I was curious if anyone here shops for Coyle and if you are a professional writer or poet? I've been reading reports that make me feel like a tiny little worm. A friend has offered more jobs with Coyle but I feel so inadequate, please advise because this is not self-deprecation. The reports that you write for Coyle make mine look hideous! None of mine have been challenge except by me, how do you keep tract of all your information? Were you a Editor before joining up with Coyle, I feel small now!

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 02/29/2016 11:22PM by Pennies4Shops.

Are you looking for someone to soothe you?

I actually do work in the publishing industry in my day job as an editor and I've had some work published, and I also happen to do the majority of my shopping with Coyle.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2016 12:48AM by Misanthrope.

Looking back at some of my reports from two years ago, I realized how tolerant Coyle had been with me. I am glad my scores were only reduced a few points. Writing comprehensive chronological narratives just takes time. They are objective for the most part, recreating your visit. For the few areas that allow subjective responses, I use a thesaurus sometimes. My grammar is average at best, no college, no writing classes or training.

As for keeping track, there have been many discussions here going over that subject. The easiest way is if you are in a state where you can legally audio record your surroundings.

Coyle is one of the few companies I work with. Their assignments and surveys are not for the light-hearted and uninitiated.

How are you able to read reports? Are they the samples posted in their Evaluator Resource Center? Is your friend who is offering more shops a scheduler for Coyle?

Take heart. We all start somewhere. I've been writing narratives for over ten years. If you completed an assignment for them, and it was accepted - congratulations! You're on your way!

** Edited for punctuation.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2016 05:01AM by Professional Guest.

I think there's a bell curve to the Coyle report writing, but it's definitely not poetry and not really that good of a story, since It always has the same ending.

When I started out, I didn't have much experience or even know that I liked writing, but the company was much smaller back then and took the time with me to show me the right way to structure a report. After a dozen hotels, I was much faster and better at it. After 100, even more so, and I found that I was enjoying the writing process. I could knock out a report in 8 hours at my peak and still go out with friends afterward.

Then came the decline. Somewhere around 500 hotels, I got tired of that story. I also got older, and less comfortable sitting for 8 straight hours. I started wearing glasses and my my typing slowed. I would be exhausted at the end of the day and only halfway through.

I just finished up a 3 night extremely full-service resort over the weekend and the narrative came to 52 pages. It felt more like giving birth than expressing myself, and I'm starting to like the idea of actually paying for a hotel stay in the future, rather than having to write about it and have so many restrictions placed on what I can do....but alas, I'm around 14 years into this. All I know of hotels now is raiding the mini bar, ordering room service and getting massages. I'm not sure I could go back to the way travelled before.

I think many of us write professionally, are published, teach, have advanced degrees in English, or possess other attributes that make us well suited to Coyle's style. Keep a log of the changes and the advice that their editors give. I have never, ever been unfairly docked points with Coyle. Everything their editors write has been valid. Sometimes there are style choice differences, but I cannot recall an actual error from them. I'm impressed with their level of skill. I would rather write a dozen reports for Coyle's editors than one for editor3.

@PasswordNotFound wrote:

I think many of us write professionally, are published, teach, have advanced degrees in English, or possess other attributes that make us well suited to Coyle's style. Keep a log of the changes and the advice that their editors give. I have never, ever been unfairly docked points with Coyle. Everything their editors write has been valid. Sometimes there are style choice differences, but I cannot recall an actual error from them. I'm impressed with their level of skill. I would rather write a dozen reports for Coyle's editors than one for editor3.

Password have you been published in Coffehouse Press, Copper Canyon Press, Tin House Press, or Mc Sweeneys because I can tell by your writing style your good!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2016 03:50AM by Pennies4Shops.

I have hesitated to sign up with Coyle. It's not the writing that puts me off so much as it is all of the detailed observations I read about here. And the fact that it doesn't seem as if one can get much enjoyment out of an overnight stay!

I can write, but when I try to type more than about 60 wpm, my fingers go berserk, and I make typos. So I fear I'd be doing a lot of "backspace and re-type" on these because I'd be trying to hurry! And, I'm not sure I could handle all of the observations. (Of course, I say that to myself on just about every new shop I do, and I usually do OK....)

It would, however, be a pleasure to have my work edited by people who know what they're doing!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2016 02:25PM by BirdyC.

