Hi everyone!

This is my first thread! Although I have been around for awhile.

I just read the message in regards of reporting "as fast as possible" from Market Force. I'm aware this topic has been discussed before, but now it's official.

I did write to Market Force expressing my concerns, but it seemed that it didn't matter.

In my market, Market Force shops are not that many. So now I have to be more careful about how I prepare my route for the day. An 8 hour window or less will be tight.

This new policy really affects my "business" as I do mystery shopping on a full time basis. I cannot afford a tablet, and if I could, I refuse to carry one anyway since it might not be safe. It also doesn't make sense for me to stop and compete a report while I should be somewhere else.

Your thoughts???

Thank you.

Hi Arrow

I noticed this today too and mentioned it on another thread (but I don't see it now, so maybe it got gobbled up by the internet
The part that worries me is the part about how they're going to try to keep jobs open for 8 hours after the shop window, but they might have to close them earlier. Huh? Without notice to the shopper? It worries me that we won't be able to rely on a hard and fast deadline for our shop reports.

I confess to being a little concerned myself. Sometimes it's difgicult to get in under the 12 hour deadline if you are doing a lot of shops in a day.

From the site: "We will try to keep the shop open for 8 hours, but there is no guarantee we will be able to do that if deadline requirements mandate that we move quickly."

They said they will "try" to give you 8 hours but no guarantee. Meaning they want those reports fast! Normally, I get them in "asap" but always had in the back of my mind that I had 12 hours.... but this may change my morning shops vs. my afternoon ones, meaning how I select shops now, so I need to get those puppies in fast!

It is a tight window if you are doing a lot of shops in 1 day like I do. I try and get the easy ones in as fast as possible but really MF your website is soooo slow at times. Are we going to penalized for their slow website?

There are some reports I could do in half the time if I was not waiting for every page to load that has one question.

deja vu

This will definitely affect what shops I will be able to pick up. I'll have to take a look at what I have scheduled for this month and I will probably have to cancel.

Ditto to all of the above (except contacting the company).

I will cancel one distant shop and perform the local shops lurchingly: Shop. Report. Shop. Report.

I like the challenge of fewer shops (my personal goal) arranged in fewer days (another goal) while givng this company the fast turnaround it now requires.

Phew.

I cut down on the number of hardware store shops I do for them when they reduced the fee by $1, and now only do those shops when they have a bonus. To me, this is not much different. If Market Force sees too many shops sitting around, with no takers, it will have to reconsider this policy or issue bonuses to make the shops attractive to shoppers.

I only have 10 gas assigned for October near me that I assigned prior to today and no other assignments. I just took a quick peak at the CPI for one and it still says 12 hours. I agree that I may pick up five or more in a day in addition to assignments from other MS companies and 12 hours was hard enough. I will definitely be cutting down.

"There may still be some CPIs and Guidelines that mention the older 12-hour reporting time, but we are working to update those as well. "

I am going to assume this means fair warning has been given, do not assume you have 12 hours even if you didn't see the announcement.

So much for picking up MF shops on a route, unless it is near the end of the route.

In the case where they are basically wanting you to report the shop as soon as it is done, it would be beneficial for Market Force to have an app or, at very least, mobile-friendly website that would allow us to report from our cell phones/tablets/etc. I already try to do this where I can, but Market Force's current website is so slow and cumbersome that this seems really impractical. Maybe this will encourage them to make some of those necessary upgrades. (fingers crossed!)

They are always stressing that we need to follow the information on the CPIs and paperwork so if my CPI says 12 hours, that is what they are getting. Written contract rules.

I don't shop for MF yet, but this 8-hour-or-sooner deadline is ridiculous. Especially for those of you who do routes. And especially if their site is slow and not mobile-friendly. I usually only do one shop in a day, so this shouldn't affect me if/when I sign up with them. But sometimes it's hard to get a report in within 12 hours, depending on if I'm working my p/t job, have to take my kid(s) to an appointment, etc. Today I had a shop, but had to take my kids to the optometrist. Was gone for three hours. Did the shop after that, but theoretically, if I were to do an MF job in the morning, I'd be pushing that "asap" envelope.

Agree with all of the above:

I don't do routes and usually report my shops very soon after I do them. I'm less concerned about the reduction from 12 hours to 8 hours (but can see why some of you will be affected), than I am about the possibility that after 6 hours MF might decide that too much time has passed, and that client requirements demand that they unassign the shop from me. That seems horribly unfair, but it sounds based on the quote above that it's possible.

Yes, I think that's what they're saying - that they may pull the shop at any time regardless of the time on the CPI. I can't work with that right now. I'm doing too many shops in a day to meet the new conditions. I already cancelled one and I'm having to take a hard look at another one. It's out of town and a lot can happen between there and back home. It looks like their shops will be more appealing now to the shopper who works close to home and doesn't have a grinding schedule to meet. For those of us who seriously drive, it's going to be harder to work with the new "indefinite" requirements. This will all work out - those of us who can't handle it will move on to something else and that will leave more for those who can.

I am wondering how the timing works for those which you can visit anytime they are open aside from the one hour within their opening and closing time. Meaning if you can go anytime between 11 and 8, will it be taken away at the wee hours of the morning or before 8pm even hits? It's so odd that they are doing this. At least with a definite time to have it reported within, you know whether you will make it or not and can cancel if need be. To do the shop, spend the money or time or both, only to find the shop gone is not cool at all.

The only shops I have seen with them that would concern me are the FF shops. Those shops have certain times of the day they want you in. Outside of those particular shops, how are they going to know what 8 hours should be for a retail or cellular shop if they are not scheduled in specific time frames? Just a thought...

