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Post removed. This forum's guidelines state "Do not reveal the clients of mystery shopping companies". Additionally, It is probably an ICA violation for you to name both the MSC and client." - Admin

She is a legit scheduler and Bucklew is a legit MSC. To do their shops you must be ready to do the report in Excel.

Please remove the client name from your post! I know that you know better.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2017 12:15PM by walesmaven.

I saw this posting but I hate using excel

@walesmaven wrote:

She is a legit scheduler and Bucklew is a legit MSC. To do their shops you must be ready to do the report in Excel.

Please remove the client name from your post! I know that you know better.

Oh, gosh, sorry!!

Forgot about that.

I'm actually not registered with that company, so it technically wouldn't be a violation for me. I had received the email and found it possibly a scam and wanted to ask if people were familiar with the company. My mind was totally on the unusual nature of the email addresses and it completely slipped my mind that we shouldn't reveal clients of mystery shopping companies. Except, I'm not a shopper of them either! So, in my mind, it never even occurred to me!

Either way, thanks for the responses! It did seem possibly fish at first, because there were non-business email addresses (gmail and a local internet provider company). I usually will see xyz@insert_MSC_name.

This was xyz@gmail.com, which looked suspicious.

A lot of schedulers schedules for multiple MSC so it's not unusual to see a personal email address.

@eyelove2shop wrote:

A lot of schedulers schedules for multiple MSC so it's not unusual to see a personal email address.

Yeah, I guess with the MS industry being so full of scams, I felt it was best to check.

shoptastic,
It was a violation of forum rules, which are important. And, although you are not registered with that MSC you have been around this forum and the industry long enough to know the general expectations of ethics. Finally, industry folks, including both schedulers (and that particular scheduler, who works with many MSCs) and managers follow these forums and talk to one another, so you may have done yourself some harm. Just be glad the mods caught it so fast.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/2017 02:27AM by walesmaven.

safer to ask more food questions w/no names.

@walesmaven wrote:

shoptastic,
It was a violation of forum rules, which are important. And, although you are not registered with that MSC you have been around this forum and the industry long enough to know the general expectations of ethics. Finally, industry folks, including both schedulers (and that particular scheduler, who works with many MSCs) and managers follow these forums and talk to one another, so you may have done yourself some harm. Just be glad the mods caught it so fast.

Yeah, I feel really bad if it affected anyone (scheduler, client, company, etc.).

I apologize to you all, take responsibility for it without excuse, and thank the mods for quickly removing it. I'm very deeply sorry.

This was one of those situations where my mind was entirely focused on one thing and the obvious entirely escaped me. I should have known that combining a client and mystery shopping company was against forum rules. I did not actually and specifically. Although, I figured it was already covered by ICA violation potential, which would be enforced by the forum, as I have seen it done many times.

This was a lapse on my part and I'm guilty (being absent-minded) of that and ignorance of specific forum rules. I can say that it genuinely did not come into my mind that there was a violation of sorts in my post. But that doesn't excuse it, as I should have been more careful, thoughtful, and knowledgeable! If it's at all helpful to provide context into my thought process, I was entirely focused on the personal email issue and this being a possible scam. At the time, I actually thought it would even be helpful to post about this. It never occurred to me that there would be potential ICA conflicts for others!

I think the combination of me not being registered with the company (which removed ICA considerations from my mind) and my focus being on the possible scam consideration completely made me miss the obvious: that others might have ICA conflicts of interest in talking about it and/or combining the client and ms company would be a violation of forum ethics. I can't explain why it didn't occur to me and don't at all excuse it. I feel terrible about it now. But that was literally what was going through my mind. I was so focused on the unusual email part. And I think maybe I was thinking too that people would be responding to my question as it related to the unusual email addresses and not having anything to do with the client, so again nothing related to ICAs ever crossed my mind. I think I somehow thought people would just be telling me whether a representative was a real worker for that company or not and that would be the crux of it.

Bad morning for me guys. I was pretty tired and the combination of these various factors led to me entirely being absent-minded about potential issues. I'm very sorry and again it's no excuse. I did just want everyone to know what was my thought process and intentions. But it's on me to know the exact forum rules and I failed at that.

Won't happen again and I extend my deepest apologies to the mystery shopping company, client, and scheduler. If there's anything I can do, please let me know.

[p.s. I'm going to actually take a break from posting and just spend more time reading first and thinking on the forums for a while, by the way. It probably would help avoid posting problems and be best for me too. I want to make sure these issues don't occur again and that I can be a more helpful poster too in the future.]

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/19/2017 08:27AM by shoptastic.

taking a break would be appreciated by many. your posts ramble & are repetitive.

u have 250 posts in 1 month. i have 500 posts in 2 years. that says it all.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2017 03:15AM by MSNinja.

@MSNinja wrote:

taking a break would be appreciated by many. your posts ramble & are repetitive.

u have 250 posts in 1 month. i have 500 posts in 2 years. that says it all.

You are being very rude and judgemental.

@walesmaven averages 150 posts a month over 7years, are you also going to ask them to follow your example? Maybe give me some posting advice as well?

I do not see "posts per month" ALONE as meaningful. Some frequent posters are mostly answering questions, sharing tips that they have learned, or adding to ongoing discussions. etc. Others, not so much.