I log on and there's no tab to show when we were paid for shops? I haven't done many shops for them so I'm not familiar with their paying system. Is there a way to find out when you were paid?

They pay by paper check bi-weekly just like a regular job, and they issue a 1099 at the end of the year. There's none of the ridiculous tying your money up for months while waiting for your pay and reimbursements, that so many companies employ. Since 2009, I have never had a problem getting paid in a timely fashion. It's too bad they do not have more shops available.

Yes, they pay quickly and on time.

However, they do not have a good shopper interface to track payments (and by not good, I mean they don't have one at all as far as I know). Many new shoppers don't realize they need to submit an invoice and once you've forgotten to do it and it's been more than 14 days after the shop, you're no longer able to do it yourself (you have to call in and have it manually submitted by Martiz). There's no way to reconcile for yourself when a payment comes for an amount different than you were expecting. For example, if you are due three payments where you are expecting $10 each (to make the math easy), and you receive $28.52 instead of the $30 you were expecting, there's no way to know which shop paid less than you thought. You have to call. And talk to a lady who handles payment inquiries all day, so imagine how thrilled she will be to hear from you (she was not at all thrilled in my experience). And no, there's no way to look on the website and find your previous payment dates. You need to keep detailed records, or you need to call and ask.

But yes, they pay quickly and on time.

I didn't realize I had to submit an invoice. I did a shop back in early March and was never paid. I guess I know why now. They really need to get in the 21st century!

According to recent e-mail traffic I had with them, they do not pay bi-weekly but rather bi-monthly on the 15th and last of month. Payment is by check.

Don't forget one must invoice them in order to be paid. And one must invoice them within 14 days of the shop, otherwise their, IMO, very poor website doesn't allow one to generate the invoice.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/15/2016 11:58PM by Rousseau.

I have always been paid on time but I have not received 5 shops pay from the end of February until the first week of March. This was after they changed the requirement that you did not need to invoice again. I also tried all week to contact anyone without success this week. By phone and email.

@fiddlels wrote:

This was after they changed the requirement that you did not need to invoice again.

I'm confused. I know Maritz made a change to the invoice process and you are no longer required to attach photos to the invoice that were already submitted in the report. But to my knowledge they have not changed the actual invoice process and an invoice must be completed for each assignment in order to get paid. Have I missed something?

@JayC----->no, you did not miss anything. Fiddlels is a little misunderstood. We still need to invoice. We just don't have to resubmit the receipt image with the invoice.

@fiddlels-----> apparently you may be calling a wrong number. If you can't speak to anyone by phone, if you leave a message they will return your call. Speak with someone from the TEAM of your assignment and Visit ID number. They are very responsive.

@Rousseau------>if your invoice is past 15 days, you must call it in. Sounds legit. Your pay will go out the next pay out, but you will receive you pay. If there was something wrong with your shop, MCX would put it on HOLD, to clarify any questions with you. They (MCX) wants to get paid as well as you go

@DareWright------>".....................I did a shop back in early March and was never paid. ................. get in the 21st century! <<<<<<<<<<<<<<< If you never got paid, then you need to call to submit an invoice. You have the credentials for that shop then you have what you need. Call so you can get paid. MCX does not want to keep you from your money, really.

Maritz pays 2x a month by check. They pay once on the 15th and once on the 1st. You do have to invoice them for each shop. The invoice no longer requires a receipt upload. I suggest submitting the invoice right after submitting each shop.

This advice goes for everyone but especially new mystery shoppers. You need to keep a detailed log of each shop you did, how much it paid, how much you get reimbursed, and when it is due to be paid. This is the minimum you should keep track off. You would be surprised how often one or two payments you are owed slip through the cracks. If you don't keep track you will miss those and lose money you were rightfully owed.

Edited to make it easier to read



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2016 08:47PM by BuffaloNY101.

From reading this forum and just recently now, saying something, I've learned a lot about the part of mystery shopping (and everything in between). One of the most important aspects is that each shopper is conducting themselves as a business entity separate from the MSC.
With that in mind, accurate records of each shop performed is paramount.
For invoicing and followup payment, I've commented before. But, here are a few other things to do:
1. Create your own worksheet or what others have referred to as a "cheatsheet". Make it tailored to each type of shop that you do. Have reminders or some form of note on it of the parts of the shop that the MSC wants to know about. That could be required photos , names, etc. Make sure you fill out the worksheet immediately after performing the shop. I learned that the reason a cop sits in his car long after he has given the ticket to the motorist and the motorist has left is because he is filling out his report while its fresh in his mind.
2. If you are supposed to get receipts to prove you performed the shop, make sure you have them and make sure you photograph them immediately after performing the shop. Do this while filling out the worksheet. Keep a small stapler in your car. Staple those receipts to your worksheet.
3. File the worksheet after invoicing the MSC. File the worksheet in a folder for the month the shop was performed. For me, I just label the file folder, for instance, as "March 2016". All of the shops that I performed and invoiced for that month are filed into that folder. I've heard that others keep separate folders for each MSC in which they worked. whatever works!
4. I track my payments by checking off my worksheet that I've been paid for it. Maritz is a good MSC as their check that arrives lists the shops or "visits" as they refer to them. I open my file, and start checking off the visits and worksheets in which I've been paid. If I find a visit that has not been reimbursed, I call the company and pleasantly ask why. Usually there is a good reason and we (the MSC and myself) work to resolve the issue.
None of these ideas or actions I've described are of my own design. They are of the ideas I've found on this very helpful forum.
Like I've said before, keeping track of your shops is good for your business and good at pay and tax time.

