Ok, I am fixing this. Trendsource keeps sending out an individual email for each individual location for the same client. Instead of working on a reasonable fee they just SPAM us. To make it worse, they sent a new batch again just several hours later.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/2018 01:52AM by isaiah58.

Uh. You realize that's an ICA violation.......

I get it, and am also getting emails for area's I've written to them I won't go too...new schedulers, and yes, very annoying.

isaiah, remove the client name from your subject line.

Brain fart. I was thinking the individual stores being shopped were not to be mentioned.

You didn't mentioned the clients names?

Some shoppers just complain about everything, geez. A scheduler in my area with A Closer Look does this, I just delete it and move on. Life is to short to get aggravated enough to start a thread on MSF....

A few years back, I also experienced that problem, but with ICCDS. After receiving approx. 40 individual offers from a scheduler within an hour, I sent an E-letter requesting she package the shops in a single letter. The next day, as I recall, she only sent 30+; I firmly responded with a demand. When, on the third day, the 30+ was repeated. I phoned the MSC, but their position was that if I did not agree with the scheduler's manner of business, it was my prerogative to deactivate; I immediately took that action and have never regretted my decision.

I agree with shopperbob. Don't sweat the small stuff. If I don't like how a company works, I don't do business with them.If a company doesn't like how I work, the company is free to not do business with me.

My point of view with what is happening at The Source is NO, I do many jobs for them in my town, and though the pay may be low, it is a company from L.A. with jobs close to my home (3 miles). This never used to happen, they would allow self assign (no longer), and the emails are annoying, getting hard to fill jobs daily in an area out of my radius. They never used to do this, newly hired folks just don't care or get it. I don't want to leave them. I definitely agree and have left companies for various reasons, but I benefit greatly with their jobs in my town, so, I guess I'll stay annoyed. I think it o.k. to complain, maybe higher up will read what shoppers are saying and they can change. Telling a shopper to leave a company is like a toggle, they may have a job you want and will miss out on, with a toggle, the poster may have info. that benefits you. Now for my morning coffee......

I can think of 3 companies that I have "left". Left can mean a couple of things:
1) A scheduler was blasting my email, I mean REALLY blasting, making it difficult for me to take time to look at other postings. So I blocked the SCHEDULER - I didn't do any work for them.
2) A scheduler/owner responded to a question I asked with a rude response where cursed and attacked me. Seeing as how he owned the company, I left /deactivated from the company. I don't want to work for a company whose leader is not only a bully, but so crude also, no matter the job. I am fortunate enough to not depend on the income from mystery shopping for a living.
3) There was an MSC who signed me up for jobs when I asked a question. The first time, it was no problem to complete the job. I let the MSC know that I did not appreciate it and not to do it again. I told them this time I was doing the job to help them out, because I know we all need a little help sometimes. The second time they did it by asking me to do the shop. When I responded no, they simply assigned it to me for a different date. I responded by telling them I would not do the shop and to stop scheduling me without my request. I also escalated, to no avail. The third time they sent out the job request, I didn't even respond. Then the scheduler began blasting my email, so I did the next best thing. I put an auto-reply to anything that comes from the scheduler. I have semi-left the MSC. I can always go back in when times are slow to look at what they have. But I no longer receive notices from the MSC.

They have now lowered the price for doing a big box..I've done them for 7+1.25 to buy something not available for that amount. I just got an email to do same audit for 5.00.....guess I'm done. i did not get the grocery i've been doing for years, yet I applied and it's still on the board....not a happy camper.

Yahoo is now automatically sending their blocks of emails to my SPAM folder. They keep sending the same group of emails multiple times a day.

Food for thought. The MSC may automatically generate the emails.

Does Trendsource not allow to simply turn off the email notification option?

@MFJohnston wrote:

Does Trendsource not allow to simply turn off the email notification option?

Probably, but IMHO since I have never shopped for them I may as well close my account. I prefer timely and reasonable emails. Several other MSCs are just as annoying, I shop for them so put up with it.

No, I went to my profile, the link to not getting emails doesn't work. I did get an apology email for all the recent emails where jobs had been dropped then got an email, 2 hours RT. for a (whoopee) 6.00 pad and 5.00 fee, so for 11.00 I can drive 2 hours.....and do an audit. #over it

They are always asking me to do one that is around 200 miles round trip for $17 and a PAD of $10.00. maybe for a pad of $100.00 and two more in the same neck of the woods.

Zillions and few phone calls too. I shopped for them years ago. Business verifications, food and pizza. The latter two were a PITA but at the mall where I frequented. It's all good. Delete key is easy.

I would love to do the shop they have where I grocery shop almost weekly. Problem is, the area is separate and deserted. No customers.

Hello! Here I am to spend time milling around and take pictures while you watch me.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2018 11:18PM by Madetoshop.

I set up a filter in my email to send the emails from the scheduler who spams me into trash. I can periodically look at the emails there just in case and my volume of emails is greatly diminshed.

They deluge me with text messages regarding the grocery shops. I just respond "No" and keep it pushing. As for OSIs, I constantly get requests to do audits in a nearby city I despise visiting. Last month they were so desperate to get me to take on the audits (there were 5 of them) I quoted an insane amount of money to take the package. Lo and behold, they approved it.

It worked for me to just stop their emails in an option on their site. I had to it was driving me nuts. I still check their site and they call me when they need something near me with a bonus, so I still work for them. They are VERY reasonable and pay very fast and correctly. The spam emails are ridiculous.

What I can't understand is when companies require you to give such details about yourself in your profile, including your home address and the range you are willing to travel but you still get notifications about shops that are 100's of miles away! I'm in southern CA and I get shop offers for Sacramento. Really??? Can't they read? I've e-mailed the scheduler to find out why and they just won't stop sending the shops to me. I like the idea of sending her messages to junk. My fear is that they will get a new client and I will miss the opportunity to do that shop if I block them.

@BASheehan911 wrote:

What I can't understand is when companies require you to give such details about yourself in your profile, including your home address and the range you are willing to travel but you still get notifications about shops that are 100's of miles away! I'm in southern CA and I get shop offers for Sacramento. Really??? Can't they read? I've e-mailed the scheduler to find out why and they just won't stop sending the shops to me. I like the idea of sending her messages to junk. My fear is that they will get a new client and I will miss the opportunity to do that shop if I block them.

Don't send them to junk/spam. Set up a filter to automatically place them in a sub folder for the MSC. You can set up filters and auto sort all of your shopping emails in just a few minutes, regardless of what email you use.

It is so much easier for the recipient to filter their inbox than it is for the sender to filter for the geographic area each individual shopper is willing to shop. I can't even imagine how you could do that without creating so many custom lists it would be impossible to manage.

Ok, I'm up to learning something new. I've had e-mail since the first inception, but have no clue how to set up a subfolder for e-mail in Outlook to go into without setting up another e-mail address. I've set up lots of subfolders to keep messages in once they come into my main inbox, but no clue how to get incoming mail to go directly to a subfolder. I'd welcome any suggestions/instructions you can offer. Thanks!

There truly is no perfect way to email shoppers for available assignments. While it will vary based on the platform used, there are a few generalities to keep in mind. Filters are very varied. Schedulers can sort by a mileage radius of the shop zip code, by area codes willing to be shopped by a shopper, or by state; one at a time, not filtered together. Depending upon how many locations there are, one email cannot list 40 locations in the title. There are character limits in every platform used. That would then get you a very general email title that you would have to open before you can determine if it is something you are interested in doing and in a location that is somewhere you want to go. Or, you can get 40 emails of the same assignment with a different town listed in each email title, so that you can delete the ones (or all) just by looking at your inbox. The final option would be to remove your name from the email list for all MSP's (or the ones that routinely annoy you) and only work for a company if you proactively seek out work on their job board. It sounds like the company in question has limited options to reach shoppers for difficult to fill assignments. Hopefully you will find other companies that communicate in a different way.

My vote is always for the best description in the subject even if it means more emails. I only get frustrated if the description is vague which forces me to open and read the whole damn thing. It is then compounded if none of the locations are anywhere near me. Checking a box next to a dozen emails to send to trash without even opening is so easy. It would actually take me longer to complain about it than to just do it.

Thanks, I think I will remove myself from that scheduler's e-mails and will check the job board regularly for other possible shops. It is annoying since I'm signed up with several companies and it takes me quite a bit of time each morning to go thru every one of the e-mails to determine if it's a shop I want to do.

I actually left Trendsource a few weeks ago, got fed up of low fees, long milage, and expecting a location by location quote instead of doing the smart thing and batching them!

What gets me is that we have to read the entire email before seeing that the location is hundreds of miles away or in another state. This is for all MSP's not just Trendsource. It is getting worse and worse. They ask us to be professional but these schedulers are just lazy if they are blasting everyone without looking at locations.

In all likelyhood, the emails are generated by the MSC, out of the schedulers control. It seems when the scheduler targets specific shoppers that the locations are relevant.

@KaliAri wrote:

What gets me is that we have to read the entire email before seeing that the location is hundreds of miles away or in another state. This is for all MSP's not just Trendsource. It is getting worse and worse. They ask us to be professional but these schedulers are just lazy if they are blasting everyone without looking at locations.