I noticed a few local gas station shops/audits on my Maritz job board tonight. They're not the yellow gas station, but rather red, white, and blue that's two companies merged into one. Can anyone give me some insight into the difficulty of the questionnaire? I did a cell phone shop for Maritz earlier today, and it was WAY easier than the two I did the other day for RSG. I'm hoping the questionnaire for Maritz's gas station shop/audit will be easy, too.

One other Maritz question. After I submitted my cell phone report, I clicked on Submit An Invoice, entered the Visit ID and clicked Add New Visit. The screen that came up had a place to submit receipts, which weren't required for this shop. But I didn't see a button for anything like "Submit the invoice you just created." Do I need to do anything else, or was that all? Didn't I read somewhere here that there's not a place to view your history on the Maritz website? Bummer.

Your receipt for the cell phone shop would be the business card you obtained, with the Visit ID# written on it.

Wait, I thought that was RSG's requirement. Dang, did I screw that up??? I'd better go check, or I'll never get to sleep tonight...

Rats, rats, rats, you're right, BBird! Is there a way I can upload a new photo???

No, I don't believe so. I don't do them often, most of my Maritz shops are banks and gas stations, but I've occasionally done both versions of the Maritz cell phone shops. I haven't done them since they've started using RSG, but when it was Maritz-only, I had to submit the business card, with Visit ID# written on it, in lieu of a receipt.

You have 14 days to do this, but if you have already submitted your invoice, your best bet is to call them, and see what needs to be done to rectify it. They don't respond quickly to emails.

Lisa, call Maritz in the morning. They'll fix it for you.

Will do, thanks for the advice!

If you have done this for the other company that had them,. it is the same shop with two new questions. It is a basic reveal photo audit with pics of all the pumps instead of just one but there are fewer other required photos. $5 gas and $1 in store. Report is easy. I do a lot of these. Most can be done at night as well so it makes scheduling a bit easier...

The gas-station shops are super easy with the biggest PITA being resizing photos if you (like me) forget to change the resolution on your camera to the requested pixels.
In regards to the invoice issue, I mistakenly submitted one without a receipt photo because the website is not dummy-proof and will allow this, and after calling found out there is no way for a shopper to correct an invoice once it goes out. Frances, with whom I spoke to gave me her email address and allowed me to simply email her a photo of my receipt which she offered to attach to my shop so it was all corrected easily.

tgihvaa, the only other gas station shops I've done were Sunoco, and those were for another MSC. I found them to be a major PITA, took way too long to do the reports, and I hated having to go across the street to take the exterior photo. (If I do any more of those, I'll just take the photo from the sidewalk in front of the station instead of going across a busy highway, as another shopper recommended.) Since the cell phone shop I did for Maritz was so easy, I was hoping that was a trend. Guess maybe I should just try one of them out to see for myself. I'm okay with that.

VickyS, I didn't actually have a receipt to be attached with the invoice. There wasn't a purchase required, and I had already uploaded the required photos at the end of my report. I was more worried about there not being a "Submit" button once I had created the invoice, kwim? But I went back and tried to create the invoice for that job again, and got an error message saying it had already been submitted. So I *think* I'm okay.

I can see why everyone complains about their website. Thanks, everyone, for your advice!

Regarding the Maritz gas stations, I had two removed from my current assignment with an email message that the client canceled the shops. I didn't think too much of it until yesterday when I drove by the address the gas station had changed from yellow to blue so there have been some sales between their two clients. I am hoping to pick up the debrand job on it soon.

Lisa, a "receipt" is still needed for the cellphone shops, it would be the business card. The department who pays you and looks for the receipt on your invoice does NOT get a copy of your shop report so just submitting the business card or other proof of visit with your shop report is not enough. For mine I had to submit the business card with my shop report, then write the shop number directly on the business card and take another photo to submit as a receipt. As far as I'm aware this is listed as a requirement for payment and must be done correctly within 14 days or you may not get paid. Additionally Maritz does NOT contact you if there is a problem with your invoice. When I called and inquired they confirmed by invoice did not have proof of visit attached via uploaded photo and that the invoice was unacceptable though they never contacted me about this and I also received the error message because, per Frances at Maritz, you cannot change or fix an invoice once submitted, you would need to do this through an email to a specific invidual. If I were you I would call and have someone confirm that your invoice is acceptable for payment.

VickyS, Thank you for the info and warning! I'll give them a call on Monday. I figured uploading the image once was enough. Guess I figured wrong! :-D

Have you guys seen the new (Meritz) yellow gas stations quality control booklet/guide? So much info they had to send a book through the mail to help people do the shop. I am worried as heck about it. I can't even get through the book and say done. I have my first one tomorrow. I love the other stations they do and take as many as are within reason but these requirements are nothing like the others. They are only paying 12.00 plus reimbursement of two gal gas and 2.00 purchase. I am thinking just from the 12 pages of questions I will spend about four hours on one shop. Then all the required photos will have to be uploaded resized. I stupidly took two, then thought oh what the heck how bad can they be? So I scheduled another one for tomorrow Saturday just to get a feel for it. Ohh! what have I done!!!!!!!!!

On the yellow stations, I received notice this week that due to too many complaints from stations in my area for being too critical--they are really pathetic in the Atlanta metro area--I was being removed from doing those shops. I have been doing the shops for the past four years with few complaints and I average about 200-250 of these shops every year.

