This is a first for me. I'm working an apartment shop for Ellis. For these shops you visit the community unannounced. After your visit you then call using an alias asking about an apartment. You are required to speak with the same agent that you toured with. (Note: this is advertised as a non-targeted shop which is utter B.S.). Anyway, I visited the community on Monday afternoon. Everything went as it should except I forgot to check the color of the agents eyes and their underwear. Yesterday I began calling the community just after 9:00 AM. I placed ten calls to the community throughout the day, but reached a recording each time. I couldn't leave a message because I have to speak with the targeted agent. It appeared obvious after ten phone calls that the leasing office never answers the phones.

I turned on the news while getting ready for work this morning. The community had a 4-alarm fire yesterday and the fire crews were out there all day. The fire caused extensive damage to 10-12 units.

Here I am trying to complete this darn shop. I'm guessing it will be next to impossible to catch the leasing agent answering the phone as they have lots to handle with the aftermath of the fire and lots of displaced residents. Waiting to hear from Ellis as to how they want to handle. Realizing that I probably won't hear back from Ellis until later today, I will still attempt to reach the agent today. I just want this shop to be DONE!

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2016 04:15PM by ValG.

Sounds like a valid reason to me... But, in this business, who knows what the MSC will think?

OMG - Ellis responded back to my notice of the fire. They wrote - The client cancelled the shop for obvious reasons. Period. No mention of the fact that I will STILL BE PAID. I performed the damn visit and tour. Filled out their freaking report except for phone call portion. I've made ten phone calls. I DEMAND PAYMENT. This is utter bull! I'm seeing dark shades of RED right now.

They've now advised me that in order for me to be compensated for the shop I will have to RE-ENTER the ENTIRE report that took me hours to do the first time. When they cancelled the shop THEY deleted the existing report. After arguing for ten minutes on the phone with a LIsa she says she'll pay an additional $10.00 for me to re-do the entire shop. They claim they have no way of paying me without having the report that they destroyed. How is that MY fault. I refuse to write another report for them for a flippin $10.00. Totally unethical.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2016 04:50PM by ValG.

I think you're way off base. I don't see how they are unscrupulous. And if you want to get paid, sorry, you're gonna have to resubmit the report. I don't see any of their actions as unethical, either. Certainly not happy-making, but far, far short of unethical or unscrupulous.

You did everything you were supposed to do and required to do. It is not your fault that Ellis deleted the report when they cancelled the assignment. It certainly wasn't your fault the apartment complex caught on fire (at least I don't think it was..LOL). You should be compensated as originally agreed to. Ellis should absorb the loss of revenue as it was their fault the report was deleted. It is unethical for a MSC to cancel an assignment, without paying the shopper, when they are 100% aware the shopper has already completed 95% of the shop report. I hope you get the resolution you rightly deserve.

I am sorry for your experience. I guess I would probably re-report it if I had already done the legwork -- otherwise the income from this shop will be zero. Their reports must be really intense if they take hours.

I have never done a shop for Ellis, so I don't know if this would work with their reporting platform, but reports on some platforms (Sassie, Kinesis, etc.) can easily be saved with form/password savers like RoboForm. I save my reports this way whenever possible, and save it a few times while I am reporting. This way I have a record of the shop, and I won't lose all my info in case my computer happens to die while reporting. It would have saved me in a situation like this.

@ValG wrote:

OMG - Ellis responded back to my notice of the fire. They wrote - The client cancelled the shop for obvious reasons. Period. No mention of the fact that I will STILL BE PAID. I performed the damn visit and tour. Filled out their freaking report except for phone call portion. I've made ten phone calls. I DEMAND PAYMENT. This is utter bull! I'm seeing dark shades of RED right now.

I believe it was wrong for the client to cancel the shop *after* you did the onsite visit and wrong for the MSC to agree to the cancellation when they already had your report.

I would try to salvage my pay either by asking for a larger bonus that makes it worthwhile to conduct a redo, or appeal to Ellis' sense of fairness by saying that the report was deleted by their staff in error and you should not have to pay for that mistake. If you still have your notes, maybe email them to Ellis and they can recreate the report?

If you decide not to continue working with Ellis permanently, then I would contact the BBB in Texas and file a complaint. I know that's not a popular topic on this forum, but what Ellis did was rash. You completed the assignment and submitted the report. The missing part is the follow up phone call, which the customer agrees couldn't be done within the time frame due to extenuating circumstances.

Good luck.

Do you save PDFs of your reports? Could you send them that and they can re-enter it? I agree, you should be paid for the work you did. However, I can understand them needing your firsthand account of what happened during your on-site visit. You should be compensated for the extra work of having to rekey it, that's for sure.

@ValG wrote:

OMG - Ellis responded back to my notice of the fire. They wrote - The client cancelled the shop for obvious reasons. Period. No mention of the fact that I will STILL BE PAID. I performed the damn visit and tour. Filled out their freaking report except for phone call portion. I've made ten phone calls. I DEMAND PAYMENT. This is utter bull! I'm seeing dark shades of RED right now.

There is no defense any MSC can provide when a A+ Shopper like you perform's a perfect report only to get possibly ripped off. I performed a Shop for a company, the Editor gave me a 10/10, thanked me and my shop got tossed out because their client did not like it. The Editor felt it was wrong to stiff me but said "You have no power in the end because receiving your payment is completely up to our client". There has to be a way to get paid after both you and your mystery shopping company get stiffed. What valid reason can a client provide to both you and your MSC because they decided they did not want to pay you? The client admitted my report was great, their viewpoint was "We don't want to pay you, that's it"! Was I part of a vendetta between the client and MSC or something else because the Editor told me a large amount of reports he graded got tossed out for no valid reason.



