CSE recently began a large project which involved shoppers getting badged. At the time of the badging process, very little was disclosed with respect to the guidelines or requirements. As more information became available, it became clear that while the relatively large payout would be coveted by many shoppers, for me personally, there was too much time and effort involved to justify my participation without a bonus.
I should say, at this point, that my wife and I both have full-time jobs with generous benefits, and most of my shopping is reimbursement-only or reimbursement with a very small payment as a way for us to lower our dining-out costs. People who rely on payouts for their income could easily find this particular project worth their while. I had other reasons for wanting a badge which would be difficult to explain without giving away to much information about the client.
Therefore, I decided to ask Julie for a bonus. Here was her reply:
We are badging over 50 shoppers. We will not be bonusing these shops for anyone. Why should you receive more pay than anyone else? I will contact the project manager to find out the badge return procedure.
I was pretty shocked by her reply, so I replied to get clarification that she was firing me merely because I requested a bonus. Here was her reply:
That is correct, If you are not interested in doing the shops without a bonus I am asking for your badge to be returned. Have a nice weekend.
There was a continued back-and-forth, but the result is that I will be mailing my badge back to Julie tomorrow, since she provided a postage pre-paid envelope on which I insisted as a condition of returning it. I wanted to share this story for any mystery shopper who needs a source of income from CSE to be careful when asking for bonuses.