I am a very patient shopper, who has been mystery shopping for over eight years now. I have had a few problems with Intelli-shop over the past several years, but was able to get them worked out. One incident was when they refused to pay me for an auto dealership shop because they couldn't confirm that a salesperson worked at the dealership. I called the dealership back myself and asked for the salesperson with whom I interacted, and was told that he no longer worked there. I had to contact a supervisor to get it straightened out, explaining that I had no responsibility if a salesperson quits his/her job. The supervisor did finally agree with me and I was paid for the shop.

I have completed 115 shops for Intelli-shop and have an average grade of "10." I have read many posts regarding the proofreaders at Intelli-shop, and have posted items myself regarding this. This last shop has made me decide to sever my relationship with them. I completed an overnight hotel stay shop, and followed the guidelines exactly. The proofreader, who obviously didn't read the guidelines, contacted me and asked me how I knew the names of the employees that I interacted with. I explained that I followed the shop guidelines, which state, "Names are required for ALL employees you evaluate." The guidelines further state, "If they are not wearing a nametag, ask them for their name in casual conversation."

The proofreader deducted two points from my grade because I had to be contacted for this information! So it appears that I have to train the proofreaders to read the shop guidelines, and then receive a deduction on my grade to explain the shop guidelines to them. I have concluded that it is just not worth the hassle any more. It is really frustrating to do the hard work of completing an excellent report and then to get degraded because a proofreader has to justify their position by finding something (anything) to use to deduct points from your score.

Wow!! I can't believe you have an average score of 10 at Intellishop...They're not exactly CORI, if you get what I'm trying to say...

Some of their proofers can be ridiculously annoying and petty, and I considered quitting Intellishop because of criticism and a undeserved lower grade awhile ago too. But I decided as long as they will pay me, I will let these things roll off me. For now!

There are some Intellishop shops where the score seems to always be a 10. All others tend to give lower scores. I have never gotten lower than a 10 on a convenience store I have shopped for them.

Bay Wrote:
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> There are some Intellishop shops where the score
> seems to always be a 10. All others tend to give
> lower scores. I have never gotten lower than a 10
> on a convenience store I have shopped for them.

Perhaps the higher the fee, the harsher the criticism becomes. I also got 10s for convenience stores that paid $10 but lower ratings for $25 shops.

Nycrocks, if that is true then it is a flaw and bias they need to correct. I have done a couple of car shops for them and a casino one. No problem with casino one, always a problem with the car one. It's like they don't get it when the salesperson does not do what they should to try to sell me the car. I no longer do car shops for them.

I don't think this lower fee higher score theory is true. I did a comic book store shop and received a 9. The comic book store assignments pay less than $10.

My grandmother used to say "you're cutting off your nose to spite your face" for situations where taking harsh action does more harm to yourself than it does accomplish anything good. I prefer the smell of an MSC's pay even with the stink of occasional unjust scores, than the odor-removing surgery of deactivation.

I've quit caring about shop grades. They're close to meaningless.

Nevermind

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2013 03:37PM by SunnyDays2.

Mantis Wrote:
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> I've quit caring about shop grades. They're close
> to meaningless.

Is that for any shop or just Intellishop? Just curious if you've found that your Intellishop grades affect the jobs you get?

I think Mantis was referring to individual scores. Kind of like in school, one bad grade on a pop quiz isn't a big deal if you make straight A's on everything else, so why stress over it?

I have done many inteli car shops and although I am never happy about the grade I found that if you provide plenty of detail they accept the shop and don't ask for more information.

I completely disagree with Elcarv. In business, one's self-esteem and attitude are far more important for success than a paltry fee. My experiences with the editors of this MSC are mostly negative. I no longer will accept a phone shop through them due to being pestered after completion. Ditto for auto, video and senior facility assignments. Such is the prerogative of an independent contractor.

I've had mixed experiences with Intelli-shop. For the most part, they've been wonderful.

OP, I think I might have asked the same question as the editor on your shop: how did you know the name of the employee? Did you note in your report something like, the clerk, a female who wore a badge that read "Lucinda" greeted me..." or something like, "I made eye contact with the clerk, a female, who was not wearing a badge. After the interaction, I thanked her and asked for her name." These are reasonable details to add to a hotel report. If you didn't include them, it's reasonable for an editor to request them, no? I agree, a 7 should be reserved for shops that need a lot of editing and/or may be incomplete in more than one area. I got a 7 on a shop that I poured a huge amount of details into and had points deducted for "grammar and spelling."

I am not so happy with them now either. About ten days ago I got a couple of calls to do their retail gift card shops. I was leaving to go out of town the next day so I had to say no when I realized I had done one of these urgent shops a week or so before. I got onto my log and saw I had a grade of one and a comment that said I had asked about their rewards program. I had not as I have done over 20 of these and know the drill. I did the contact us and asked about this and was told that I had asked about buying a card and that is why it was not accepted. My log comment was changed to it was not accepted because I asked about a card.

I was livid as yes I had asked about a card and I even copied and pasted the part in the instructions that says you can if you ask about a specific card and then buy that type of card. The shop I had done three days earlier I had done exactly the same way and had gotten a 10 on with the comment of do more shops for us please....

I emailed back with the copy and paste, the fact I have done many shops this way since they changed the guidelines (when they first started you could not ask about a card) and got an email back that the person I was communicating with was a scheduler and would forward this but it was up to the client.

I know I could call but I am waiting for them to call with the request to do a shop and bring it all up then. The shops really don't pay that well and I basically do them for the card as I need one anyway but no longer for now.

It is just irritating though that I followed THEIR directions, did a shop EXACTLY that way three days earlier and one is accepted and the other is not.