You're right, they don't know what time of day we do many of these shops. Some of the FF and fast casual also have very long time windows, so they don't know if we're shopping morning, afternoon, or even evening. I don't understand not having a definite deadline. I don't think I can deal with a floating deadline. I've already cancelled a shop I had planned as a morning shop because it would be late that night before I could report. Many shoppers will be able to meet these new requirements but some won't. I have three laptops and a tablet so technology is not my problem. My problem is I don't see myself interrupting shopping time to make a report. I don't believe this is going to work for me but I'm sure it will work fine for many shoppers.

Brings to mind such things as Kim Jong-un, Bassar al-Assad, Pol-Pot, Muammar Gaddafi, Adolf Hitler, Jim Jones, Benito Mussolini, Isokoru Yamamoto, and countless others. All were genius to some degree, but all managed to make arses of themselves and alienate themselves and finally pay the price. Stoopid is as stoopid does, and the piper will be paid. And yes, I did specifically say "things" and not people above, there's a reason for that, in every case, what were people condemned themselves with immense vigor. Along another line of thought, the Roman Empire got top heavy and history demonstrates what happened. Certain business' out there are employee owned, they benefit from the strength of this model. Market Force is crazy if they think they can succeed at making literal machines of people, persistence is futile in such a foolhardy effort. Truth trumps pompous arrogance all the time, every time, no exceptions.

Little note I just gotta add... Like who the flip working for whatever client is busy reading reports 24 hours a day seven days a week? I'm an independent contractor, have my own business and clients, and I get paid for what I do or it is not done, or undone if necessary. Market Force is begging to get all of us classified as employees, and see how long they survive with that ball and chain around their stoopid neck. Will anyone be able to spell Markinosaurus Forcodocus when it's fossilized bones are found a couple hundred million years from not too long from now? What made the great beast go extinct, anyway? Alienating shoppers and attempting to employ (read micromanage to death) so called independent contractors will surely impress clients, We as a group have three powerful tools:

Our own independent and resourceful minds, Public opinion when enough truth makes what happens obvious, and the cold, hard, brutal hand of Government involvement. Market Force is crazy to fly in the face of common sense, the Law, and common horse sense that is rampant in our entire society. Sure, they can "get away with it" for some of these some of the time, maybe even all of the time for minor elements of some, but absolutely positively cannot and will not succeed at getting away with all of this baloney all the time. I can just hear the attorney general's of every state in the union being ever so indelicately prodded by hungry legislators seeking to get some of this cold hard cash Market Force thinks it can grab scott free and let us muddle along in the muddy murk of obscurity. It will take only one action reporter at one local TV station anywhere to start a chain of events that will ensure the extinction of Markinosaurus Forcodocus.

Waxing Eloquent Mode [OFF]

Watch them bones fossilize....

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2015 07:02AM by ap7isback.

I am so glad I no longer shop for MF.

I don't think the CPI time of 12 hours applies anymore. It even says that I think in a few "daily mails" back. In other words, they say 8 hours. You can bet it is. The CPI paperwork may take time to redo but until then, I will honor the 8 hours (or less) I can say this, when I checked my reports ALL were approved from yesterday. That was fast! Which leads me to believe the clients want their reports faster and MF must accommodate.

I don't see how people can meet a deadline when they don't know what it is! If it's going to be eight hours, then they should give you eight hours! If they want it sooner, then they need to say so. If a particular client's shop deadline is "really" six hours and they'll yank the shop if they don't get that report in within six hours, then make the deadline six hours! If this is client driven (and I highly doubt it is), then maybe MF needs to tailor each shop's deadline for the specific client.

While I haven't worked for MF, I wouldn't be surprised if this is posturing on its part. IOW, the new deadline is really eight hours, but they're trying to instill in shoppers the (mostly unnecessary) sense of urgency. (Like when you tell your perpetually late brother that Sunday dinner is at 1 p.m., when it's really at 2.) As if most shoppers don't already have that! Duh. Maybe MF's getting a lot of late or last-minute reports and wants to prevent that. The only thing I can see it preventing is shoppers taking what are apparently its fairly low-paying shops.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/02/2015 01:46PM by BirdyC.

I am wondering if this is only affecting the FF shops. Since I don't do FF shops at all, I am not seeing any changes on my paperwork for other non-FF shops.

I foresee a lot more MF deactivations in the future. With many shoppers cancelling their existing shops and possibly missing shorter deadlines, it is only a matter of time.

I can see bonuses spiking in my area but just sitting on the board. Breakfast shops, unless you have reliable wireless data, which is rare in rural Iowa, really cannot be reported until you get home. One could whip out a laptop in a FF dining room and fill in a report using the free wifi, after doing the drive-thru first and pressing "send" when the 15-minimum time has been met. I suspect that could lead to invalidation.

I saw the message today and had to cancel a fast casual burger shop I had scheduled for today for lunch. With kid's activities in the early evening, there was no way I could get the report in before 8, and no reschedule dates available. Hopefully they won't deactivate me as I really like the bonus offer phone calls I get from the schedulers. I've done well over a thousand shops for MF over the past 6 years and this new requirement will impact the number of shops I take dramatically. Yeah, big bonuses coming up for shoppers that can meet the new deadlines.

I took a bunch of their cell phone shops last month with big bonuses for each one. (average $30 for a 5-minute, 4 page report). I'm hoping the new policy scares off the other shoppers or causes a few "flakes" so I can do it again this month!!

@Sybil2 wrote:

I am wondering if this is only affecting the FF shops. Since I don't do FF shops at all, I am not seeing any changes on my paperwork for other non-FF shops.

I foresee a lot more MF deactivations in the future. With many shoppers cancelling their existing shops and possibly missing shorter deadlines, it is only a matter of time.

Wait, Sybil... you don't do fast food shops? I had no idea.....