I completed a shop last night at 10 p.m., which was the last possible minute the shop could be completed (5:30 p.m. - 10 p.m.) It was a casual dining shop. I arrived at 9:05 and left at 10 p.m. on the dot.

When I arrived home a little after midnight, the Marketforce website was down, as usual. (It goes down almost every night for maintenance at around midnight PST. Sometimes it's down for a few minutes, sometimes times it is down for hours.) I got up this morning to input my shop before the 10 a.m. deadline and at 9:40 it had already been removed from my list.

This is at least the fourth time in recent weeks this has happened but the first time I caught them red-handed without a shadow of a doubt. The last time I asked them to restore a shop, I got a nasty little lecture on reporting within twelve hours. I thought maybe I had read the end times wrong but didn't think so. It was a crazy chicken shop. I've done a hundred of them and know the routine well.

Is anyone else having this issue?

..not the same as yours, but I'm seeing shops appearing, then disappearing and then reappearing.

Strange.

I have to agree with your point of view, this is a load of bull#$%&. In light of the fact the website goes down for maintenance, there should be at least a little bit of leeway. Do they really want these shops reported as soon as possible? Then the website needs to be up at midnight when shops are being completed at 10pm! It's that simple! And they definitely should not be reassigned right at the 12-hour mark (or even 20 minutes before).

Not too long ago I stayed up to report a shop until well over an hour after the maintenance window was supposed to end. (Not something I feel I should have to do on a base pay shop, BTW, and I was unhappy about it. I only did this to keep my standing with MF in hopes that it would not happen again for a long time. I was very tempted to say "#$%& it" and finish it in the morning, but was afraid of having the shop cancelled out on me.)

The only thing I can think to do that might help is to email the helpdesk when this happens with all pertinent info the next time it happens.

I'm also wondering why there's not some kind of redundancy on the website. Two (or more) identical servers with a load balancer in front, take one down for maintenance at a time at midnight so one is always running and ready to take shop reports.

The site may go down tomorrow around 4PM I read. Not a good time for maintenance.

You should have immediately called the help desk when you were still within the 12 hour window to find out what is going on.

I did and still no response. I contacted them 18 minutes before my 12-hour window was up.

In case some of you didn't hear the weather news or see the message posted on MarketForce's web site...

"Message Posted on Shopper Portal January 28, 2014

Market Force Office Closing This Afternoon

Due to inclement weather in the area, Market Force's Office has closed early today.

The only impact to Shoppers will be that our phone lines will not be manned. You will be able to leave voicemails; however, we strongly encourage you to contact us via e-mail rather than phone since our Help Desk is staffed nearly 24/7.

We will make every effort to return the voice messages we receive in a timely manner, but please be aware there may be a longer than usual delay due to our staff working from home today.

We appreciate your patience and understanding!"

I am watching "The Today Show" right now on Wednesday morning. Atlanta and The Deep South was not ready for this winter storm. They released kids from school and people from work early but it was already too late. People got stuck in their cars on the highways for 18+ hours. Parents got stuck and could not pick up their kids at school so many kids had to stay at their schools overnight.

I am not making excuses for MF. I don't do that many shops for them they do seem to be pretty good about posting messages to the web site.

Lately they seem to be very trigger happy to remove near deadline shops very fast, even before the 12h reporting window. I had one removed 20 minutes before the reporting time last December. I contacted them but it was snapped by another shopper in between s they could not restore it in my account.

@ KateH ~ Did you ask why they are removing shops early before the deadline? Just curious.

I did not ask as it was a no purchase filler so I did not bother as I had spent less than 8 minutes in that shop. I am a little leery of their algorithm so I try to choose my "battles" with this MSC. So far I have survived taking primarily bonused shops/over $xxx in fees annually/ etc.

All those burger shops are gone on my end..

I had a shop that I vaguely remember taking. When I was looking over when my shops were due, it wasn't there. When I printed out my paper work for my other shops, it wasn't there. I thought maybe I just thought I had assigned it so I didn't think anything else about it. A few days later, I got an email saying it had been canceled due to not being reported in 12 hours.

That could nearly have happened to me today. I awoke to a notice that I had only a few hours to report a shop that was the email said was due yesterday. However, I had agreed by phone just yesterday to do said shop today. Fortunately I could reschedule it for today, but had I not checked email uber-early this a.m., it would have been cancelled on me. Not sure if this post has a moral, but perhaps it's make sure the scheduler has actually set you up for the date you agreed to.

For any MSC when agreeing to a shop on the phone we should always be sure dates, times and fees are in writing as soon as possible. Since Market Force keeps all information on shopper ratings secret it is even more crucial. We have no way of knowing if those emails create little dings on our records and if they are ever removed. I once had a problem because they said I had gone over my daily shop limit of four. The problem was they had wrongly included phone shops in that days totals. While there are emails back and forth and it appeared to be corrected, how do I know it is not still sitting there? Needless to say, I still have that email trail, just in case.

It appears that the burger shops have moved to a different company. Many changes this January.

Are you talking about the <don't name the client when the MSC is being discussed!> burger shops?

Robinv

Robinv... you are not supposed to name clients of Market Force... I would edit your last post.

I called them today and got right through and the message is still up on their website. I think it just depends if they're extremely busy at the moment or maybe they had the calls forwarded to someone's home because I notice that it's random whether they answer or not. I just happened to luck out this morning.