I recommend requesting a restaurant opportunity. They have a good variety of clients. Most require two guests, upscale locations tend to include bar visits. Fees are about $15 - $20, plus full reimbursement.

You have to be patient, it took a year of applying every month for them to approve my first assignment, which was for a casual restaurant. Most of the clients can not be revisited from between 6 to 12 months, which is not very clear at times as they do not filter out locations a shopper is not eligible for.

The online reports need a little getting used to. It is not always clear where you need to insert the full chronological narrative. The questions help you go back and make sure the narrative covers everything. I learned to first build a draft narrative, filling the report in from the applicable areas, going back and forth getting everything right. The example narratives are not always in sync with the actual report, they are just a general guide.

My narratives for other clients have improved immensely because of my efforts to meet Coyle's standards.

@BirdyC wrote:

I have hesitated to sign up with Coyle. It's not the writing that puts me off so much as it is all of the detailed observations I read about here. And the fact that it doesn't seem as if one can get much enjoyment out of an overnight stay!

I can write, but when I try to type more than about 60 wpm, my fingers go berserk, and I make typos. So I fear I'd be doing a lot of "backspace and re-type" on these because I'd be trying to hurry! And, I'm not sure I could handle all of the observations. (Of course, I say that to myself on just about every new shop I do, and I usually do OK....)

It would, however, be a pleasure to have my work edited by people who know what they're doing!

@SteveSoCal wrote:

I think there's a bell curve to the Coyle report writing, but it's definitely not poetry and not really that good of a story, since It always has the same ending.

Happy?

Pennies, I think Copper Canyon Press is largely academics who publish and then their friends who are academics force their students to purchase the works. It's a racket. If, however, you can get past the "angry queer" tone (his words, not mine), Mark Wunderlich's poetry is actually very good. I'm not impressed with most of the others from CCP. I haven't heard of the other publishers. Poetry makes no money for the overwhelming masses. The royalties are in books that instruct.

Isaiah writes: My narratives for other clients have improved immensely because of my efforts to meet Coyle's standards. << This is so very true.

52 pages and 8 hours plus a weekend stay at a hotel???!!! @#$%& You better be getting paid like 5-6 bills per shop people. I have been shopping for almost 5 years and I discovered that most companies will have you do a tremendous amount of work for crap ass pay. Trust me. If your not making at least $400 per hotel shop don't even waste your time friends. It took me a while to filter them out but I am now with 7 companies who PAY GREAT! for the amount of work they expect you to do. I do 5 $50 shops in a day and it takes me about 2 hours to fill out all the reports and about 4 hours to hit up all the locations and conduct the shops. OR I do like 10 $20 shops in a day which takes me even less time. Instead of shopping yourself to exhaustion try shopping around for a company that respects you as a human being and not one who things you are a slave.

I'm very curious however. How much do these Coyle shops pay?

@B4bladez wrote:

I'm very curious however. How much do these Coyle shops pay?

Two night hotel stays are about $75-100, not including travel reimbursements.

The travel reimbursements are the biggest incentive, imho. Want to visit the kids in California or the parents in Florida? Coyle often pays full travel expenses to get there. Just make sure to do the hotel stay after your family visit because it's going to take a good two days to complete the report (some people are faster; not me). Or maybe you're freezing your patootie off and could do with a weekend in sunshiny Phoenix or Miami. This company requires a lot, but they give a lot as well.

I find that keeping my phone in my pocket while recording my shops with Coyle helps. They want a play-by-play and yes, grammar does count.

I have done several restaurant shops for Coyle for about a year. The reports takes me about two days to write because I need to take breaks. I have some numbeness in my hands. They will start to hurt after typing for 2-3 hours.It took a few reports before I was able to meet Coyle’s exact standards. They want their narratives to be almost robotic-no creativity. In most of the narratives, they want you to address many of the items in the checklist. This is causing duplicity-especially if you give a 3-5 word comments on the checklist.
There are times that I wondered if the editors really have read what was written. There were serval times that they would ask me to repeat something that I know that I had addressed in the narrative.
I have found to keep track of detail observations by keeping a small notebook with me. This was used mostly for timings and exact comments made by the host, servers, bartenders,etc. You have to be discreet. My guest knew that this was work for me. So I would not converse while I was taking quick notes. Moat of the general observations are usually easy to remember. If not, I would make a short note about it to help remind me later when I did the report.
I just terminated my account with Coyle. I want to be able to enjoy my dinner without having to write a long reprt when I get home. Plus I have found Coyle to be problematic to work with since I started with them. I have been a mystery shopper for over 10 years. With the exception of a few other companies, I have not had any problems with the scheduler or my reports. I am now very selective about the type of assignments that I will do.
I thought i would want to do a hotel assignment for Coyle but decided not to. I did not want to spend three days writing a detail report. I can only imagine the narratives one has to write after doing the restaruant shops. Once I Printed out just my narratives. It take to 12-13 pages. This did not include the checklists. So I am not surprised at the shopper that stated a hotel shop is 52 pages. Not for Me!!!!

