

I've only been shopping for them for a couple months, but so far, I've had good experiences with them. Also their payment was in my account first thing in the morning on the day it was supposed to be.

I absolutely love SI, They are one of my tier one companies. Never had a problem with them, they pay on time, the jobs are fun, and the paperwork is easy to understand!

I also have never had a bad experience as far as I can remember.

I had a brief spat a few years ago with a scheduler there over a bonus that was verbally offered by phone and never made it to the job. We were both peeved for a while but got over it and worked well, if cautiously, thereafter. (As in she knew I would not head out the door until the bonus showed up on the screen.)

One thing a little annoying aboout their surveys, at least to me, is that they don't give you the character limit on their comment fields up front. Their comments for this one client I am shopping the most are limited to a rather small number. After being used to writing essays for some other companies, I always write too much for them. I only get to see the error after I try to submit the whole survey. Then I have to go back to word and rewrite to fit into the limit. It's just a little oversight on the technical side.

Otherwise, a great company. I only wish they had more shops here. I've never seen any gas station shops from them.

There are a couple of companies that do that. It really would be nice of them to 100% of the time tell you that you are limited to "3000 characters or less" rather than only state minimum characters. I would be delighted with "100-500 characters". I totally blew up and froze up a Sinclair report once because they wanted 'very detailed account of the entire transaction'. That transaction took place over about 45 minutes so I wrote about 5000 characters. I had carefully composed it in Word and when I pasted it into the form and entered to turn the page ka-zam I had a screen full of programmer debugging error messages. Could not salvage the form, could not exit and start over, could not log off and log back on and get to the report. Of course a weekend with nobody accessible. Found out later it was a 3000 character max and that much over the limit decimated the report.

I so totally agree. If you have a limit to work with at either the high or low end, then put a counter there, and tell us the numeric values by which our comments are delimited.

shop-a-holic Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I only wish they had
> more shops here. I've never seen any gas station
> shops from them.

I agree. Half the shops I see people here say they do for them are never on my area's board. And I even search for all of Indiana and the southern part of Michigan.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2009 04:42PM by lisams901.

My best and most frequent shop for them is a regional chain that is only in a few states in the Southeast.

shop-a-holic Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> One thing a little annoying aboout their surveys,
> at least to me, is that they don't give you the
> character limit on their comment fields up front.
> Their comments for this one client I am shopping
> the most are limited to a rather small number.
> After being used to writing essays for some other
> companies, I always write too much for them. I
> only get to see the error after I try to submit
> the whole survey. Then I have to go back to word
> and rewrite to fit into the limit. It's just a
> little oversight on the technical side.
>
> Otherwise, a great company. I only wish they had
> more shops here. I've never seen any gas station
> shops from them.

I agree with you....so hard to weed out the less important stuff. Takes so long to rewrite it 10+ times!

To circumvent SI's character limit, there are two approaches I have used with a 100% success rate.

1. I paste a 3,000 character paragraph from any convenient source into the narrative box knowing full well that it will exceeed the limit. When it kicks back, it will display the charcter allowance. I can then use any word processing program to write the actual narrative and meet that criteria. I find this method easier and quicker than having to re-work, cut and edit something I've already spent time writing.

2. When I have exceeded the character limit and feel I can not accurately convey what transpired using the limited character allowance, I truncate the narrative, leaving just enough free space to include the message, "continued in a VOX message." I then forward the original narrative using SI's VOX message system and include a brief note explaining that I could not provide enough detail using the allowed space.

Reasonable approaches lame1. But of course most of their shops stay pretty much the same over long periods of time, so after a few your 'autopilot' will have you ending up writing within the appropriate character range.

I cut and paste my narrative into word, and do a character count. This way I can keep track of it easily. Sometimes, for shops I do all the time I will keep the cut and paste and just do a sort of fill-in-the blank approach if the shop went well. I can customize their appearance, clothing, what was said, etc. very easily this way and the character count is under control.

Just snagged a late night convenience shop........$20 pay.
all you do is see if front door is unlocked. Form asks two questions...what time you arrived and what the status of location was. Assume they are checking to make sure they don't lock up the store during the wee hours.

I did two of these one night..........easy $40.
Aww...........if all the shops were this easy.......

bugspost Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just snagged a late night convenience
> shop........$20 pay.

I never find anything like that on there. I search my whole state plus the state north of me and both of them only ever have cell phones or the occasional FF.

They vary a lot around the country with what they have to offer. But they do show you a list of their clients (where you can take certifications) so that helps. Here shops fly off the board very quickly.

Like many other MSC's across North America, the number of shops SI has available has been significantly cut back. Their subscription system muddies the waters a bit, making it more difficult to get a clear idea of all available shops, but even subscription assignments I've previously received have been reduced or suspended. Two years ago, SI was my primary MSC, and I often completed 50+ assignments for them per month. Sad to say, but in my neck of the woods, they have become "filler fodder" used to augment routes. Also, they have prohibited US-Canada cross border shopping to all, other than shoppers holding dual citizenship or valid work permits. This has seriously reduced the number of shops available to those of us who travel or vacation frequently between the two countries. I have been advised this was done at the request of their parent company, Global Compliance, based in Charlotte, NC. Technically, they are no longer a Canadian company, although SI offices are still in Calgary, AB.

This is a dynamic industry, and it is always interesting to see the MSC's we previously relegated to a back burner, come to the forefront with a major new client and vice-versa. I hope that once the economy improves, SI will regain its previous stature. It really is one of the most professional and reliable MSC's in the business and a model that other firms should emulate.