They seem to pay whenever they feel like it. I don't shop for them. i am tired of multiple phone calls a day for stupid reasons like available shops or to reschedule a shop. Just rescheduled the stupid shop, they don't need to call.

My experience is different. I:n my experience, Maritz sends checks out very reliably twice each month.

@jjk3995 wrote:

They seem to pay whenever they feel like it.

@sojo917 wrote:

@Rousseau------>if your invoice is past 15 days, you must call it in. Sounds legit. Your pay will go out the next pay out, but you will receive you pay. If there was something wrong with your shop, MCX would put it on HOLD, to clarify any questions with you. They (MCX) wants to get paid as well as you go

It is not legitimate, it might be poor technology more likely it is sneaky.

A wise firm enjoys tardy invoices from its vendors. A vendor is late in invoicing: great. They make money off the float. But with Maritz, I suspect that by not providing a display off various shops' invoice status beyond 15 days, they are hopping that a number of completed shops will simply be forgotten by their vendors (shoppers).

The idea that Maritz or any other MSC wouldn't invoice their client simply because their vendor (the shopper) hasn't invoiced Maritz is nonsense.

When I first started shopping with Maritz, I didn't realize the need to manually invoice them. When I realized this, more than 15 days had passed. I e-mailed an inquiry to them as to how I should submit an invoice; would they re-open the invoicing portal or should I send them a paper invoice. My inquiry was never answered. A follow up inquiry told me that my payment was forthcoming. Strange, isn't it, they have no problem paying something that hasn't been invoiced but only after one asks for payment.

Between Maritz's quite poor website, their often quite low fees, and their very annoying disregard of e-mail and their constant telephoning about the most trivial of things, I generally avoid doing work for them. I imagine that others act similarly.

@Rousseau------>to each his own I enjoy MCX pay system and communication techniques.

Ok, so I call Maritz and an elderly lady answered. She mistyped my shopper id and got confused. She then pulls up my account and I find out that I haven't gotten paid in 2 years! Granted, I've probably only done 5 shops for them, but still....

I keep good accounting records, so I'm not sure how this slipped my mind. She said she would pass this onto their accounting department "this time." I felt like a little kid being scolded by my grandma. I did tell her that of the 50+ msc I work for, Maritz is the only one that I have to invoice. It's such an archaic system. She listened to me, and then hung up her rotary phone to consult her abacus.

Gee wiz that was sure nice of that elderly lady to do your job of putting in the invoice. I hope she can type up the request on that type writer the first try. Then she will have to go to the inter department mail boxes and put it in the correct one. All told you should see your money soon. Of course you have a nice day deary.

I don't mind them just can be fustrating at times. I Keep them in my rolodex when I need to call.

I just think it's bad business that they don't send payments unless you do the invoice. Sometimes people like me are confused by their archaic system. I don't understand why we have to type in a security code either. You would think that at the end of each fiscal year they would have some type of report showing payments that have not been sent to shoppers for completed reports. I work for a very small company, and even we do this. We run a report at the end of the year, and if there are outstanding payments due to our customers, we print out the checks and send them.

I was clearly in the wrong by not submitting invoices, however I did do the assignments and they were accepted. We should not have to call and inquire. And if they website had a "payments" tab we could see what's been paid, and when. This is just my opinion. A lot of people love Maritz. I'm just not one of them.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2016 05:27PM by DareWright.

I find it interesting that while Maritz is not the only company which requires a separate invoicing step (not very hard and nothing new to scan). No one ever complains about the other MSCs which require a separate invoicing step. Maybe because MF, for instance, calls it a CPI and does not call it an invoice, but they require that you scan and submit it to be paid. Guess calling it a CPI makes it OK?

I think there might be more complaints about Maritz invoices than Market Force invoices because the most Maritz invoicing complaints seem to come from shoppers who did not get paid because they did not invoice Maritz. The CPI is pretty obvious with MF. Maritz provides very detailed tutorials that tell you exactly what you have to do, but you have to look at them and many people are in a hurry to get started and they skip them. Unfortunately that was ME when I first worked for them.

I blamed Maritz and called them old-fashioned and other names when I didn't get paid. Instead I should have said "what a dummy I am - I didn't read the tutorials and I goofed." When another shopper pointed out to me that I didn't know because I didn't take time to read the tutorials, my face was red. I went back and read them and I understood everything. It taught me a good lesson and I try to pay attention to the website of a company when I first start to work for them more than I used to.

I'm with the OP, though, on no tab on the Maritz website to show much we've been paid. Market Force does have good payment history information. It's disappointing that Martiz does not have that information available to their shoppers.

For me, the main difference between Maritz and Market Force is that the invoice portion is more transparent on MF. If you haven't completed all the required invoicing on MF, it is clear to the contractor on the MF site. The same cannot be said of Maritz: I haven't been on this forum that long, but I've heard several shoppers ask about payment, not aware that they needed to complete the second (duplicate) step of submitting an invoice. MF's invoice does not require duplicate information to be submitted (if the receipts were already attached, you don't have to enter them again. If you already put your payment amount in, you don't have to enter it again, etc.)

I can imagine that there are probably lots of shoppers who do a couple of shops for Martiz, don't know about the Invoice, and aren't members of this board. If the shops are low paying enough, the shopper might just assume that Maritz is more trouble than its worth and not feel like chasing payment for a shady company that doesn't pay. I know that Martiz is a dependable and reputable company, but I can see why a new shopper might assume otherwise if they missed the invoice step (which seems to happen pretty often).