I just completed my first shop with them a week ago. The deadline is noon Central time, the day after the shop. I am in Pacific time, so that's 10 a.m. As luck would have it I woke up late and almost forgot to enter the shop. I remembered the noon deadline but forgot about the time zone until later.
The survey was not difficult, but being my first time filing it out, it took me a while to fill out. I finally submitted it about 12:30 my time if I recall correctly, so it was about 2.5 hours late. I probably should have emailed a coordinator but I didn't.
Over the next few days, I kept checking the status, and nothing changed, even after the typical 3 days most companies make you wait if they have questions.
I finally emailed a coordinator, who replied that my shop was in editing status and it could take up to TEN business days to finish editing.
That's two weeks! Of course every company wants us to hurry up and submit, sometimes within as little as 8 hours, because they need timely information. This being an ice cream shop in a mall, probably they have high turnover that could mean the person no longer even works there in a couple of weeks.
The coordinator advised me to write back with all the reference numbers if nothing happens by the end of 10 days. I imagine by that time they will tell me it's too late to fix.
For those who've worked with Secret Shopper, is this typical? I liked the shop in every way, and the $15 flat pay is pretty good. The ice cream was mad good.