EandCconsulting: Thank you for sharing your experience with BestMark. We understand that what you have shared with the mystery shopping community is your side of the story. I do feel it is necessary, however, to point out that you did leave out pertinent details of the situation, which led to our decision to terminate you as a shopper with us.
We carefully perused every single report you submitted as a BestMark shopper and sifted through the information you provided for each report. You are correct that you did complete several rural car dealership shops, very likely evaluating some of the same salespeople. However, this was not the issue. In several instances, you uploaded the exact same image of a business card even though the shops were months apart. You provided inconsistent descriptions for associates you had shopped previously, and you provided names and descriptions of associates were not working at establishments at the time you performed your shop (which was reported by the client and was the reason we investigated to begin with). Most pertinent, however, is that during a recorded conversation with our Quality Editor Manager, you did freely admit that you had in fact fabricated several of the business cards you uploaded. After this admission, you insisted that you be compensated for the shops you claimed were legitimate and threatened to go on every blog as well as to the Better Business Bureau to denigrate BestMark because we refused to be extorted or threatened.
I would like to clarify that we do not remove shoppers from our database unless it is for a legitimate reason (shopper fraud, suspicion of fraud, shopper unreliability, etc.). It is in our best interest to keep as many different shoppers in our database as we can, as this provides both BestMark as a company and our clients with various perspectives completing the assignments. Moreover, we go to great lengths to contact shoppers to clarify/gather additional information required for a report, as an effort to save a shop so it does not cancel.
As I am sure you understand, mystery shopping providers (along with almost every other business) have quality control processes in place to ensure that the information they’re providing/gathering is reliable and valid. As our clients expect us to provide them with accurate and veritable data, we hold that same expectation with our shoppers. Your actions reflect negatively on the entire mystery shopping community who make the time and effort to provide real feedback when they perform mystery shops. It is indeed unfortunate that you would attempt to capitalize on the support of this community without mentioning the fact that you performed and admitted to performing fraud (fabricating and reusing business cards)- the absolute nemesis of the mystery shopping industry. It was not our intent to make public your actions, but we have no option but to defend our position.
EandCconsulting, if you have any questions regarding this, please let me know and I will email you directly.
Thank you,
BestMark, Inc.
EandCconsulting Wrote:
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> So I was cancelled out by Bestmark today after
> several years of successful shops. They accused
> me of forging reports...the ultimate insult in
> this business. Of course they have no proof, as
> there is not any. I do several small town rural
> dealerships 2 or 3 times a year for them. These
> dealerships have very few employees. One of them
> is out of a trailer and it is the owner and his
> secretary, THATS it. Sooooo as you can imagine
> repeat salesmen come along and I have had several
> shops over the last couple years with the same
> name. OF COURSE that means I'm cheating them at
> Bestmark, there couldn't POSSIBLY be any other
> explanation. I did about 12 shops in the last 2
> weeks, 6 had new sale people I met, 6 did not. So
> they gave me no warning and a nasty email and that
> was it. No questions asked, just adios E and C
> Consulting. No soup for you. Shoppers beware if
> you are in the same boat I have been in!!!!