I signed up with them in my initial round of newbie sign-ups. I was emailed personally and asked to pick up two audits. I asked a few questions.. agreed to take them on. Did the first one, ended up being more hassle then I bargained for, but I agreed to do it.

Person who emailed me told me if I had any questions to email her. I know they are in Europe, so the time difference makes emailing inconvenient as replies take forever. I had a question after I submitted my audit, and didn't want to do the next one until I had an answer. Days passed. I finally got a reply 4 days later. I really needed to do the second one yesterday. The reply told me I had done it correctly and my question wasn't a problem. Great. Asked if I was doing the other audit. I replied I planned on leaving in an hour for it.

Then I see I have another email from Helion. It tells me they really need to check my work from the first audit before I do the second. Okay.. Only they haven't bothered to. They were both due yesterday.. I don't have limitless time to twiddle my thumbs.

I see from searching the forum there isn't a ton of positive to be said about Helion, but not much of it is current. So.. Are any of you still shopping them? Do they get better, or are they always non communicative and problematic to deal with?

I shop with them regularly. Be patient. Adela is amazing and will work with you if you work with her. Not the fastest at returning emails but she does respond. I can't imagine how many other projects she works on in EU plus getting the Canadian audits on top of that. From my discussions with her, it sounded like they did not have many shoppers around our parts too. Scheduler nightmare

I had to wait many times past the dates I wanted to do the projects but only because I did a lot of them and they had a limit. I ended up doing them later because they needed them done. This company is not a company that you should expect a response within the hour as much as it is a pain for us. When it is afternoon here, it is close to midnight there. When we sleep, they work. Most MSCs do not respond that quickly here either.

My experience has been positive and I wish they had more projects here because it is so easy to work with them (when you have no problems that require an answer ). My only gripe is that the locations I get sometimes are in a nonsensical order so it can be hard to make a route. Otherwise I find their audits to be really easy and I love the pay rate. Hopefully you will have a better experience with your second audit if you decide to do it.

Thank you, yes same person. I get that the time difference is problematic. Just the due date for all these audits was the 4th. I just happened to plan the second one on the day it was due, as it should have been doable. So now it's past the due date with no reply :/

Although I see they have a bunch more of the same project, all with the same due date. Can you tell me if they ever end up bonusing assignments when they need things done? I'm happy to do the remaining one I said I would do, but I'll wait to hear back from her.

I think doing a second one of the same assignment should be far easier honestly, less of a learning curve with everything I try to not be impatient, I just hate that the due date has now passed.

Yeah I totally get it, I generally would be and have been annoyed when a MSC has done the same thing haha. If Adela and the Helion team were not so nice and the pay so decent, I probably would have deactivated. I'm kind of in the same boat with them now too but I've done 8 of these already so I just book other shops. I'm sure at some point, she will call or email asking for help. If not, no hard feelings. I do not think they bonus.. I have seen this project end without bonuses especially out west where it seems they have a huge need for shoppers. It seems they just report to the client with what they have.

If you still want to do the audits you applied for, leave them even with the date past due because if you remove them, you will not be able to reapply. I ended up "cancelling" audits I applied for in order to change the due date and now they are not there to apply but are still listed in the count of available evaluations. If she gets back to you and the date is not convenient, you can always email to reschedule (I know it's like a circle). I have had to do that before when they just gave assignments without knowing what dates I could do them and she was very quick to adjust them. You could always email again if you really want to do it and let her know what dates from now until the new due date you could do them in case she gets back to you.

Hopefully she will respond to you soon and my good words won't be in vain

Haha, thank you I appreciate the personal experience. Being so new I never never know what is common, odd, etc.

Good to know about the no bonuses. I've been kinda quick picking up stuff being so new, not knowing better and also needing the experience. There will be no more McDs, like ever again.. I contemplated picking more of these up, wondering if they'd go higher as there were seemingly so many of them, and are now overdue. Though I need to wait to hear back. I didn't self assign any of them, she assigned me the two I took.

Thank you for the info and advice I really appreciate it

I recently registered with this company. I have applied for a couple of shops, but when they were not approved in time, I canceled. Then I received an email stating those shops were scheduled with another shopper. So it looks like they leave shops on the job board that are already scheduled. I could see where that would be irritating.

Do they ever allow a shopper to self-assign or do we always have to wait for approval?

Sigh, this has been one of my more frustrating MS experiences thus far, though my experience is still limited. So I signed in daily and my first report never changed status. So.. I didn't do the second shop. Today I get an email asking if I was planning on doing it as it is now overdue.

I'm a little cranky since I was told my work needed to be checked. I went and did it this afternoon, and it was easier and faster then the first one, but the frustration with the MSC has left something to be desired :/

No self-assign.

Did she end up emailing you back Mafia_Princess? I had that happen (emailing about overdue shops) before after requesting for the due date to be changed. They seem really slow. It sucks you are having this experience.. especially as a new shopper. Sucks for Helion too because there are so many locations to be done and the whole audit looks overwhelming as it is, let alone to have available shoppers and take so long to get back to them. I don't know what to say.. other than they pay on time lol.

Actually I did get a reply. Someone was apparently supposed to get in contact with me to tell me my first audit was fine. Though in the system it still shows as completed rather then finished. She apologized as no one contacted me, and told me a scheduler was wondering if I'd take more.

I agreed to three more shops as the second one ended up being far easier then the first. Be nice if one could self assign. As I've seen many comments that shoppers have tried to pick up shops to never hear back. I wonder if they only need a percentage of all locations done? Paying on time is nice Last month was my first full month of shopping, so I'm still learning about pay dates

They are much easier after the first one.. it's a piece of cake :-) Glad everything worked out for ya!

Thank you

I was assigned the audit and trying to pass the test. However, Q18.1 does not accept any answer. It gives me red warning Wrong Answer...
Any ideas? Tnx

I can't access the test again. You could PM one of us the exact Q, but don't know which question that was off hand :/

I applied for 4 more audits the other day, was assigned one. Also got paid for the first one I did today, so they do pay in a timely fashion. There is a note n the paypal deposit saying to please sign up for more, they need people. I'm like but I tried...

It just gives me the same warning, it does not matter what I choose... To email them, should I just reply to email that they sent me as confirmation email? Tnx

update...I finished the test, as I did not realize it was multiple choice...tnx

Over here there are jobs that are self assign, up to a limit. They can take a little while to answer mails here as well, usually from day to day though. But they've always paid on time.
Any problems with doing jobs on time because of questions (or severe weather, as has been the case twice) have always been worked out. The portal can be a bit tricky to use and a bit of a mess at times, but I've gotten used to it. :-/

If one is patient and knows not to panic while waiting for a response, then I'd say they are also a good place for beginners. It was the first freelance MSC job I signed up for, while actually employed full time as an interviewer and mystery shopper with another company.