I received an e-mail today from a couple of people who are supposedly from Ace Mystery Shopping. I'm not sure if it's on the up and up and I would appreciate it if someone can tell me if it is. It's about an app for route shoppers. To quote the e-mail it says it's "a shopper mapping tool that allows shoppers and schedulers to network with each other and look at the "big picture" to see what other companies have shops in the same areas you shop! How would you like to see a map like this with mystery shopping assignments for multiple companies listed?" And I got the e-mail because "For now,I am ONLY sending this to shoppers within 5 miles of one of the shops posted on this map. I want to make sure I am only getting shoppers on board that this will actually benefit."
Now, although I am signed up with Ace, I have not done any shops for them yet. I am not a route shopper for any of my MSC's. And the app costs $4.95 a month with a 14 day free trial. I doubt I would use it even if it were $4.95 a year but I'm curious if anyone knows if this is on the up and up. I'm always leery of anything that comes by e-mail and costs money. Does anyone know for sure?

Sounds like the app that was being advertised in one of the Facebook groups. Blanking on the name, but it's the group for the organization that has the conference in November. If so, it's legit. It may be useful in the future but I'm not going to spend $5 a month on something that's brand new and may not have a lot of shops available through it yet. If they had a longer trial period I would have signed up.a

ETA: if it is the same app then I highly respect ACE for what you've said they've done. That goes along with my concern.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2017 04:45AM by leaiso.

I got the same email! I was just coming on to see if anyone knew what that app was!

The app is legit.
It's in its infancy (just launched last week), but schedulers from many, many companies across all platforms will be adding their shops to the map.

Shoppers aren't going to want to pay for it. Not me, anyway.

Sounds like a pay app like presto shops and that is free. Not worth a hoot but still free.

I received the email as well. After the GigSpot fiasco, I'd be hesitant to sign up until they've worked out ALL the bugs.

So, COM, you would spend $4.95 a month on this app after they've worked out the bugs?

I signed up to pay $5.99 for Jobslinger and they sent notifications an average of 28 minutes AFTER I received an email frim the MSC.

I noticed this on Facebook last night and I am considering using it for a month or 2. The out of pocket amount is small, can be recouped quickly, and it is actually a business expense.

edited to add:
Free for the first 2 weeks
Then $4.95 USD for each month

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/18/2017 11:06PM by sstazz.

I gave kudos to Ace earlier but have since learned that Ace is actually the ones behind this new app. So, I don't know how I feel about that. I have no experience with Ace at this point.

ACE is the place for me. Wait that is the hardware commercial. Never mind z

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2017 02:36AM by Isaiah4031a.

Thanks for the responses. It's good to know that it's legit. Whether it's worth $4.95 a month is a whole other thing. The 14 day free trial this early probably wouldn't do anything for me. And like I said I'm not a route shopper anyway.

Hi Everyone!

I would be happy to answer any of your questions! I'm going to apologize in advance for the long post (I tend to do that!) but I want to give you some background on the website and why Deva and I put this project together.

I have owned ACE for 16 years. Deva works full time for Primo Solutions and we've been friends forever. Most of that time, including the present, I schedule. I do sales. I edit. I do payroll. The list goes on. I don't have a lot of time on my hands.

I sometimes compare scheduling to herding cats. Then, I found the IMSC, went to a couple of the conferences and started participating in the forums more often (even though I really didn't have time, I LOVED interacting with shoppers). It kind of felt as if I was breathing life into my company again, as sappy as that sounds. But I was getting excited about it because I was REALLY getting to know my shoppers.

As I looked at the problem, finding shoppers willing to travel a gazillion miles for me when I didn't have the budget to bonus shops. I would even go do some of my own shops because I just couldn't bonus some of them any more. Deva and I took a trip to Gulf Shores together, to do some of OUR shops! By the way, I live east of Kansas City!

Before that trip, Deva and I had been brainstorming, trying to think outside the box about how we could pull everyone together and work for the common goal, to benefit everyone. Then project started to take on a life of it's own.

There's Gigspot, there's Presto Maps, but there's not one single map that ALL companies can post their shops on and work together as a team. We thought that if both shoppers AND schedulers had an idea of how many shops were in a specific area, they could come together, pick up multiple shops for several companies and everyone would be happy! It's a win-win for all!

Saturday, a shopper (not using the system) texted me about a shop that he wanted to do because he was traveling through the area. I was so excited because it was my first experience being able to refer him to two other schedulers that I knew was looking for a shopper in the same area that I was. That is where the magic happens!

