Bestmark. Had a long email discussion with Cory there last week. He's been there 18 years. When I started doing their shops in 2019. they paid like clockwork. What Cory told me is that they lost ALL their clients in the Pandemic. Many of their clients are gyms and restaurant chains, and those are two types of businesses that got hit really hard by Covid.
They gave up their office space and started the company over from ground zero -- the executives of the company went home and worked for free to start the company back over. I see they have back some of their old clients (and lost others, particularly thinking about a major Minnesota-based electronics retailer). But they took on a lot of purchase/return shops for compliance at [and since he told me I hope I'm not violating the rules by saying] a certain online auction site that starts with an e and ends with a bay. And apparently that is the tail wagging their dog and screwing up their pay schedule.
I am not upset WITH them -- but IMNSHO not responding to shoppers and ignoring BBB complaints is not a good way to run one's business (they have 16 completely non-responded to complaints in the last year, BBB has dropped them from an A+ to a B-). The project managers don't control the pursestrings, all they can do is push the complaints up the food chain.
I've been told by more than one person that their new benchmark is to pay people 30 days after the shop's been processed and accepted -- and they've changed the words pay date to estimated pay date. Still, they owe me for 6 completed shops and I'm pushing back hard on them that I'm not going to do any more shops for them -- especially ones that require me to expend money -- until I see some money from some of these other shops.
That's all I know. I hope that they can turn it around, but I'm not going to be spending a lot of my money for their shops and wait 30+ days to not be paid back. I trust THAT they will pay me, but I don't know WHEN they will. Cory said he's escalating shopper complaints to the CEO.
And to the OP, I had all my shops moved from the 2/28 schedule to the 3/15 schedule, and they are still unpaid, and they KNOW I'm not doing the shop that is assigned to me until they pay me the backlog.
Shields up. Yellow alert.
Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 03/14/2022 09:06PM by gsfreeman2.