Liz

"grammer and spelling" seems to be the catch all when they want to deduct points and don't have any other reason.

iamloved1 Wrote:
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>I got a 7 on a shop that I poured a
> huge amount of details into and had points
> deducted for "grammar and spelling."

Penny,

I had a fairly similar experience. I had a car shop where you were supposed to wait 72 hours after the shop in order to see if there was any follow-up. At 48 hours after the shop, I got an email reminding me that I needed to do the follow-up questions. I waited until the 72 hours had elapsed and submitted exactly at that point. Got the deduction because they had to contact me. However, I am certain if I submitted it at 48 hours, there would've been follow-up because I had submitted it too early. UGH

Perhaps the real perfect is a 9 at this company. Maybe they start at 9 instead of 10, and dock points from 9. After all, nobody is perfect.

I'm registered with them but have never done a shop for them. Now, I'm afraid to....

Deleted post



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2013 10:24PM by niteowl.

shopperbob Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I completely disagree with Elcarv. In business, one's self-esteem and attitude are far more
> important for success than a paltry fee. My experiences with the editors of this MSC are
> mostly negative. I no longer will accept a phone shop through them due to being pestered after
> completion. Ditto for auto, video and senior facility assignments. Such is the prerogative of
> an independent contractor.

Shopperbob –
I really like your posts on this Forum. You offer consistent reflections that apparently proceed from an appreciation for a free market business perspective, one that recognizes the freedom of MSCs to establish and maintain their standards, yet where IC’s have the freedom to shop or not to shop when, where, for whom, and for how much they deem right for themselves.
Thanks for posting to disagree concerning ratings as it highlights a significant plateau that I needed to move beyond in order for me to keep growing my MS'ing income.
In considering an MSC, should its system of ratings affect a shopper’s willingness to shop for them? Each IC needs to answer that for themselves. It was, in fact, IntelliShop that brought the concern to a head for me. In one of my first five shops for them I received an 8 for a shop where the only criticism was that I had not placed double line-breaks in between paragraphs (who knew?!). On the other four shops, all for the same client, I followed the same format for all four in my reporting. The two weekend shops received 10’s, the two weekday shops received 8’s. The 10’s came with a thank-you note from one editor, the 8’s came from a different editor who wanted more details so the reports would “pop” when the comments were read (hard for me to make anything “pop” for a plain vanilla $7 convenience store visit).
I was absolutely scandalized and brooded for weeks about the 8’s. At that point I had two years of MS’ing under my belt and had never received anything less than a perfect score for any company. I determined that I would never shop for Intelli again. I didn’t know that I could “deactivate” myself or else I surely would have. In time I saw other shops with 'telli that I would have liked to take, but didn’t. Then I found this Forum and realized I wasn’t alone in experiencing Intelli’s scattershot system of ratings. Through this Forum I then connected with dozens more MSC’s, which inevitably led to a couple others that have subjective ratings systems (subjective here meaning editor-specific).
I found peace with it all, and am back to happily shopping for IntelliShop (giving consideration to editors’ comments but simply ignoring their scores), by realizing that their scores are not reflective of me. They don’t know me, they don’t care to know me, their scores have no correlation to my worth as a person, and, so far, neither do they to my worth as a shopper. No matter the scores, I have never been hindered from receiving new shops, and for every shop that I have completed I have always been fully paid. There, for me, is half of my worth as a shopper. The other half is the level of integrity to which I hold myself in my shopping. I am an honest and dependable shopper, and I find value in that. This for me has the greater effect on my self-esteem as an IC.
Particularly since the OP was contemplating deactivating over a single unjust “8” after 115 evaluations that were acceptable to the OP, with the attendant implication that the OP was throwing away the income that another 115 shops would generate, I’d have to say the OP was about to cut off the OP's her nose to spite the OP's face. The 8 is in no way reflective of the OP's worth as a person or as a shopper, and it is not a valid indication of even a stranger’s estimation of the OP. It’s a number that a stranger assigned to the OP's report (unjustly, to be sure), but for which the OP is still being paid in full.
I look forward either to continuing a conversation in this thread or to reading your next post elsewhere championing the benefits of free market dynamics within the realm of MS'ing enterprise.

<edited for grammar (and brevity... ha! ) >

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/21/2013 01:05AM by elcarev68.

I had an experience in which I did a shop and received a 10, then aneditor wanted answers to questions that were not on the report, when I gave her the answers she took my score down to a 7! I had never received a 7 with them before and while I would say that devastated is a strong word for this situation, I was a bit miffed. I tried to get the situation resolved by explaining to the scheduler but she didn't seem to appreciate what the big deal was.

The big deal to me would be what if I really make a mistake on the next shop and I get another 7, that would ruin my average and potentially ruin my chances for new opportunities. Things like this do matter, at least to me.

You have probably nailed my biggest complaint regarding a grading system and some of the double standards applied in mystery shopping. If the grade is not a big deal, don't issue a grade and don't have a system where by only shoppers with a specific score can self-assign or apply for a shop. The MSCs make it important for those things and any attempt to make sure the scores we are receiving are appropriate is met with the attitude "no big deal" which to me is becoming code for other people's problems because nobody at the company wants to take the time.

Same goes with editor comments. I fully understand that most editors do not have time for an in depth critique, so why provide one that is vague at best and usually creates more questions rather than providing any answers? The comments regarding something concrete like, "don't forget to address all no answers in your narrative," works for me because it is something I forget and the reminder is helpful.

Did anybody get paid by Intelli-shop today for July shops completed and accepted?

Yes.

Thankfully, I've only done one shop for them.. won't be doing anymore lol

Yup... my checks showed up in PP right on time.

I got paid from them today. I have never had a problem with payments from them.

Yes.