Stay away from REGAL HOSPITALITY GROUP.

I did my first and last shop for them. It was 4 parts. Lodging, 2 bars, and room service. I spent 3 hours just doing the LONG lodging report, and when I hit save and came back to report, all my work was gone.

They told me it was my fault since I didn't hit save every 30 minutes. Nowhere's in the instructions or on the site report did it say to do that. I've worked with 100's of that type of reporting and the system always tells you to save in the 28/29 minute. Some other reports never require saving the report every 30 minutes.

Their report is so repetious.

I said I would give the report on the phone, and they refused.

I'm out $326.00.

STAY AWAY - FAR FAR AWAY.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/18/2010 11:19AM by huskie9.

I don't know that this is necessarily the fault of Regal.

I think avoiding typing for 3 hours into an online form without saving is very well covered in topics in these discussion boards. I've read many posts from experienced shoppers warning newbies to write their narratives in a word processor and paste them into the form.

Regal uses Prophet, which unlike Sassie, will not warn you when the system is about to log you out.

I think you may be guilty of not doing your homework and being prepared for this assignment, huskie.

Did you not have the option to re-enter the report?

I have never shopped for them, as I have heard some late payment complaints so stayed away from the hotels I have been offered as I need money enough that waiting on hotel payments would have a serious impact on us financially.

That said, they have some pretty nice clients, and I am tempted. :-)

I do tend to agree with Steve on it being the responsibility of the shopper to get the report in. Most will work with you instances like this, but I would personally never expect to give a long narrative report on the phone.

I've done the Regal lodging reports. As hotel shops go, they pay pretty well for the amount of narrative required, IMHO, and they have nice clients.

The reimbursement time, as dee noted, would make me very cautious about accepting accepting multiple assignments, though, since it runs around 60-90 days for full reimbursement.

My payment went over 90 days on my last shop for them and within 1 hour of an email sent to accounting, I got an apology and my check was mailed the next day. I'd have no worries about getting paid by them on shops, I just don't have much interest in putting out a few hundred dollars for 3 months unless it's a really choice hotel that I would have stayed at anyway.

I would warn anyone that wants to do upscale hotel shops to shop at your own risk, however. Be prepared and read all instructions....twice. Type your narratives into a word doc and keep a copy for yourself. I don't know of a single MSP that will let you off the hook for not being able to submit the online report, but most will give you an extension for submitting when you have a problem.

As an IC, you have bought that hotel stay until you can get the MSP to accept your work.

I would NEVER type for that long without saving. I probably save every 5-10 minutes. That is no fault of the company.



karen

For the companies that require lengthy narratives with their reports, why can't they provide the capability of logging you in automatically when you hit submit, without losing your work? I never have this problem with CRI. I think companies like this share a large part of the responsibility, to be frank. Their job is to provide software that is as easy for their shoppers to use as possible so we can do the best job for them as we can. Now, because of their lack of software capabilities, they are out a shop and have to find a replacement, in addition to down a shopper altogether because of the negative experience. There certainly is more than one way to look at this. If the company provided adequate software that wouldn't do this, and as stated, when they require shops with long narratives, this really is not asking too much.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2010 11:17AM by mystikwizard.

I don't agree. The SW is what it is. Sure, who wouldn't love SW that doesn't time out ever? The act on typing into a web browser is not a measurable activity over a network. Most of the companies are not out there creating their own software. Anyone working on jobs primarily done on the internet needs to be network savvy enough to handle their part of the bargain. Yes, problems happen, and then we do expect the vendor to work with us. But not saving over a 3 hour period hence losing the work then expecting to dictate the report is not realistic. We all know that every dime that we spend on these jobs is our loss until the report is submitted and accepted. I try to protect my investments. :-)

Both sides are at fault here, with the heavier burden of guilt on the complainant. The shopper made a dangerous leap of faith by assuming that their work would be automatically saved during its input and then forfeited their outlay of cash by refusing to re-enter the data. Prophet unquestionably has the ability to add an auto-save feature or pop-up reminder. That they have chosen not to, borders on negligence, shortsightedness or perhaps the fact that they no longer have staff to maintain or tweak their software.

