Scratching my head and wondering if being accused of doing good is an insult

JayTee Wrote:
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> Scratching my head and wondering if being accused
> of doing good is an insult


JayTee,
Perhaps in worlds where all is seemingly negative, being a "do-gooder" would be as well. My real life FB posts will attest to that side of my personality, as some here know...But my MS life is not where I do my "do-gooder" work. Its a job, it pays bills I have, and I treat it as such. I offer advice and thoughts here for a different reason. I am guessing you do as well. Keep on rocking. You are awesome at it. :-)

dr.lloyd@sbcglobal.net Wrote:
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> Dee: You were not the person with the lunatic
> comment,it was the other do gooder.



Confused here?? Not sure what is do-goody or narrow minded about any of the other two poster's comments. In fact I see THEIR posts as the opposite of narrow minded.

KathyC Wrote:
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> Low pay, delayed paychecks, excessive tests.

Low pay? Probably yeah, at least until they get bonused.

Excessive tests? Some of the tests can be a bit much, but I'm sure every MS company has dealt with new shoppers that sign up for a job, but don't read all the details to perform it?

Delayed paychecks? They are the fastest paying company I shop for.

Why CORI is so cool you get to take the qualification tests and such before you can even see that the job you just spent an hour do the testing for pays less than minimum wage for the hour you just spent And in case you forget how little it was, when you go to look next month you can take the test again!

Hey Flash: Maybe some one else out in the ether thinks like I do about that Certain Other Reprehensible Inbred.

While I have disdain for them I don't have the anger you represent. I am perfectly willing to work for them when they get the fees to an appropriate level as I have few issues with their actual jobs and none with their payments. I do object to their initial fees as abusive and I do object to having to take a test before I can even see if the job is worthwhile, but I do not object to having to certify before you take a job. My run ins with them have been minor skirmishes and I have always been paid in full and in a timely fashion--more than I can say for some companies out there. My favorite? Heck no! A potential resource worth checking? Yes.

Flash: I do not disagree with you except my experience has been different. Sure, if they accept all the shops and find no problems, they pay on time. However,if there is any form of dispute, the whole thing goes into the trash and you will never reconcile with them. In my case, they did not like the faint receipts that the client's registers provided so they would not pay. In the last and final issue, I drove 80 miles to to a chain of gas stations at 8 am. When I arrived at the first location, it was completed on time and I proceeded to do five others. When I was finished, they cancelled the entire run at 3 PM saying the client had changed its mind. I tried to get paid but that is a laughing matter. No response, no pay. and in my case, no more interest in doing anything for them and do I bad mouth them. YOU BETCHA BIPPY I DO and will. Am I angry and vindictive? That was a very good anaylsis of my feelings towards them. I have this thing about not getting screwed by bad people and it reflects in my not so tender emotions.

Ok. I rarely have a shop rejected by anyone. As for receipts, I play with the scans of them with various editing software to darken them up to be readable. At times I have spent over an hour making photocopies as dark as my printer will do and then scanning and editing. I know that if I cannot read it, neither can anyone else and therefore I could have sent them any garbage in the world to try to fake a shop. If a receipt is barely legible, with work it can be turned into a reasonable black and white, legible copy. When it was not even vaguely legible at the store I have asked them to reprint it with a new ribbon or give me a hand written receipt because "I need to have something legible for IRS or my accountant won't let me claim the expense." Companies insist on legible receipts pretty uniformly and it is part of our job to get them, even if they need to be hand written.

I have had jobs change in mid stream. The most recent was when requirements were changed after noon for a job I performed in the morning. I have never not gotten paid for a job that was performed at a time in the contract window prior to any requirement changes. If that was what you sued them over, that was correct. But I always find I am successful just pointing out the time lines for both the job acceptance, job performance and changed requirements and noting that I performed the job as contracted with those changes I was notified of prior to performance, that in reality I did not even need to comply with any changes to my contract to have fulfilled it. Having fulfilled it, I am entitled to payment. Sometimes for additional compensation I will return to execute the new requirements, but most of the time I take the approach that the job was completed as contracted and I am due payment. I am firm and factual.

