I've probably been signed up with this MSC for over two years now, and have yet to see an assignment in my part of mystery shopping land up here in the Pacific NW. Do they have any kind of job board? Although their site makes a reference to using a search button to look for assignments, I have yet to find it. Additionally, the site also makes mention that schedulers will call or email if there are available assignments.

Am I completely missing something here?

These are schedulers. They schedule for several MSCs, mostly Prophet ones. They do Restaurant Cops, BMA and others.

Thanks, Austin. I'm trying to update the list of MSCs I've signed up with and figure out which ones I'm not working with yet and why. I'm sure the area I'm in is a big part of not finding assignments with certain MSCs.

They seemed to have an menagarie of "shops" in my area but when you email them the information they require, they never get back to you. I know they are a database scheduking company but what the purpose of them emailing 'Us". if they aren't going to get back to you.

Hmmm.....maybe they do it different than here. I've always gotten an e-mail from them that shop are available and then I log into the MSC (Restaurant Cops, BMA, etc) and self assign the shop I want. I've never actually had them schedule me except when I scheduled myself and then found out the restaurant was closed that day and needed them to re-schedule me.

It's been an interesting endeavor to do my yearly review of my list of MSCs. I'm more convinced than ever that there are a lot less opportunities in my area. There are scads of them that I've been signed up with for a very long time that never seem to have assignments wthin 350 miles of where I live. I wish there was an easier way to sign up with only the MSCs that have work somewhere in our vicinity.

Austin, you had mentioned BMA in your earlier post. Do you happen to know if this is the same company as Troy Dolan Group, or an affiliate? Like I said before, I'm in the process of trying to update my list of MSCs, and am trying to figure out if some companies operate under different names and/or require a shopper to sign up more than once. Some of this is driving me a bit mad.

It is. They apparently have merged with BMA, Troy Dolan, and Customer First.

This was on the website main login page: "All mystery shoppers for Customer-1st and BMA now login at this Troy Dolan Group website. Please bookmark it for future use."

How do you keep a list of MSC's you work with? I was actually trying to search the forum to see if anyone does this. I have been shopping off and on for a long time and now due to our financial situation, I am shopping fulltime and trying to get into merchandising. I have applied for every MSC I can find, but I didn't make a list of MSC's that I have applied to. (Mistake!) I am now trying to go back and make a list of those that I applied to, those that seem to have regular shops in my area (very rural!) so that I can know better which ones to check daily.

I was also wondering how people look for shops? Do you check certain MSC boards daily? Do you wait on the emails that come in asking for shops? I feel like I almost spend more time looking for shops than I do actually shopping. Ok, not quite, but I do spend a lot of time! That's why I am now trying to get my list organized.

I also do "destination" shops. I live in such a rural area that it seems better if I find an area that seems to need some shops done and I try to schedule a lot in that area to make the drive worth it. It has worked nicely, but I have found I spend a lot of time and effort to set these trips up. I have wondered many times if there is an easier way to do it!

I guess I combined a lot of questions/comments in this post, but it's all things I have been thinking about and working on in my effort to be more organized and try to minimize the time I spend searching for shops so I can be shopping and earning money.

What I did organize looking for shops was to use folders in my bookmarks on Firefox. I had ones that I set up to check daily or almost daily. These would be companies that I knew had frequent shops in my area or shops that I particularly enjoyed. The next level is checked less frequently about once a week. These are the companies that do have shops in my area, but are more limited. I then have a group that I check every three weeks to a month. These are the ones that I have never seen a local shop but they have a self assign board, so I will go in and look for changes to local availability or will go in when I'm trying to set up a longer distance route. For the companies that don't do self assign I will try to check in every few months just to see if they have changed that option.

AustinMom Wrote:
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> It is. They apparently have merged with BMA, Troy
> Dolan, and Customer First.
>
> This was on the website main login page: "All
> mystery shoppers for Customer-1st and BMA now
> login at this Troy Dolan Group website. Please
> bookmark it for future use."

Thanks, Austin. That will help clean up a few entries on my spreadsheet.

I use Windows Live Mail for my email. I set up an email address just for shopping. I set up folders under that email address. I have a folder for "Shopping Accounts". Under that folder I make a folder for every company I sign up with. I put the welcoming email and any other special information about that company into that folder. Usually those introductory emails have your sign in information and password and a link to their site. If I want to know if I'm already signed up, I just open the "Shopping Accounts" folder and look.

I also have folders for "Jobs." I have a folder for Accepted Jobs to Do and I put the assignment emails in there until I do the job. (If the job came by phone, I email myself a reminder to put in there.)

I have another folder, "Completed but not Paid" and under it is a folder for every company I have worked for. I move the assignment email from Jobs to do to Completed not Paid after I finish the job.

I have one folder for Paid, and after the pay comes in I move from Not Paid (by company) to Paid (not sorted by company).

I have all this activity duplicated on an Excel spread sheet, where jobs are listed by date so I can see what I did when, and what I need to do when. About once a week I check my Excel sheet against my folders to make sure I don't miss any jobs I'm supposed to do.

I know it sounds complicated, but it works for me, and I can easily list off the companies I have worked for (from the subfolders in the Completed Not Paid folder) when I am asked that on a new application and I have the full list of who I am signed up with in the Shopping Accounts folder, and can easily find a forgotten password and sign-in information.

I'm signed up with about 50 companies but have only done jobs for about 14 at this point.

If I were doing this full time I'd probably need a better system but this has worked for the 30 jobs a months I've been doing.

Another approach might be to sort the upcoming jobs by date, and then put them in the company folders when they are completed. I will probably start doing that since some companies' subject lines don't put the location or date and when I get a string of Market Forces in there I keep having to open them to see which email is which job.

pattiwindham Wrote:
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> How do you keep a list of MSC's you work with? I
> was actually trying to search the forum to see if
> anyone does this. I have been shopping off and on
> for a long time and now due to our financial
> situation, I am shopping fulltime and trying to
> get into merchandising. I have applied for every
> MSC I can find, but I didn't make a list of MSC's
> that I have applied to. (Mistake!) I am now
> trying to go back and make a list of those that I
> applied to

When I first started a few years back, I didn't know about this forum or how to do a lot of things to make my business life easier. Making a list of MSCs was one of those things that I didn't think of doing until later. I'm still coming across MSCs that I signed up for way-back-when that I don't remember. In many cases, it's like doing double the work because I have to check each and every MSC as though it's a new one to sign up with. Ugh. This has been my new year's resolution to get this list cleaned up and current.

You'll see lots of references to making a list of your MSCs all throughout this forum. Most of us keep our list in a spreadsheet. I have columns for the last time I did a thorough check-through on their boards and my shopper profile, my user id and passwords, whether any jobs were available in my area, and other similiar information.

I thought I had signed up with scads of MSCs when I first started out, but I'm still finding companies I haven't heard of or applied with yet.