I hope you get paid because its humiliating enough to spend the amount of time you did only to discover their gonna snake you.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2016 12:28AM by GrosMichel.

Did you save your narratives/report, pdf or otherwise? Copy and paste doesn't take much time. Yes, it's a hassle, but an additional $10 fee seems reasonable to re-enter.

I agree. It should be easy to cut and paste and re-create your report from the copy you saved. And $10 sounds like it would fairly compensate you for your time.

@GrosMichel wrote:

There is no defense any MSC can provide when a A+ Shopper like you perform's a perfect report only to get possibly ripped off.

I am curious, GroMichel. You are a new forum member but I have read several posts by you claiming that this shopper is A+ or this shopper is an expert or another shopper is the best of the best. Do you actually know some of these forum members? Are you a scheduler or an editor who has first-hand experience with a particular shopper's work ethics and reports? Nothing against the OP but she is not the only one to receive this undying praise so I am curious where it is coming from.

The report hadn't been finalized because I was still working on the phone portion, which occurred after the visit. Unfortunately, Ellis doesn't provide an option for saving a copy of the report, .pdf or otherwise. They have tiny little text boxes in which you have to write long narratives (the text boxes do not expand even when writing a full page of text). If you attempt to print a .pdf it will only capture a small portion of the text you've written - think about a box about 1 inch in height. That's all the text you will see in the .pdf. Your only option is to cut and paste each and every narrative field into another document. I generally do this just prior to submitting.

Each time I complete an Ellis report I swear to never take another of their apartment shops. If you've worked an Ellis apartment shop before I'm sure you understand what I mean. They are by far the most unorganized redundant reports ever. I had only accepted this one because they reached out to me for help, and it was bonused. Have I learned a lesson, yes. Will I cut and paste every field in the future even before I've completed the report, you bet. But, if I'm not paid it will be a moot point as I will never work for them again.

I have a written statement from Ellis stating I would be reimbursed. I received while on the phone with the "manager" who said I wouldn't be paid unless I rewrote the report. The manager was to speak with the CEO and get back to me. That was 10:00 AM today. Still no word. When I look under "payments" it now has the assignment listed as cancelled. Whereas this morning it was completely gone. It shows payment as pending. I don't know if that means they are going to pay me, but don't feel it necessary to tell me so....or if they still have no plans to pay me. Looking at past shops I've done for them the payment has always been processed on the 7th of the month. So, maybe I'll know more soon. But, it may be too soon for this particular report to get picked up in the payment cycle tomorrow.

I am a scheduler for my full-time job (not MS). We have a clause in our contracts covering cancellations by the client as I'm sure every MSC does. Our clients must provide 48 hours cancellation notice or they are required to pay a two-hour minimum charge. I have to believe that the MSC have a similar clause for cancelling shops when the shopper has completed the majority of the shop.

Thank you for your support. When crap like this happens its nice to know there are others that understand. I will update when I know more.

It would be nice if they could restore your report.

I forgot to mention, one free browser add-on/extension that works well with every MF platform I've used so far is Lazarus. It's worth its weight in gold. It saves what you've entered in each text field and if there's a crash (even if there's not), when you go back to the form, all you have to do is click the little icon in the right upper corner of each field. There, you'll be able to select what was entered in there before. It has saved my butt several times.

Thanks TechSaavvy. I will check out Lazarus. I'm all for technology that will save me work, time, or my a**.

ValG, bum deal. I hope they pay you. I hope you have a better day. They didn't treat you well on this and they should make it right.

Update: I told Ellis that I would re-write the report for no less than $25.00. They have agreed to the $25.00, after getting the CEO's buy-in (supposedly). So, that's what's on my plate for tonight. I'm psyching myself out by considering this as an additional shop that I can do from the comfort of my home for $25.00. Trust me, I'm saving all documentation (from two sources at Ellis) stating I would be paid the additional $25.00.

Good for you!

I'm glad it worked out.

I save EPMS reports, by section, as I go - Telephone, Summary, etc. I generally use Firefox. Right clicking on the page lets me Save Page As. The text boxes can be stretched by clicking and dragging the dots in the lower right corner of the box, allowing the full content to be shown.

ValG, I totally agree that the reports are redundant. Disorganized, also. Easily worked around by inputting in the order that is logical to me.

FINAL UPDATE: Payment for this shop is in route to my bank. They ended up paying me $90 in total; $10 more than the $25 I demanded to re-write the report. Excellent job Ellis - they came through with some integrity!!

Val, glad this turned out well for you! Really bizarre situation to begin with; not your fault, and you shouldn't have been penalized. It sounded to me as if this might be a case of incompetence more than unscrupulousness. That, plus perhaps an "overzealous" (read, "power hungry" employee trying to score points by making a decision on his/her own (instead of asking someone how to handle the situation) and zapping your report on the spot so as to save Ellis money. (I don't shop for them, so don't know if that's a plausible explanation, but it sure could apply to other companies I've worked for, in and out of mystery shopping.) .

Maybe you can edit the title of your original post to indicate that they resolved the situation to your satisfaction?

Birdy - that was my intention earlier, but didn't see where I could edit. Just figured out that I had to go back to the original post. Duh! Updated accordingly.