Another auditor who does the same stations that I do in the odd quarters (you normally can't do the same location two quarters in a row) has been giving these stations free passes, probably to make the shops easier to debrief (the program requires two photos of each basic area of the station (overall, store, counter, restroom, dispensers, etc.).

On the Red/Blue stations that the OP referred to, those audits are easy to do because you only have two interactions with station personnel: one to present the intro letter and one to get them to sign the audit form and ask them about the phone number and hours of operation. There are 10 required photos assuming all elements are present at the station (often you can get by with about seven) plus photos for each discrepancy. I usually have about 25 photos with these stations but I don't have to worry about receipts or subjective questions like there are on the Yellow stations. This client is the oldest client that Maritz has and one of the most prolific with three different types of shops available (audit, mystery shop and debrand). The only drawback is that the mystery shop and audit shops are mutually exclusive--you can only do one or the other and if you are one program you have to wait until the next year to switch programs.

bus377, those yellow gas stations are not as bad as they seem at first. The book and the first few reports are overwhelming and I thought I would NEVER catch on, but now I do them regularly and find them reasonable. It's a question of making up a good cheat sheet and understanding the manual they send you. The more of these you do, the faster you'll get as you refine your system and it all becomes automatic to you. Good luck with the first ones, they're a booger bear.

Just bring the book with you. I stood there in the islands several times with several referance materials open looking confused and dumb and even had to get out of my car and go back and rephotograph one pump I forgot about. I would never leave home without the book and make sure you check all photos and check them off the list before you leave, but otherwise this was not painful for a newbie auditor like me so I'm confident you will be fine.

Regarding the company that has three forms of shops, I foolishly signed up for four of the audits, but found them a royal pain.

Apparently the auditor before me was giving them a pass on everything. The people in every store I stopped at would say that the other auditor would come by, snap a few photos and be gone. Every one of the stores said that he would be there less than 10 minutes and they always got a great report. But that wasn't the case for me.

Not to mention fooling around with all the photos afterwards. I just dreaded debriefing those shops.

Funny, I didn't mind doing those for another MSC with another gas station chain.

So now I do just the mystery shop version for Maritz. And I am a million times happier.

The Blue Canopy shops are the easiest to do from Maritz. The yellow canopies are a pain when you start but they do get easier the more you do. I always start with taking required photos first and look for issues as I am walking the lot down to the MID, PID whatever you want to call it. Rarely is there a fourcourt person. The thing I mess up the most is getting the vest photo.

Okay, there's more than one red, white, and blue station. But, one has changed its night time requirements this month. So, there's a new warning, when you say that you did it at night:

"You have stated that this shop was done during hours of darkness. Please be sure that if you status it in this way that the Main ID/ canopy lights were on at the very minimum."

Can anyone translate that second sentence into English, for me?

I think it means the main id lights and the canopy lights must be on. That's the minimum they'll accept on the lights.

For those Pegasus night shops, I have a few to do. Yet, I am still awaiting the timing information. I am unable to find the timing information.

Is it 1 hour after sunset or is it when it is after sunset, dark, time not withstanding? Is it when is becomes dark enough that they turn on their outdoor lighting?

The yellow gas stations have a distinct time: 1 hour after sunset. I would have done those this summer. however, sometimes sunset is 9:00. who wants to do them at 10 and then drive home or a nearby WiFi to submit the report? For me anyway.

Ishmael,
MD has the right idea. However, it is possible to be there when the lights *should* be on, and they're not. I have twice been to locations where the lighting timer had not been reset to reflect earlier dusk. I asked at both locations for the lights to be manually turned on, but one location could not. I fully documented both situations. In such cases, note the time of sunset for where you are so that the MSC will know that the mistake of reporting with no lights on was the station's, not yours.

MDavisnowell Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think it means the main id lights and the canopy
> lights must be on. That's the minimum they'll
> accept on the lights.


Thanks, and thanks to elcarev68, who deals with my next question, which was going to be: "So, if it's midnight and the main ID lights and the canopy lights aren't on, then I wasn't there during hours of darkness?"

xyz

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2014 09:22PM by Mary Smith xoxoxo.

This is a good time of year to do the night shops since it is dark at 6:00pm. The rest of the year the night shops start past my bedtime and the debrief after midnight is not a quality product for me.

Hi all It has been 10 shops later and I am just getting the hang of it. I sat in the dark while all the lights came on everywhere around me but the dang one blue station I was doing. It should have had the lights on but did not. The proprietor said they would be on at 7:14 pm. They finally came on at 7:36 instead. LOL. I am with you that is past my bed time. So by the time I get home down load the pictures and fuss over the dang re-sizing crap It is midnight and I have to get up at 5 am to drive my bus. So I stopped trying for the night shops or "evening eligible" ones. As for the yellow shops they are very time consuming. (junk1958) I agree with you.

I found this free program for resizing pictures AND you can do multiple pictures at a time instead of just one by one. I downloaded it from CNET but you can google it and download it from any source you trust.

It's called..... wait for it.....

Free-Picture-Resizer :-)

Here is a link to CNET
[download.cnet.com]

I like this little program because you can put the pixel size you want the pictures to be in the box and it resizes all selected pictures to the right format.