In my opinion Coyle is more hype than anything else. Their reports require a certain structure but so do most fine dining and hotel shops for other MSCs.
Don't get too nervous about it, and take the advice of their editors. I've found them to be a fair company. I only take their shops if I'm really feeling like working though. I have found I can get similar shopping experiences for the same pay with less intensive reporting.

And to respond to your question on if any of us that work for Coyle also write: I write poetry, and have two self-published chapbooks. No formal academic training in writing or editing. I assure you mystery shopping narratives are nothing like poetry!

@cjk831 Don't do it to yourself man. There is much better shop work out there. They sound like they are exploiting you guys.

@B4bladez wrote:

52 pages and 8 hours plus a weekend stay at a hotel???!!! @#$%& You better be getting paid like 5-6 bills per shop people. I have been shopping for almost 5 years and I discovered that most companies will have you do a tremendous amount of work for crap ass pay. Trust me. If your not making at least $400 per hotel shop don't even waste your time friends. It took me a while to filter them out but I am now with 7 companies who PAY GREAT! for the amount of work they expect you to do. I do 5 $50 shops in a day and it takes me about 2 hours to fill out all the reports and about 4 hours to hit up all the locations and conduct the shops. OR I do like 10 $20 shops in a day which takes me even less time. Instead of shopping yourself to exhaustion try shopping around for a company that respects you as a human being and not one who things you are a slave.

Some of those hotels include five-star, overwater bungalows in Bora Bora at over $1,200.00 a night, not including reimbursements for food and beverage, and may also include spas, tour/car service, etc.,. You want me to put my post graduate writing skills to use? You want timings and opening and closing quotes? You want me to provide an objective report that addresses all of the standards you are testing for the client? You'd like me to show up fifteen minutes before the breakfast outlet opens, after I just traveled 20 hours and cleared customs the night before? You'd like me to put a splotch of lotion on the vanity and on the bathroom mirror? You'd like me to front all of the money and have the charges reversed after my report/survey is accepted (or a few months later)? You got it!

I don't think anyone is being exploited. Shoppers agree to take on the work fully knowing the requirements and pay.

For the record, the shop in question netted me around $4,500 in reimbursement, including $500 travel to get to the resort. The $75 fee went toward my car rental and I was still a little short with that, so I took 2 additional dinner assignments in the area for them at $15 each.

While the fees may not add up to much and went entirely toward the car rental, the assignment was not about earning money. It was about creating an experience for myself and my GF that I could not otherwise afford. I walked away from that 52 page report with a 4-day vacation that included lift-tickets for both my guest and me at a nice ski resort, a massage, snowboard lessons for my GF, gear rental, art classes, and 100% of the food and drink we consumed covered...with zero expense after reimbursements and fees. I also added a few thousand miles to my airline rewards program between the flight and charges to my credit card, so for me it was worth it, even if the writing was painful.

I'm earning around $100 per written page or $100 per hour for the time I was working on the report the way I see it.

Steve I thought your summary of what kind of skills are needed to excel at Coyle hospitality is exactly what all potential shoppers need to prepare for. These jobs are not for the faint of heart, keeping immaculate records, writing up even the smallest details makes the difference between good and superb shoppers. Can you tell us which part of the World your assignment was or is that top secret?

Wonder if Dragon Speak would work for a shop like that. That is if you can do voice recordings. just do a Berushack listen to the recording on a headset or ear buds and then talk to the computer. Of course, you would need a good grammar checker. Or even better get two of them and compare. Or you could be like NASA on the Space shuttles and have three and two have to match. Or would that be a lot of extra work and expense to get all of that. Google has text to speech and speech to text at least for text messages. Just set them up to email to yourself.