As a teacher, I have to enter narrative reports on each of my students twice per year. The online software we use does not give a popup reminder or have an autosave feature. Anything I have worked on will be saved often and repeatedly. I am currently working on my master's degree in an online program through my state's university. When I am entering a comment on the program forum, I need to save my work or the connection will time out.

When I began mystery shopping, I was surprised to get the popup reminders to save my work. I did not expect them and I never go 1/2 hour without saving my work, so they are really unnecessary.

When you are entering information on the internet, you need to save your work. When you are simply using a word processing program, save your work. Sure, there's no internet connection to worry about, but there is always the chance for your computer to lock up or the power to go off. Saving your work often is a no brainer.

Agreed. Save! Save! Save!

We all learn the 'save' lesson at some point in life. Perhaps huskie learned it a bit late.

I would not say Prophet is "at fault" here. It's just not very user friendly.

I have to say that I do like the timer/warnings with Sassie, since I'm much bolder these days with entering shops online and printing them to a PDF, rather than using a word processor. I get into a flow with the dictation software and sometimes look up to see only 2 minutes remaining.

The PDF printout is a great trick to do before entering long reports in case of internet blackouts or timeouts, because you will have your checklist answers and be able to copy/paste the text boxes in case of a problem.

I save all of the PDFs into a temporary folder and them move them to a 'completed' folder once the shop has been approved. This also gives me a quick view of all my pending shops at any time.

Certainly an interesting aspect, Steve. I prefer the Word document only because it does a spell check and the version I have has a minimalist grammer checker. The grammer checker gets into a twitch when my sentences are too long, which is one of my usual flaws. I PDF at the end because with some reports you only 'see' what shows up in the box and the narrative is likely to scroll down beyond the box space.

Edited to add: Usually I hit 'save' between sections of a report because that gives me a natural break time to refresh my coffee or ice water before moving into the next section. Since with most of the software that sends me back to some sort of 'resume shop' or 'jump to the first oops', I then can hit that when I return to keep going and it reloads while I settle in.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2010 04:13PM by Flash.

A couple of issues here.

In Prophet it is a good idea to disable your pop up blockers when entering a report. Also, if you are using a Mac make sure you log on using Firefox and not Internet Explorer. DO NOT use AOL to access the internet.
On an extremely long form I would save my work after every 10-15 questions.
I would also write all my summaries in Word , save it, then paste it in the approporiate sections if there are long summaries. That way at least you have the summaries saved.

I would also advise to get an email confirmation on the time expectancy of pay, especially on high reimbursement/pay shops.

Sometimes it takes a client time to review the shop and payments can be delayed, depending on the company, until the client okays the shop. I can't speak for other companies but we give the client 15 days to review the shop, after that the shop is closed and the process to pay the shopper starts. Each mystery shopping company is different and it is the responsibility of the shopper to contact the company to see what their policies are.

Happy Father's Day!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2010 06:10PM by dcrector.

dcrector Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Also, if you
> are using a Mac make sure you log on using Firefox
> and not Internet Explorer.

I am sure you meant "Safari", not IE, since Microsoft ended support for IE for Mac on December 31st, 2005.

dcrector Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Sometimes it takes a client time to review the
> shop and payments can be delayed, depending on the
> company, until the client okays the shop. I can't
> speak for other companies but we give the client
> 15 days to review the shop, after that the shop is
> closed and the process to pay the shopper starts.
> Each mystery shopping company is different and it
> is the responsibility of the shopper to contact
> the company to see what their policies are.


Here is an excellent reason to avoid these shops. In effect, the company's "acceptance" of the shop and the score they provide are meaningless until the client has "approved" it. HUGE HUGE HUGE red flag for me. So glad I have never shopped for this company.

