Don't you just miss the days when you could just pick up the phone and call Maritz to change a daytime to a nighttime or a nighttime to a daytime to work with your route???

I have not completed a route since Maiitz departed the business. I very much enjoyed their accessibility and willingness to, when necessary, open their purse.

I did not shop much with Maritz but I do miss them. I have not done any gas shops with Ipsos and probably will not. It's not worth it to me.

I miss the Maritz bonuses!

As much as we made fun of maritz and their antiquated ways I think most people liked them as they were available to talk with and did bonus to get the needed jobs done. no more $150 gas shops and /or regular $60 gas shops. Be real interesting to see how high the bonuses get for the end of year gas shops especially in brutal weather in the unpredictable northeast.

I miss it very much.

I liked shooting the breeze, and sharing jokes with some of the staff.

Sincerely miss them.

Yes they were nice. Things there were changing even before the sale, such as fewer phone reps and smaller bonuses, so I think we would still be missing those times even if they were still handling the mystery shopping.

They were decent people to talk with but not overly bright. I was told more than once that when they did stupid stuff it was "The Maritz Way"

Now, with IPSOS....anything your scheduler cannot take care of....well, you might as well forget it....

One thing I certainly don't miss about Maritz is having to telephone rather than e-mailing. I also don't miss their over-the-top editors who often had creative readings of shop guidelines.

I was an editor for Martiz- it was the 70 year supervisor that was out of touch that made the call. None of the staff had ever actually shopped. I finally realized I could make more money shopping than editing.

Doing everything by phone is not efficient for businesses these days. For me it was a constant issue. I am on the west coast. Few or no resources to help after 5 PM their time. Need choices to effectively reach and communicate with your target audience (shoppers). Also don't miss taking the tests over and over, oh and did I say over and over again ? I'm fine with a test, but your shop grades speak for themselves. Shopper not making it after passing the test ? Boot them instead of penalizing the entire shopper base. What I do give them grand kudos for; could finish up a edit on XX day and that shop would be in your pay the next day. That part was always amazing and wonderful to me.

@BuffaloNY101 wrote:

As much as we made fun of maritz and their antiquated ways I think most people liked them as they were available to talk with and did bonus to get the needed jobs done. no more $150 gas shops and /or regular $60 gas shops. Be real interesting to see how high the bonuses get for the end of year gas shops especially in brutal weather in the unpredictable northeast.

Exactly, and now I feel bad for making fun...........

Oh god yes.

Yes, I miss their simple, easy, efficient survey forms. The new company seems to make changes for the sake of change, as far as designing their survey forms. Maritz used to print out ONE long sheet of paper to fill out for the audit. Then you tear off a carbon and hand it to the employee when you finish the audit. It took 20 minutes if the location got a perfect score. With the new company, I have to print 4 double-sided pages to fill out and give to the employee, plus I have to print out 3 additional pages (condensed from IpSOs version) to put on my clipboard to check question answers while I am conducting the audit. They apparently think printer ink is free.

@Lstockwell wrote:

I was an editor for Martiz- None of the staff had ever actually shopped. I finally realized I could make more money shopping than editing.

And I say this to everybody considering editing! I will hundred percent agree with you and quit editing elsewhere because I can make at least 10 times more as a shopper than an editor!

I miss my Team 5 schedulers. Team 3 a little. Some nasty people there

I think the thing I miss the most is having an app that made doing the shops in real time in the app possible, and simple. MobiAudit is good, but you still have to fill out the reports AFTER you finish the actual shop. The ladies that I talked to at Maritz were sweet, but sometimes they seemed to be less than aware of actual conditions. Like the constantly insisting that you take the pictures with your phone sideways so that their program wouldn't turn the picture when it loaded the files, or having to reduce the size of the pictures to thumbnail size for the software to accommodate it without changing the aspect ratio. One thing I don't miss is the invoicing.. but then again, I kept better records because of the invoicing, so maybe that wasn't so bad..

No, I don’t miss Maritz at ALL. They made my teeth grind with their 1990’s technology.

I see IPSOS gas stations regularly for $40-90 all over the USA. Make a little route, talk to the MF folks when they call (and a few others,) you can make some real money. And not have to aggravate yourself beyond all reason with an office that was three decades behind the curve.

I miss all those sweet helpful Missouri and Kansas ladies from Maritz, and their twangs

i miss maritz for the security they provided(although in the end there was no security lol). you knew that shops were always gonna be there, bigger incentives were always gonna be there, night time bonuses were gonna be there, and (mostly)friendly ladies were always gonna be there to answer the phone when you had a question or wanted to make bonus offers. i also miss the elevator on hold music they had when you called. they changed it up to a generic one in 2018, but before that they used a couple songs that are forever ingrained in my head and i wish i could hear them again. i don’t miss always having to talk on the phone. i feel a lot less guilty and awkward asking for extensions and incentives through email rather than phone haha. i don’t miss taking the same tests over and over, i don’t miss having to invoice every shop, i don’t miss receiving calls for projects i had no interest in. with ipsos you don’t feel the same security. fortunately i’ve been dealing with Kate, who has been great. she’s been able to assign shops, has changed my dates around a hundred times, and always answers emails within 12 hours. she’s easily the best scheduler i’ve dealt with over there. if not for her though, things definitely wouldn’t have gone as smooth. like i know there’s other schedulers over there who wouldn’t have even bothered responding to me, or would respond days later than i needed them to. i do also like that ipsos bonus’s are basically the same as what maritz was now that they’re not using a scheduling company. yea, you don’t get the huge ones over there with the phone call, but the ones they set on the site aren’t bad, and it’s nice being able to change the dates ourselves. i’ve gotten used to the sassie platform, and don’t feel like it takes me any longer to do reports than it did on maritz site. so overall, both have their benefits,but if i was to pick one to do shops for for the next 5 years, maritz would be the easy choice as i’d feel a lot more secure with my ability to earn without having to stress over it.

Wow!

I do miss being able to talk to someone on the phone when I was onsite, or really needed help. I had a LOT of trouble transitioning to doing the shops on Sassie. I started with spending an insane amount of money to get my laptop repaired, only to end up getting it replaced with a supposedly "good working used computer," and then having to buy a ton of accessories so that it would work in the car. The situation was untenable because of the poor signal in the rural areas here, I needed something with its own signal, not using my phone as a hotspot.

What ended up happening is 5G finally started rolling out, and Verizon gave me a really good deal on a 10" tablet with 5G capabilities. It's big enough to see, and it doesn't randomly close a web page because I moved the phone the wrong way or rotate the screen. And it's made all the difference. I can do the Sassie gas station shops in far less time than I was ever able to do them even on the MartizCX OnSite app.

I think a Surface Pro would be the shiznick to do shops with but they are super expensive.