This is NOT a reporting platform. It's just a simple place to look for shops. Chat with schedulers (and other shoppers) through a private messaging system and also add yourself to the map (you can pin yourself to the map to let schedulers know where you may be traveling).

While I do just about everything for ACE, I am not an IT person! This is also separate from ACE Mystery Shopping. So, there are development costs associated with this site. Not to mention time. Over the last few days, we have spent about 40 hours just uploading shops to the system. So, while we don't expect to be on "The Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" anytime soon, we would like to be able to recover the costs of running the site and perhaps even compensated a little for our time (or enough to hire someone to run it.)

We have posts for all of the companies below and promises of shops from even more. We had 6 new schedulers sign up today and I am waiting for their lists.

A Closer Look
ACE Mystery Shopping
All Star
Amusement Advantage
B Business Solutions
BLD Scheduling
Business Observations
Cirrus Marketing
Coast to Coast Scheduling
Customer Experience Experts
Customer Perspectives
Grace Hill
ICU Associates
Informa Research Services
IPSOS
iSecretshop
Jancyn
Market Viewpoint
MCG
Measure CP
NIM Research
Nsite Inc
NWLCP
Primo Solutions, LLC
Private Eyes Online
RBG
Reality Check
Red Brick Scheduling
Sales Quality Group
Satisfaction Services
Sentry Marketing (Dave promised he would send me his list soon).
Service Evaluation Concepts
Service With Style
Sinclair Customer Metrics
Strategic Reflections (John said he would get his schedulers on board soon!)
Summit Scheduling
Udemo

Thanks!
Julie Simbro
ACEMysteryShopping.com - and now RouteShoppers.com

So, it's free for them but another cost for the shopper?

Interesting thought spicy. Why not have the MSCs pay a nominal fee instead of shoppers? They are certainly gaining some advantages which may be used to save them money on bonuses.

Quite honestly, I don't know if this is the right answer or not, but I will share with y'all our thought process behind that.

We knew we could not do it for free because of the development cost alone (not to mention the man hours we spend working on it). In order to "break even", we have to have about 1100 shoppers using the system.

The more users we have, the more our expenses are. If we were charging the companies, we could easily get in the "red" the more users we get. The more shops that go onto our map, the more our map storage fee increases.

There are 35 IMSC member companies. The IMSC member companies are more of your "out of the box thinkers" and more shopper friendly companies in my opinion and also more likely to take advantage of this. Those are the companies you will see on the boards, interacting with shoppers and such.

Many of the schedulers are also independent contractors. The companies don't often care how long it takes a scheduler to schedule something, since they are paying them a flat rate. Schedulers work for pennies sometimes for shops that are difficult to fill. It would be up to the schedulers to convince these companies to let them use this (unless they would pay the fees themselves). Many schedulers only schedule 100 or so shops per month, so since the fees would need to be much higher they may not have the opportunity (or the budget) to do it.

But, don't think the schedulers are getting off easy! They are actually "earning their keep". The schedulers that have been using the tool so far have gone above and beyond looking at the map, taking notice of what other schedulers need help and reach out to shoppers (on and off the system) to help them build routes and work towards a common goal. They have a LOT of sweat equity in this project.

We need many people to share the cost of a small expense each, rather than a small group of people to cover a large expense each.

I would also like to add that this map will also include shops offered by MSPs using platforms that don't have all encompassing job boards or mapping apps.

Julie, this sounds pretty cool. How will we be able to tell if there are shops in our area before we join routeshoppers?

Thanks
Sallee007

They give you two weeks free

What would be the value for someone to find shops near home?

How often is the map updated. I tried the app and discovered that several of the jobs shown are not there when I go to the MS company's website.

My concern is redudancy. Are the participating MSCs already using Jobslinger, Presto, or any of the existing multi-MSC platforms? If not, then why not? If yes, then we do not need another platform.

Many MSCs do not use publicly accessible job boards to protect the clients from visibility. Would there be a significant number of opportunities on this private platform that are not currently not listed on the free sites?

My current problem is not wanting to sign up with MSCs that have no work in my area, or do not offer opportunities that I am interested in. Provide me a free way to see opportunities and I will gladly sign up with the related MSC. I have no interest in paying for information that should be freely available. IMGO, no MSC should hide their opportunities on a paid access site.