I just went to log in and disable myself, as I won't work under these terms, but I guess Doug already figured out my name, and did it for for me. Gotta love these "non-vindictive" owners who want to come here and play.

"There is an account with the e-mail address you entered, but it has been disabled by Northwest Loss Prevention Consultants.

If you would like to have the account re-enabled, please contact Northwest Loss Prevention Consultants at..."

LOL. Thank you Doug. You did me a huge favor, since you never had anything here anyway, and I find your method of approving shops not to my taste.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2010 08:36PM by dee shops.

Edited - I realized that a new thread was started on this subject - so I will move my comment there.

Regarding this subject - I agree that the responsibility does not really lay with Regal - however, it is an unfortunate lesson for the OP to learn... my sympathies go out to you.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 06/19/2010 08:50PM by MickeyB.

Even if the company did not warn me to save my work, the risk of an Internet disconnection would impel me to save FREQUENTLY. I have done dozens of Regal overnight hotel shops and never have needed three hours to enter the lodging survey. Since I am not an accomplished typist, I am probably much slower at this than most of you may be. That said, the really funny thing about the short questions on that form is that they are worded precisely so that, if the standard was met, you can just cut and paste 95% of the time. So, you can go through the short questions first, marking yes or no. Then return and use cut and paste on all but a handful of the "yes" ones to fill in the blank. Just remember not to include the question mark, and do replace it with a period. So, "Housekeeping staff greeted guests in hallways?" becomes, "Housekeeping staff greeted guests in hallways." Where a specific interaction is involved, you can cut and paste the employee name into each blank first and then return to cut and paste the answer. This is ENTIRELY acceptable to Regal and the clients for whom I have done their shops. That very long form lodging has about 5 longer narrative boxes, where I do use Word to compose and spell check before entering the results.

It is true that Regal pays in 60-90 days (more often about 65, in my experience). However, because the charges are put on my "frequent sleeper account linked" credit card, I get extra tons of frequent sleeper points for each stay. Any interest charges, if I carry a balance (rarely), are business expenses because that credit card is used solely for business expenses. So, I get the shop fee, plus a very comfortable hotel stay, some very good food (with a room refrigerator for leftovers to take home), and the equivalent of about 1/2 a night's points for each stay. So, two Regal shops "fund" one high end hotel stay for my personal use. My sister logs a ton of frequent flyer miles. We team up to use her airmiles and my hotel points for some very nice "girls trips." Other times, I spend points to stay in the hotel chain's more modest hotels on MS road trips where MSCs are paying me a flat travel fee regardless of what my expenses may be. That turns those points into CASH.

Finally, I find Regal staff to be supportive and easy to deal with. If I can do a shop for them, but not on the requested dates, I am often allowed to name a mutually agreeable date and take the assignment.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2010 08:25PM by walesmaven.

I have performed an abundance of shops for Regal over the past four yers without any problems or set backs. The shops are enjoyable and easy to complete. I always save as I go and I do not try to complete the entire report at once. That is like sitting down to eat an elephant during one sitting. You break it down over the course of the stay which makes it very easy. Another thing is over the past four years I have found the staff at Regal to be very supportive and very easy to work with. They have always been very helpful when needed even on the weekends. Payments have always arrived between 45-60 days and they have NEVER bounced a check to me. I have a lot of confidence in this company and I will continue to work with them for years to come.

Being me....I love that they tell me to save. I don't have a watch and forget how long I'm typing. I also love spell check and the save reminder, it's the easy way out, but, so what, I'm not that computer savvy, but always get it done, and that save reminder is a blessing. I also try and take hotels that I really would want to go to on my own dime, then the reimbursement is a double dip.

I want to add, I feel for your loss, that's alot of money, and a very expensive lesson.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/2010 03:21PM by Irene_L.A..