So many of the issues that shoppers have with payment regard receipts and they need to be firm with the shop about getting something legible--even if it must be handwritten by the store--and they need to develop skills of turning a too light receipt into a darker one without actually tampering with the receipt. On a recent one I did a print of it as dark as I could get the whole thing scanned and darkened and then literally hand wrote every piece of information to the side of the receipt print. While sometimes it is suggested you trace over the information on a receipt, I will never do that because some companies/editors perceive that as falsification.

Flash: Your comment is helpful. I did attempt to trace it once and as you state, it fell in my lap. My fault for not finding a more efficient way to do this. As far as the cancelled shops in midstream, I did get paid but only by shifting into nasty mode as I find easy to do as it is probably my basic nature. I sued them and as soon as the writ threat hit them, they paid. What a way to have to operate and it is said that I am a vindictive old man. You betcha' That is the only sure fire way to play with amateur theives. Bottom line is it works every time as they feel that shoppers will not do these things. Would I prefer not to have to do this. Absolutely. But life does not work like that in most instances. I work with great no nonsense msc companies who would not dream of doing that stuff and never have anything but a smile from them.

So you continue or discontinue to work with them. Certainly I continue to work with the companies where issues have been resolved through being firm and logical. I have to laugh that my recent encounter with a company that changed the requirements AFTER I had performed the shop ended up with them indicating they were submitting it to the client to see "if it would" be accepted. I will allow them this 'face saving' as if the problem was mine, though whether the client accepts it or not, my contract was with them, not some third party, and I did what I was contracted to do so need to be paid. I am just watching quietly to see if the job falls off my pay history and if it does, I will be raising a furor.

Flash Wrote:
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> Why CORI is so cool you get to take the
> qualification tests and such before you can even
> see that the job you just spent an hour do the
> testing for pays less than minimum wage for the
> hour you just spent And in case you forget how
> little it was, when you go to look next month you
> can take the test again!


So true dat. It's why I rarely even check to see if the bonuses went up the penny or two they usually go here.

I totally agree with everyone that thinks Corporate Research is a joke. The pay is an absolute insult!!! Doesn't even work out to half minimum wage at times.
Everyone should stop shopping with them then maybe they'd get the hint.

jhmyrs@yahoo.com Wrote:
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> Everyone should stop shopping with them then maybe
> they'd get the hint.

Which would perhaps be effective if all shoppers found forums and recognized that there are other companies worth working for. In my area virtually all the CORI shops get snatched up very promptly after posting and at the initially offered fees. Yet I rarely see a shopper from my neck of the woods on the forums. For a while there was one who was just starting who was within 100 miles of me. So obviously there are lots of shoppers 'out there' compared to 'in here'.

Quite frankly, I am contenet with CoRI paying the way they do for their shops. I seldom shop with them, although every 2 or 3 months I get a frantic call from a scheduler who wants to make a deal.

But as long as they are offering cheap shops and people are taking them, thos same people don't have time to compete with me for the "Good" shops.

CoRI is a good place for new shoppers to learn the mechanics of the business, and a good place to get your feet wet.

From time to time an acquaintance will not recognize my subtle reluctance to share information about mystery shopping and will pressure me for how to get started. I generally refer them to CoRI. The best thing is, if they follow up on it, when they do their first shop, I get a couple of bucks as a recruiting bonus.

This is one of my favorite companies. One of the schedulers there is my favorite scheduler ... and I have completed over 6500 shops in 14 years so that is saying a lot! I just won't take the photo pizza shops. I haven't taken ANY pizza shops, for that matter -- but would consider the few where no photo is required. The solution to the $4 shops is to wait until the last third of the month, when the shop comes available for a higher fee. So then you don't get as many as you want -- but that's your choice.

