A-Closer-Look is paying $40 to buy three smoothies and answer a barely more than one page questionnaire. BEWARE! The cost of the three $3.99 plus tax smoothies is included in your $40 fee, so that takes your fee down to $27 something. That is written in the guidelines.
What is not written in the guidelines, nor shown on the Comments section of the printed survey, are that the online submission report requires you to write 8-10 sentences for each of the 4-5 sections of the report, answering in complete sentences and having your narrative 'tell the story.'
Truly, it is hard to stretch three smoothies and some POP into 30-50 sentences. So there goes another hour of your time that you had not scheduled for this one shop. Reduce your pay for that wasted hour by $20 now, and you have $7 for the actual site visit and original shop that you thought you had scored big money on.
BIGGER WARNING - The guidelines say you have 24 hours to reply to an editor, but the editor who contacted me gave me 12 hours at 9:30PM.
Now I have to decide whether to (1) spend more unpaid time contacting them to make it right and finish the hour-plus editorials as a sign of goodwill so I can continue to work for this company, or to (2) say screw it, I've already lost money at this point and don't want to lose more.
Maybe I don't want to work for a company that tricks me like this, but they have been good to me for the handful of shops that I've completed for them over the last dozen years or so. I hadn't taken many because of the usual low pay. What say the masses?
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2016 08:55PM by lucyshoe.