What a total bunch of ...... time wasters Market Force are. I WILL NEVER EVER WORK FOR THEM AGAIN !!!
They had me go to do a service and sales visit for a new drug and state i must buy the item, yet they also state they will refund £5 of the cost with £4.75 payment for my trouble. So I go to do the visit but find the price of the item is actually £7.99 however if i do not buy it i do not get paid for the report anyway so now i am in a catch 22. Having got home done the 1/2hr report and send it off i ask them to pay the full refund but they say NO, we will only pay the max £5. So i make a grand total of £1.76 on the deal and have a packet of useless heartburn tablets for my efforts.
I have been doing this for over 4 years and over 800 visits and i have never been treated so badly (and that is saying something) I WILL NEVER WORK FOR THEM AGAIN and i feel it is about time we shoppers band together and boycott companies such as MARKETFORCE who treat their staff with such contempt.

@submarine man wrote:

I WILL NEVER WORK FOR THEM AGAIN and i feel it is about time we shoppers band together and boycott companies such as MARKETFORCE who treat their staff with such contempt.

It will never happen. The topic has been discussed many times over the years. It will never happen.

You have to choose your assignments carefully and don't accept them if they are not bonused enough to make it profitable. The catch-22 is that they will not call you and offer the extra money unless you have done the shop at base pay at least once.

Now that you have done the shop, you may get a phone call near the end of the month as others will flake and not do the shop and they will be desperate to get it done and you are now a proven shopper with this program.

Tell them you require a £14 bonus and pick up several of them and make your losses back. With MF, you have to do a few of each shop type to get them calling you offering a real payment.

They just called me and offered a $14 bonus on a $6 shop. I told them $18 for this 25 minute job at a grocery store I was going to visit on my own for the BOGO specials this week anyhow. Look at the long term and not the single assignment with them. With the food reimbursement that is $34 for less than 30 minutes in the store and a quick survey with no narrative at all.

Edit: I can't count three numbers in my head when I posted this and actually understated the amount. And full of typo's.

Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 06/09/2015 03:10AM by scanman1.

i agree with Scanman. We are Independent Contractors, so we can pick and choice what assignments we will or will not do. It is also up to us to find out what sorts or costs we will be incurring before accepting a shop. You should be doing your homework --- know before hand if the reinbursement is going to cover all or most of the cost. Then decide if it is worth it, or pick up another shop in the same area, to make it profitable. I have been known to take a lose on one shop, only to make it up with another, on the same or another day, with the same or a different MSC. Sometimes you need to, to get known by a MSC.

Market Force, is just now calling me with the Bonuses. I am making much more per shop, for them, then I did at first. But I would not be getting those Bonused Shops, if I did not do them at Base Pay First, and even a few times, at a lose. You need to prove yourself, before they are going to really make you any money!

I hope you stick with Market Force, because they are one of the biggest MSCs, and tend to have one of the largest number of Shops available for shoppers. (although their ax may come down on you one day, ride the profits until they end.) Good luck in your endeavors.

They called me and offered me a bonus to do a shop I'd never done at all, base pay or not. Perhaps they were desperate, IDK.

I love MarketForce

I don't understand. you accepted at the stated pay rate. They paid you for a completed shop. How is this poor treatment?

Submarine man, Market Force said they would pay $5 of the cost of the item and they did. Many times a shop is set up so the reimbursement on the expended amount is not 100%. If the shop does not say 100% reimbursement, it will be a set dollar amount which may or may not be enough. From your post it appears you read the offer and understood the offer because you knew when you bought the product it was "above budget".

A shop like that is useful if we can use the item purchased because it means we got a lovely discount on the item. If the item is useless to us then it's not a good shop for us. You did a shop that did not reimburse 100% and now you are holding the MSC responsible as if they did something wrong or underhanded. I understand you're upset, but they did exactly what they said they would do.

Your decision not to shop for them is hasty. I suggest a cooling off period and reconsideration. The shop did not turn out as you expected, but sometimes that happens. I am sure if you continue shopping you will have more experiences of this nature. I have them now and then and consider it part of the program.

There is a certain fast food shop where it rarely EVER covers the reimbursement amount, unless you order a certain thing that comes just under $5.50.

So, you bite the loss if you decide to take this certain fast food shop

OP many shops are just not worth it. You've got good suggestions on this thread how to make mystery shopping work for you.

I can see expecting that the reimbursement would actually cover the product

800 shops with Market Force, you are doing something right. You took a small loss. It's not worth throwing out the baby with the bath water. Just avoid that shop and stick to the type of shops you've been doing with them.

@scanman1 wrote:

The catch-22 is that they will not call you and offer the extra money unless you have done the shop at base pay at least once.

This isn't necessarily true. I had a scheduler call me about a week after I completed my first shop for Market Force and ask me if I would be willing to do a small route of bonused hardware store shops that needed to be completed within a few days. At that point the only thing I'd done for them was the one fast food assignment.

I have not worked for them in years. They did not play fair!

@SunnyDays2 wrote:

There is a certain fast food shop where it rarely EVER covers the reimbursement amount, unless you order a certain thing that comes just under $5.50.

So, you bite the loss if you decide to take this certain fast food shop

That's why those $10+ shop fee bumps come in handy. I can indulge in cheese sticks or a shake on those!

