Have any of you done these this month? You get mailed a few boxes of brochures and inserts and go to a doctor's office to remove the old ones and replace with the new ones. I signed up for three locations thinking they wouldn't be too bad. I was wrong. One of the doctor's offices had 9 examining rooms. The office doesn't close for lunch, so I had to try to replenish each room in-between patients. It was a nightmare. The instructions advise you to wait if a room is occupied. I sat around and waited 30 minutes for one exam room and was then told they didn't know how long the patient would be in there. You do the report on the GoSpotCheck app which was really clunky and time-consuming. Three photos required per room, so 27 photos for one location. That shop is now on my ten-foot pole list!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2022 05:17PM by Phoebe70.

Yes, I got snookered my first time too. 10 brochure racks. Luckily it was bonused, but I also ran into the wait for a room to clear waste of time. I only do them now if they are $50 or more because of the inconveniences built into a medical facility. The work involved is NOT worth the meager base pay they start out with. Hold out for the increasing bonuses that will be offered. By the way, the brochures were sent to the facility not me. I still avoid the 10 rack facility because it is waaaaaay too time consuming.

I have a few rules I NEVER break, One is to only accept a single shop when I have not completed the work in the past or have, but for a different MSC. I can struggle through one of anything, but several is a far different situation.

@big_sky_thunder wrote:

Yes, I got snookered my first time too. 10 brochure racks. Luckily it was bonused, but I also ran into the wait for a room to clear waste of time. I only do them now if they are $50 or more because of the inconveniences built into a medical facility. The work involved is NOT worth the meager base pay they start out with. Hold out for the increasing bonuses that will be offered. By the way, the brochures were sent to the facility not me. I still avoid the 10 rack facility because it is waaaaaay too time consuming.

One was mailed to my home, and the other two were mailed directly to the medical facility. The first one I was able to do when the office was closed for lunch, so it wasn't too bad. The last one I gave up on one of the rooms, waiting more than 30 minutes and the staff still didn't know how much longer the patient would be in there. I took a photo of the closed door with an explanation. I hope this will suffice and that I will be paid. I spent close to 2 hours there for less than $30. Never again!

This is good to know! I just saw these and was tempted.

@shopperbob wrote:

I have a few rules I NEVER break, One is to only accept a single shop when I have not completed the work in the past or have, but for a different MSC. I can struggle through one of anything, but several is a far different situation.

The funny thing is, I had done one of these for this msc, years ago. It was a small doctor's office and I only had to replenish the waiting room. It took less than 10 minutes. This time I had to remove old inserts, put in new inserts as well as removing and replenishing the brochures. Each examining room took approx 10-15 minutes due to the clunky app, redundant questions and multiple photo requirements. I won't do these in the future!

@LaceyV wrote:

This is good to know! I just saw these and was tempted.

I just saw one that is literally 2 miles from my house. It's now at $45 for 10 examination rooms....no way in h*ll would I do this one!

The one I do, I call a few days ahead and they schedule me for a time when they have no patients coming in -- i.e., the doctor's golfing or whatever. I think there are 7 rooms, and it does take me about 2 hours. I also find it exhausting, so I can't build a route around it, as I have zero energy left to do anything else! The worst is when you must remove everything currently in the racks and do a total replacement. Ugh!

@ceasesmith wrote:

The one I do, I call a few days ahead and they schedule me for a time when they have no patients coming in -- i.e., the doctor's golfing or whatever. I think there are 7 rooms, and it does take me about 2 hours. I also find it exhausting, so I can't build a route around it, as I have zero energy left to do anything else! The worst is when you must remove everything currently in the racks and do a total replacement. Ugh!

I called last week to schedule for this week, so they had advance notice, but this is a bustling office that doesn't close for lunch and wouldn't let me in before or after office hours. Each exam room was stocked full of brochures that I had to dispose of. You have to dispose of them off-site, so I was carrying two heavy boxes full of puberty and HPV vaccine brochures back to my vehicle. I hated to have to throw out so much...what a waste of paper! The brochures are on glossy paper and I was told they can't be recycled. Trying to get in and out of exam rooms when they're unoccupied was a logistical nightmare. All while wearing a mask and running around. I was a sweaty mess by the time I finished LOL.

I'm glad to have this heads up, thank you!

THIS!!!

Doctor offices this month have been packed, I personally woudnt without a $100 bonus

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2022 10:06PM by SunshineQT.

Ive been doing these for years. You have to develop a system so you can speed it up. I open 1 box stand up all the brochures so that i can lay the old brochures next to it. I communicate with the nurses and let them know which rooms I am waiting for and they will often ask a client if I can come to do the board (if the dr isnt in there yet) and im in and out of a room in less then 5 minutes. If i am waiting for a room to open up then I am opening the brochure packets to save me time. I walk in the room clear the board and take the picture of the door number and then the cleared board. This helps me from stopping and starting or picking up and down my phone. Hope this helps. I have one location that has 15 rooms and it is a challenge but I go at the the end of the day so the rooms start opening up quickly.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2022 04:48AM by breathingdeep1.