I have to say, if I stood the chance of losing $300+ dollars, I would safe guard my work by identifying all narratives that were needed and typing those in at the very least Sun's Open Office (free). Before I started cutting and pasting everything, I'd answer any multiple choice or quick answer sections first. Sassie is great with reminders and my experience with Prophet says that one is lacking.

As an IT professional, it is sad to see the state of development for these two products. I see so many areas for improvement. If cloud computing was this badly represented, the industry would never get businesses to adopt. A user friendly environment would take the guess work out and save for you. But it is what we have to work with, love it or not.

My system for protecting anything long that I am doing online is to use a free program called CutePDFWriter. I allows you to "print" document (or screen shot) directly to your computer as a pdf. On long reports I do this several times. You still can lose your entire report if a site crashes, but at least you can copy/paste from your saved document if you must redo it.

Flash Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> .... I PDF at the end because
> with some reports you only 'see' what shows up in
> the box and the narrative is likely to scroll down
> beyond the box space.


For anyone who uses Firefox, there is this great add on called Textarea++ 0.1.19. It lets you resize the box you're typing in. It works for sassie and prophet boxes. I highly recommend it. You can make the box as big as your computer scree or as small until it disappears if the box doesn't apply to you and you don't want to see it. You drag the corner of the text box to the size you want it over and over as much as you want.

You must have FF version 3.6 or under or this add on won't work unless there has been an update I'm not aware of. I like it so much that I uninstalled FF version 3.6 and installed 3.5.

Textarea++ works with Firefox 1.5 - 3.6a1. Anyone know of a similar plugin for newer versions?

Thanks Jamiesan, you sent me out looking for something that would work with the latest versions.
Found this:
[addons.mozilla.org]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/2010 07:07PM by dee shops.

You're welcome, and thanks for the link above. I downloaded it, too. It does enlarge the one-line text boxes, which is nice.

My experience with Regal has been great.

I guess this may be a dead horse, But I always copy and paste the blank report into MS Word and then I fill it out, I then reopen the report session and copy and paste the narratives into the correct boxes on the report. This gives you a complete digital copy of your report and allows for MS word to spell and grammar check all of your work.

As to payment is concerned, these shops have to be treated as self indulgence. I think of them as rewarding myself with something extra. Then, when you get the check, you get a second reward. These shops should not be looked at as regular income for the first couple of visits. After you get on a rotation, you can then expect the monthly check and spend it. Start up on any program is hard, but if you look at these shops as a reward for being a shopper you will enjoy them for the experience as well as the money. I have a hotel near a major airport that I do the shops at. I always schedule a meal there when I go to the airport to drop someone off. It is my reward for being a good neighbor. The food is always 5 star at the hotel.

They have only one client in my area. It is a hotel in which they shop only the bars. I've gone twice and had no problems with Rega.

I love this advice. I did a report for this company and don't remember if I saved or not. And I also remember blanks showing up where I had fill-ins. I'm just getting used to other systems outside of Sassie. I'm just glad I had good notes. From now on copy and paste.
Thank You my able-minded colleagues!

I AGREE! THEY COMPLETELY CHEATED ME and never paid me! not to mention they are extremely rude to their shoppers! I dealt with John and Diana. They were unprofessional and do not care about anyone but themselves. They pay after 90 days which is insane! I think you need to stay away from Regal Hospitality!!!!

I have done tons of hotel shops for them and have had nothing but positive interactions with staff. Most hotel shops in the industry pay on a 60-90 day shcedule. These shops just are not for those who cannot handle that schedule.

If the poster wants to be specific about what problems they have had, it would be helpful. So far this new poster has posted only twice, both against this company. With no other track record on the forum, and no explanation of the issues involved, this is always a bit dodgy, IMHO.

Who else is good for hotel shops? Those are about all I enjoy doing now. I don't mind extensive reports. I've done Regal, Bare, and Freeman, but I want better, high-end properties. Suggestions? Thanks!