They hardly ever bonus here...they either get taken early or they sit, unbonused. Recently they put a 2 cent bonus on something. Hahaha. They did have one HW thing up to $30 once in the summer. I figure someone must have made a mistake on that one, as their shops never get more bonused than a dollar or two, max, over here.

I always wonder about exactly WHO grabs those shops at the beginning of the month. I'm with JayTee on that...Let 'em go for it. More high paying shops at other companies for me.

I always wonder why I see a lot of reluctance to do the pizza photo shops. I've done close to 30 of those just in the past couple of months. Once you get the hang of them, they are really one of the simplest shops to do.

lisams901 Wrote:
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> I always wonder why I see a lot of reluctance to
> do the pizza photo shops. I've done close to 30 of
> those just in the past couple of months. Once you
> get the hang of them, they are really one of the
> simplest shops to do.


Same here. I've done over a dozen. I start picking them up when they hit $15 fee + reimbursement. But hey, I am not advertising. It's because everyone else is reluctant that I get them for a higher fee.

I've never seen a test by them that wasn't a breeze. There's no need to perform the "low pay" jobs, just wait until they hit $12-20+. Mangled pizzas are easy and typically hit $20+ and free pizza. Fast pay, nice schedulers, what else do you need???

"What else do you need?". How bout a sanitary way to perform this shop? Most of these break a way knives are made in China. The blades are treated with an unsanitary oil that has made some folks sick..............

mrcomputer101 Wrote:
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> "What else do you need?". How bout a sanitary way
> to perform this shop? Most of these break a way
> knives are made in China. The blades are treated
> with an unsanitary oil that has made some folks
> sick..............

I clean my blades in bleach and boiling water first. I can't say it will work for everyone, but I've never had a problem with anyone getting sick from them.

CoRI does not do the pizza here. The company that has them does not pay more than reimbursement to a certain dollar, which is under the cost of the pizza when purchasing it here. Not worth my time. This is one I often wish CoRI had here, as they at least pay a fee for it, minimal though it starts out. I can;t say I do anything for them, as after one blue light special chasing down folks, I had enough. But that one I might do, as my son likes their pizza, and I keep reading about how the fees go up...Though virtually nothing they have here ever stays long enough to go up.

They do Kroger now. Just off their job search. lisams901 Wrote:
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> cheryl bailey Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Stay away from the K-mart you won't
> > get paid.'
> > Also beware of Kroger shops,not what they seem.
>
> Odd, I've done probably 20 KMart shops and I've
> been paid for every one of them.
>
> CRI does not do Kroger, but with those too, I've
> done close to 100 and always gotten paid with no
> hassle.

Kroger is not in my area.

Who does Kroger now?

Unless they just changed in the last day, or like the pizza shops, there are two companies doing them, Kroger is still on the job board for the company I have always shopped them with.

dee shops Wrote:
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> CoRI does not do the pizza here. The company that
> has them does not pay more than reimbursement to a
> certain dollar, which is under the cost of the
> pizza when purchasing it here. Not worth my time.

I'm not sure how long the shops will stay on there in your area, but check the other site with the pizza shops after a bit. They do end up giving a bonus if they aren't shopped for a while. I just did one of their pizza shops for the pizza cost plus a $20 bonus.

They have always been with the other company here. Never with CoRI.

dee shops Wrote:
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> They have always been with the other company here.
> Never with CoRI.


That's what I was talking about. Not CoRI, but the other company that has those pizza shops. I've done one for that other company and it was with a $20 bonus because it sat there for a while and no one picked it up.

CoRI used to have all those pizza shops for my area, but lately about half have gone to the other company.

Really? For some reason with that company, here, they never get bonused, either. I think the girl who has them won't do it. :-) Because I can work some huge bonuses for unclaimed high end retail shops out of some of the other peeps there. :-) Maybe I will try for the pizza, too. Thanks, Lisa. :-)