I should have joined this forum before wasting my time. I did the Swedish furniture store one in August. It took me forever. They promised I'd be paid by Friday. I won't do another with them.

Ah yes, it is not so affectionately known as THE shop from hell. If it will make you feel better, try searching here using the client name. There are plenty of stories on that one.

The good news is that you have found us now and will be able to prevent that type of fiasco in the future

Ugh. It seems so. My situation seems a little different. They are now telling me that their computer crashed and they lost all invoices, but if I send it again I will get payment. I'm crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath.

I did some apartment shops for them and it took them over 90 days to pay. And the shops only paid $20 each. I won't shop for them no matter how little work I have.

Thank goodness for the forum! I thought about doing the SHOP from Hell before I knew it was the SHOP from Hell!LOL
I see the posting over and over again in my location and its never filled.

OMG! I SHOULD have checked the forum before agreeing to perform the Swedish furniture store shop!! That's what I get for jumping on - what looked like - a juicy shop!

A little more information here for the uninitiated:
* You must perform 23 separate evaluations in the store
* 20 of the evaluations require a FULL NARRATIVE + a FULL/EXACT DESCRIPTION of EACH employee encountered!
* You must time each encounter with Minutes AND Seconds
* The shop evaluation is 32 pages long - wait until you start filling it in with your narratives!
* This company pays 3 months + 15 days after you submit your Invoice...invoices are submitted at the end of the month, so if you perform a job on the first of the month, it could take 104+ days to get paid.

And the biggest whopper:
If you mess up this monstrous report, you risk not getting paid!

I calculated the following for those who still think they want to cut their teeth on this shop:
* Each department requires the shopper to stay in the area 10 minutes waiting for a co-worker to appear if one is not immediately visible/available in the department being shopped. If you go on a busy weekend day (like I dumbly did) then you could be spending 200 minutes (more than 3 hours!) just waiting for staff to show up before you can even START the shop in that department.
* If each active interaction/evaluation portion of the shop only takes 10 minutes (snort! it takes much longer!) then you have a minimum of 200 minutes (read: more than 3 hours!) of interaction/evaluation time in order to simply gather the data for this shop.
* If it only takes you 10 minutes to fill in the form & write your full narrative for each section, then it will take you more than 200 minutes just to fill out the online form. Is there anybody out there who can write a full narrative with an EXACT employee description in 10 minutes??

As they say:
Payment for a Swedish furniture store mystery shop: $5/hr AT BEST
Lesson learned: Priceless!!

Sorry you didn't get here in time to get warned off it, but thank you for the details. Now I KNOW I'll never do one, not even for the $125 I thought might tempt me if it ever got that high. I think I'll have to hold out for double that now and they'll never pay that, so I guess I'm safe.

You'd think they could break it into smaller shops, maybe 5 departments per shop. If it's not worth at least $10 per department to get the work done, why do they bother having the place shopped in the first place?

I did one of these shops once. I kept getting emails offering $80 to do it. On December 30 I offered to do for $125 and I got an email back from the scheduler telling me it was not a "choose your payment" shop. This morning the job was still available. I think they had the same problem in November.

I think my offer was rather low but I had nothing I was planning to do today and I have not been to the store in awhile and I needed to pick up a few items. Anyway, to wait about four months to get paid for a long shop from hell even if I had things to purchase there ... heck ... did my shopping and got out in 30 minutes and as I told my husband, "I did not even have to do a report!"

Now, to the fireworks and champagne! Happy New Year!

sanybella Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Ugh. It seems so. My situation seems a little
> different. They are now telling me that their
> computer crashed and they lost all invoices, but
> if I send it again I will get payment. I'm
> crossing my fingers, but not holding my breath.


That's outrageous and unprofessional. Who in this day and age doesn't have an automatic backup?

Carbonite costs $5 a month for real-time backup.

I am raising the BS Flag on Cirrus. When I did this shop, it was 60 days net. Now it's 105?

Horsefeathers!

I did this *^#%$%$# shop again in October and I'm waiting to hear back from them on when I'm getting paid.

I don't know why I keep falling for their crap. I wish I would stop needing to go to buy stuff from the Swedish import store the same days that they are begging for help. I keep hoping they will just do what they say they will and pay three months out without having to be poked with sticks... If that was the case, I wouldn't mind doing the shop from hell every so often, since I'd expect payment 3 months later and I may even *consider* doing them regularly.

This begging for my damn money has to stop though. You read me FB and BH? Consistent pay schedule equals less frustrated and more willing shoppers. Whodathunkit?!