@PasswordNotFound wrote:

The travel reimbursements are the biggest incentive, imho. Want to visit the kids in California or the parents in Florida? Coyle often pays full travel expenses to get there. Just make sure to do the hotel stay after your family visit because it's going to take a good two days to complete the report (some people are faster; not me). Or maybe you're freezing your patootie off and could do with a weekend in sunshiny Phoenix or Miami. This company requires a lot, but they give a lot as well.

Really? I've found that Coyle often lowballs travel reimbursement; at least, based on time timetables they often give me. If I'm lucky I'd have 3 weeks between when I applied for a shop to when I get it, and even then they rarely cover the cost of a full plane ticket. I can drive most places in the northeastern US on their travel reimbs though.

Mis, they put an amount on the initial offering. When it gets closer to the date, they are a lot more realistic. For instance, I think their current client in Cabo is in la-la-land. Two weeks before that deadline, I'll be contacting the scheduler with a more reasonable offer.

@Professional Guest 6m

Hey if you enjoy what your doing that's more power to you. There's nothing wrong with trying to create a unique and thrilling experience for yourself. I doubt however that the bulk of these shops include. "overwater bungalows in Bora Bora at over $1,200.00 a night, not including reimbursements for food and beverage, and may also include spas, tour/car service, etc.," The good thing about shops is that you can be selective. I personally never heard of Coyle until reading these posts and based on what I read it sounded like people are pretty much suffering with these shops. I'm mostly in it for the $$. And I just wanted to let people know that I spent hours on my computer typing responses for shops that paid CRAP not knowing what I was in for when I scheduled them, and it wasn't until after a year of doing shops that I discovered that there are much more reasonable MSC's out there that are very fair with their pay and their reports don't take so long to complete. I wish someone would have told me about that sooner. I signed on with about 30 MSC's and only 7 of them pay fairly based on the amount of work they want you to do. I did a shop for a company that asked so many damn questions and wanted so many narratives that it took me 2 hours to complete and it only paid $11 which led me to believe that these other MSC's are just being greedy pricks who mostly just want to charge their clients a crap load of $$ by giving them a crap load of information but not reciprocating that to the service testers (US). This is quite common in most jobs all around in this country and I think its sickening. I really want people to know that there are options and they don't have to struggle and slave over a shop if the don't WANT to because it really isn't necessary.

@SteveSoCal

Hey that sound decent.

@B4bladez wrote:

@Professional Guest 6m

Hey if you enjoy what your doing that's more power to you. There's nothing wrong with trying to create a unique and thrilling experience for yourself. I doubt however that the bulk of these shops include. "overwater bungalows in Bora Bora at over $1,200.00 a night, not including reimbursements for food and beverage, and may also include spas, tour/car service, etc.," The good thing about shops is that you can be selective. I personally never heard of Coyle until reading these posts and based on what I read it sounded like people are pretty much suffering with these shops. I'm mostly in it for the $$. And I just wanted to let people know that I spent hours on my computer typing responses for shops that paid CRAP not knowing what I was in for when I scheduled them, and it wasn't until after a year of doing shops that I discovered that there are much more reasonable MSC's out there that are very fair with their pay and their reports don't take so long to complete. I wish someone would have told me about that sooner. I signed on with about 30 MSC's and only 7 of them pay fairly based on the amount of work they want you to do. I did a shop for a company that asked so many damn questions and wanted so many narratives that it took me 2 hours to complete and it only paid $11 which led me to believe that these other MSC's are just being greedy pricks who mostly just want to charge their clients a crap load of $$ by giving them a crap load of information but not reciprocating that to the service testers (US). This is quite common in most jobs all around in this country and I think its sickening. I really want people to know that there are options and they don't have to struggle and slave over a shop if the don't WANT to because it really isn't necessary.

Agreed. I'm all for making informed decisions. And that old adage about having to kiss a lot of frogs before finding your prince/princess - yep, it's true. I get emails every day that want me to walk into a big box hardware store and interact with two employees while providing them with a scenario, for $15.00, or a brake inspection for $10.00, or order a pizza for a $15.00 reimbursement. And while I don't fault anyone who picks up these
assignments, I don't know how they do it. That's a lot of driving and interacting and reporting for what seems like not enough compensation.


** Edited for punctuation.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2016 10:38AM by Professional Guest.

B4, just curious. What are some of your favorite MSCs?