I emailed Help Desk with offers for four tough-to-fill shops today. (The listings said to contact MFI with offers.) I was very clear about what kinds of bonuses and deadlines I would accept. They were, IMO, very fair offers.

Soon after I sent that email, Help Desk assigned me ONE of the four shops without any bonus and with the wrong date. I emailed my objections right back and got no response. I emailed Help Desk again and told MFI I was canceling the shop because Help Desk ignored my terms and did not discuss anything with me.

What got me the most upset was Help Desk emailed me back and CLAIIMED the shop was auto-assigned to me, blah, blah, blah. What a crock. I checked my auto-assign profile and it said I was NOT signed up to receive automatic assignments.

Gee, I emailed Help Desk with my offers, was not signed up for auto-assignments, and quickly got assigned one of the shops. I wonder what happened. ::sarcastic::

Someone else from Help Desk did email me back and apologized soon after the email with the false allegations, but it was a case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing. The second emailed did not address the auto-assign issue but apologized because someone assigned me the shop without the bonus.

Now, because I declined the "auto-assigned" shop, that shop is no longer available to me.

OK, Help Desk. You want to play this game? Fine. Good luck finding another shopper who fits both your client's ethnicity and language requirement AND is willing to do these investment shops. If anyone from MFI contacts me about these shops, my rates will be higher.

Geesh!

I saw a couple of those "Make Offer" jobs on my board late last night. So I emailed Help Desk with my offer.

They were two out-of-town jobs, whose dates did not coincide. I said I would ONLY do them both on the same day, gave them three dates I could do them on and let them pick, and my price.

Just a few hours later, I got emails that I had new assignments from Market Force... so I logged on, and sure enough! They picked one of my three available dates for BOTH jobs, and gave me my asking price. I was very happily surprised that it all went so smoothly!

Sounds like you got the office doofus handling your situation. Heh.

I think this particular MSC is really hit and miss depending on the person responding. You either get a good or bad scheduler, editor or help desk person. I take it with a grain of salt when I get a bad one and move on. All in all they are large, have a large amount of clients which I like, have a self assigning job board, and decent reports and reporting system so I will continue to work for them until I can't. Yes I know about the poof one day you are deactivated problems which many people talk about........

Sorry about your situation, but I am not surprised. It's like a crap shoot when you deal with MFI. I received an email from them the other day to clarify something in a report I had submitted. Over three weeks ago! ::sigh::

I agree with all of you.

There are two words in the title of this post that summarize this situation completely: "Market Force".

There are good, competent, professional, honest, friendly, and sympathetic people working at Market Force. There are also others. I like MFI generally but hate it when I run into someone there who doesn't know what he/she is talking about and feeds me BS. I'm not a plant. I don't need or want fertilizer, thank you.

I have had very good relationship with the help desk and schedulers. I recently made an error during a shop and was surprised that it was approved for payment. I realized my error when I was doing my report, and I immediately contacted them.

However, that said, I really get frustrated with the extremely LOW BALL payments for fast food and/or casual dining. I have checked "decline" on two recently because they pay $4 for the shop ($7 reimbursement). That is insane!! I wish there was a way to SCREAM "please don't accept these shops - make them offer more"!

Not right!

After my experiences with Market Farce I am glad I have severed all ties with them. Now the clients need to know about them. Maybe they will chose to spend their brass elsewhere.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/13/2013 09:04PM by CAscotch.

Why is the MarketForce website so slow and awful. I just want to log on, get my shops and get out of there but there is always some problem or glitch. The scanning is ridiculous and although I have a scanner I am NEVER able to scan my receipts and have just given up and mail them. So I miss out on the shops that must have their receipts scanned. Oh well, never gonna get rich doing mystery shopping but it does give you some change in your pocket.

Ok, after complaining how low ball their pay is, I got a call this weekend for an "end of the month" shop. Needed it completed by tomorrow. Paying me $20 plus the food cost for a FF shop. This shop starts the month off at $5. I start accepting them when they hit $10, if they are within reasonable driving distance. This one is about 10 miles from me. So I have lunch plans.... :-)

(With winter coming on, I will have to stop these type of shops because I always manage to pack on the weight during the winter!!)