I notice that shops for those odd number of dudes got bumped up a dollar for their reimbursement, too, FWIW. I just wish they had shakes here in Houston already.

OK, I had to go click the OP's name.

They just joined and this is their first post here.

The post does not make sense. 800 shops and throwing the baby out with the bathwater???

J/S

They suck. I did a shop the other day. The attendant was a creep, I purchased fuel and was supposed to purchase a small item from the store ( which was closed) so I grabbed a coke from an outside cooler box and asked the attendant for a receipt. He tells me no receipts, so I said " you don't have a cash register?" He tells me no receipt and I tell him to give me my money back. So I report this to MF we exchanged a few emails. Last one was " it sounds like you didn't buy the soda" Well even after explaining the situation I get rejected for the shop. They suck. You do a certain fast food shop they actually are getting 2 shops done for the price of 1. They can kiss off.

Two one-hit wonders in the same thread. And they both love MF sooooo much. We are blessed.

We need more of these MF haters. The more of them that sign up and flake on the assignment, the more my phone rings with someone asking me to do a shop the next day.

These people actually make working for MF a pleasure as they help drive up my asking price when MF calls me at the last minute.

Keep up the bad work, and keep getting your shops rejected. Every flake turns into a bonused shop for someone else.

I'm waiting for Krusty the Crab to comment. He must know Submarine Man and Barnacle Bob and agree with them.

Barnacle Bob, I know you don't care but it's real early and I'm not jaded for the day yet so I want to comment. It's entirely possible that if you had made the purchase and not submitted the receipt because the receipt was refused, that MF would have paid you. One of the requirements is to make a store purchase and you didn't do that. They may have waived the receipt if you hadn't told them you got in a snit and didn't make the purchase. Of course that's not a sure thing, just a possibility, but you put a lock on not getting paid when you didn't make the purchase. Another good move on site would have been to ask for a hand written receipt which I'm sure the attendant would have also refused, but the purpose would have been to exhaust all options. Many guidelines instruct to ask for a handwritten receipt if a register is down etc. You won't find these after the fact comments helpful but new shoppers can glean a glint of insight from this debacle. Hope you and Submarine will stay safe in that deep water.

I've done shops where the store was closed. I report it as such and if I can, take a picture. Report accepted.

Follow the guidelines about a closed location.

Although there may be shoppers who have not been paid without a cash register receipt, that has never been my experience. Not only have I completed reports completely lacking a receipt, I have submitted receipts with the wrong day, wrong date, wrong time of day, wrong address, wrong cashier name, wrong items listed, even the wrong receipt (given another customer's receipt) ...... and I've always been paid.

A note of advice:

PLAN AHEAD. If you were not given a receipt, be sure to explain that in your report. Do not just not submit it and wait for the company to realize and ask questions. If I completely lack a receipt, I take a photo of the exterior, of the item I purchased, something that seems like "reasonable documentation" to me, just in case I am asked "how do we know you really bought the item?"

EXAMINE the receipt closely before you complete your report. If ANYthing on the receipt is incorrect, be sure to address that in your report. Explain it completely. The incorrect receipt is part of the story you are telling about the service you received. If you submit an incorrect receipt and do not explain it in your report, the company will notice the discrepancy. When they come back and ask questions, if you have not already told them that you KNOW there is a discrepancy and you have explained it, they may doubt your explanation because, if it was not addressed up front in the report, it may sound to the editors as though you goofed and you are now making excuses.

@scanman1 wrote:

We need more of these MF haters. The more of them that sign up and flake on the assignment, the more my phone rings with someone asking me to do a shop the next day.

Yes, but when we see a bonused shop at Market Force and assume that the bonus is due to a shopper flaking at the last minute, isn't also true that it is just as likely that a shopper was deactivated and their scheduled shops were put back on the board at the last minute?

I too accepted assignments from MarketForce. The pay is low but assignments interesting. I've had some bad experiences with them but have consistently given them feedback and see slight improvement. As stated in another posting, pick and choose carefully. And make sure one experience doesn't keep you from doing something else.

Oh yeah, wait patiently and when they get hard to cover assignments they give great bonuses!

@barnaclebob wrote:

They suck. I did a shop the other day. The attendant was a creep, I purchased fuel and was supposed to purchase a small item from the store ( which was closed) so I grabbed a coke from an outside cooler box and asked the attendant for a receipt. He tells me no receipts, so I said " you don't have a cash register?" He tells me no receipt and I tell him to give me my money back. So I report this to MF we exchanged a few emails. Last one was " it sounds like you didn't buy the soda" Well even after explaining the situation I get rejected for the shop. They suck. You do a certain fast food shop they actually are getting 2 shops done for the price of 1. They can kiss off.

Having a shop rejected is the natural consequence of failing to make the required purchase. You can be as mad at Market Force as you want to be, but you really have nobody to blame but yourself for this one. The beauty of being an independent contractor is that you're not obligated to take assignments for any company that you don't want to work with.

I love Market Force also.

I LOVE Market Force also, been with them for YEARS!!

If I was refused a receipt, I would have asked for a hand-written receipt. If that was refused, I would explain it in the report, but I would still make the required purchase. I can't imagine not being paid under those circumstances. However, I do agree with Barnacle Bob that it was a petty reason for invalidating his shop.

Market Force might be the largest MSC but the people who run it are garbage. They are similar to the clown candidates running for the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination.