I'm trying to stay out of the fray of the other string regarding IPSOS paying on time.

But, this one continues to bother me: It is the way IPSOS scheduless their shopping dates - especially so, for their gas station shops (the Blue ones and the Yellow ones).

When Maritz handled these shops, they had a pull down menu for self assigning the Blue shops again after finishing the debrief (their name for the report) as the rotation would allow. The pull down menu went out 3 weeks, albeit, the third week was a few days short of a complete week.
For me, it allowed me to plan accordingly, keeping winter weather in mind, and other obstacles, etc.
When IPSOS took over, it was changed to only the first 2 weeks of the month. For myself, it became difficult to manage spreading out all the shops I did into a 2 week time period, especially so, with Covid - 19. Subsequently, I dropped many shops.
They are still allowing shoppers to self assign after finishing the report for the 2 week period of the next rotation - No big deal for me there.
However, as I continue to look at available shops on their Job Board, I now notice now that they only have allowable, available dates of only for the first week (this month, the last date to perform the shop is September 8 - the first week of the month - there is no second week). That's not much time given the Labor Day holiday weekend. In the past, I've done shops on that holiday - but really, for me, I like a day off.
Okay, that's my preference.
So, what bothers me is: As I sit here September 4th, at my laptop viewing all the possible Blue and Yellow gas stations available, they still have that September 8th end date. So maybe they'll extend it? But when?
Who knows?

Probably around the 10th.

While I don't do shops on the IPSOS Sassie side, I do several shops for them on the Metrics side. I was able to successfully contact a scheduler for some shops yesterday and offered to do the shops if the date could be extended. She replied back within a few hours and extended the dates for me.

This makes no sense to me, especially with the quarterly yellows. With the monthly blues, I can understand from the schedulers point of view more (though still wish they would have them out longer). For the yellow's, you have until Nov 30 to get these done. Now, I realize there is a cluster of these shops you want done in September, but would it harm you to have it out to Sept 10, knowing this is a holiday weekend, or, if I am going to be "greedy", Sept 15? That, I don't get.

I scheduled a yellow shop for the 8th. I thought I was scheduling my due date. It won't let me do it today, and it won't let me change the date to today. This is so stupid. I set the date to the 8th so I could set my route. Now my route is set and I can't do it today? And no scheduler contact? They can take this shop and shove it really deep up inside there.

I much prefer the way Maritz used to schedule the gas station shops but Ipsos has their way it is what it is. If you have done the blue shops successfully for a while you might try contacting your supervisor and request an extension to the third week.

In the case of the yellow station, I'm not asking for an extension. I'm just asking to do it 3 days early. Well within the shopping window. A date that I could have chosen whenever I signed up. But I thought I was signing up for my due date. Why they will only let me do it on that exact date and will not let me change it to an earlier date makes absolutely zero sense to me. It just shows that they are really out of touch with reality. And they just don't really care about trying to make things any easier for the shoppers. You would think they would let me do it on whatever day I wanted to because there are 85 days left in the shopping period. And I'm doing it at base pay. It's incredible.

@LIJake wrote:

I much prefer the way Maritz used to schedule the gas station shops but Ipsos has their way it is what it is. If you have done the blue shops successfully for a while you might try contacting your supervisor and request an extension to the third week.

@French Farmer, I have to go through the scheduler for the date changes outside of the drop-down menu.
CHECK The start date carefully for it did not occur to me that it was 6 months prior. The Audit shops for blue are not set for that week. I am finding the to be an M-F at the time called but any day that is in the closing date. Mine at this time ending on Sept 17
Shop Requirements
This shop must be performed
between 08/03/21 and 09/17/21,
on these days and times : Monday thru Friday, 6:00
am - 5:00 pm updated

And it is maybe 3 days or more before I got an email response, but the changes were made without notification.

@French Farmer wrote:

I'm trying to stay out of the fray of the other string regarding IPSOS paying on time.

But, this one continues to bother me: It is the way IPSOS scheduless their shopping dates - especially so, for their gas station shops (the Blue ones and the Yellow ones).

When Maritz handled these shops, they had a pull down menu for self assigning the Blue shops again after finishing the debrief (their name for the report) as the rotation would allow. The pull down menu went out 3 weeks, albeit, the third week was a few days short of a complete week.
For me, it allowed me to plan accordingly, keeping winter weather in mind, and other obstacles, etc.
When IPSOS took over, it was changed to only the first 2 weeks of the month. For myself, it became difficult to manage spreading out all the shops I did into a 2 week time period, especially so, with Covid - 19. Subsequently, I dropped many shops.
They are still allowing shoppers to self assign after finishing the report for the 2 week period of the next rotation - No big deal for me there.
However, as I continue to look at available shops on their Job Board, I now notice now that they only have allowable, available dates of only for the first week (this month, the last date to perform the shop is September 8 - the first week of the month - there is no second week). That's not much time given the Labor Day holiday weekend. In the past, I've done shops on that holiday - but really, for me, I like a day off.
Okay, that's my preference.
So, what bothers me is: As I sit here September 4th, at my laptop viewing all the possible Blue and Yellow gas stations available, they still have that September 8th end date. So maybe they'll extend it? But when?
Who knows?

For the Blue shops, I just checked - the dates to performs the shop is today's date and ending on the 8th (September).
As for checking with the scheduler: when all of this started I could contact the scheduler and have shops scheduled out into the 3rd week or, moved to the 2nd week. Then, a new scheduler came aboard, replacing the old one. The new one will have none of that - goes strictly by the schedule, not exceptions.
But, with this month (September) it has become even more convoluted - there are only shops with the first week scheduled - all end times are the 8th.
So what happens? They shall not be taken and they shall have to be bonused - I'm assuming other shoppers like myself are moving into the other MSCs like Alta, etc while awaiting the bonus period.
Speaking of the bonuses IPSOS hands out - I note they have become rather cheap on some of these. I see shops not taken because they are too far away with gas prices rising to even be considered profitable.
Such a far cry when the old company, Maritz, would send out an Email requesting "Your help" in finishing the month or quarter shops.

nvm

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 09/05/2021 11:10PM by jay225.

It just seems to me that if we're in the first two weeks of a monthly cycle or the first month of a quarterly cycle, we should be given more personal flexibility. If they really want us to do these for base pay, the only way we can make them profitable is if we carefully schedule them. We need flexibility, because we may not be able to find any other shops to go with it on that specific day. However a few days later we might be able to make the trip worthwhile. There's no risk in giving us a few more days of flexibility when we're so early in the shopping cycle. It just seems Draconian and counterproductive to me. Just like moving evaluations from nice, user-friendly platforms to platforms that make the evaluations take a lot longer. It just shows they're out of touch. Or they just don't care. Or both.

i need to stop typing

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/06/2021 07:53PM by jay225.

Both.

Well, well.

Finally dates were extended a few days ago. And now, as each day progresses, they add another day to their end time with a small bonus.
To me, the obviously crazy thing is this: Had they (IPSOS) plugged in reasonable dates like say, the first 2 or 3 weeks of the month for dates to choose, they might have gotten takers without the added bonus.
OTOH, while I awaited their updating of the dates, I was able to put away quite a large amount of vegetables from my garden. Now comes the fruit!