I did this one year, it turned into a huge fiasco. They shipped me 26 boxes for one location, but they didn't give me any of the information that the people at the desk wanted from me to let me in. I made an appointment to do it, but the person that I spoke to on the phone did not put me in the appointment schedule, and she wasn't there. They made me sit and wait for 40 minutes in the waiting room room and then a security officer came and took me into a side room and and wanted me to leave my personal ID and the keys to my car with him before he would let me in. I refused, I also refused to take all of their 26 boxes of c*** back home with me and I left them in the little room where the guy was trying to extort me for the keys to my car.

They said I would get paid for a location that was closed, If I had tried to contact them and make an appointment, 3 times or 5 times, I forget which it was a long time ago. At this one location, I called them every day for a week. There was never any answer, there was no voicemail or answering system. I went to the location, it was a run down old building with peeling paint and paper over most of the windows. There was no paper over the door and I looked in in, it was closed there was nobody there, the floors were nasty, with buckle tiles, and dirty, the counters were dirty and in disrepair. I assumed at that point that it was just an abandoned building that may or may not have been a doctor's office previously. I took pictures of building and of the door and I reported it as a closed location and they refused to pay me for it.

One of the Offices had 16 exam rooms, 14 of them had the racks. I opened up the boxes that the doctor handed me, I changed every single piece of marketing material and brochures and made sure that all of the spaces in the brochure rack were filled. And they refused to pay me for it because because the marketing materials that I put in the rack had the same color strip on the bottom as the marketing materials from the previous Quarter.

I was making a little bit of money doing stuff for customer impact, But after this and a huge misunderstanding over some Money card things. They became a 10' Pole mystery shopping company.

I have been doing these since pre-pandemic. Originally, I had a big route. There are some offices I won't go back to because they have so many rooms and hauling out more than two boxes with the old brochures is too much effort. Especially if my car is some distance away. Now I have a few offices I do, and I like them. I have established a relationship with the office manager and can be in and out pretty quickly. If you have to repeatedly call to arrange a time, or have to wait a lengthy time to change out the brochures, it is not worth it.

Prior to 2021, I called and visited locations. Last year, I made no visits and was clearly denied permission to visit one location and only after tremendous difficulty reached a live person at another location. This year, I am making another attempt. I have been assigned two locations and, if permitted, would do both locations in one day. Tomorrow, I can make the initial phone calls. If I make any visits, you might hear something that sounds like a stuck pig, or the mad screaming woman from a side show. But fear not. That is only how my back feels after visiting the locations with multiple rooms. Some people would run from this! I choose to walk into it, lean into the task, and hobble out with as much dignity as possible. Dignity is second only to not dropping any of the discarded materials that I remove from the premises. (I would never get up again if I had to pick up all that stuff.) The locations are near each other and to places that I want to go otherwise. It would be a long and painful day, but the money would replace a shift at another job. I would have something different to focus on for a little while. It is not all bad.

My silly tale leads only this far. People with body issues should know that no matter how much money you might receive, there is always the need to consider how you might feel after this job. I do not suggest that no one should ever do this gig. I only want people to be prepared. For example, I always have a place to sit between available rooms. Other people might not have that privilege and would have to stand somewhere. I am not tall and either stretch too much to reach the highest level or I wear moderate heels and reach more easily but feel the foot pain later. You can think about what is involved and decide what is good or at least not too terrible for you.

I completed one yesterday and was thinking breezy easy. But it was only one rack to replenish, no wait; in and out within 15 minutes max, carried the brochures inside in my hands easily, and I did not experience any issues with the app. Have a two rack one to do today, we'll see how that one goes. But ..... what I can clearly see from all the posts is that even so the locations with lots of racks pay more, they may be more pain than one bargains for. Good to know.

I did one of these (at a bonused rate) and the location had the material sent there, replenished a handful and threw out the other brochures themselves. The scheduler told me to go and take pics anyway. I did, but since the location had put "other brand" paperwork in the racks, they didn't pay me, reposted the location at an even higher bonus. I scooped it up and made 2x more the original shop and bonus pay. The contact at the location was very cool and understanding to work me into the exam rooms.
That being said, I wasn't a huge fan. They sound easy but I would much rather be able to go to a location before or after opening and not have to wait to get into any of the rooms.

So my two locations, each with 8 rooms, declined the visits. Staff did the work themselves at one location. The other location no longer uses these materials. It's just as well because I cannot get out of town for awhile. We have the weather, the crashes, the rollovers, and the closed roads. Once, I lucked out and got a one-rack-in-a-hallway location. "That was easy!" (proclaimed in my best Staples catch phrase voice).

I did the brochure replacement job years past when Pat Henry Group had the contract, and also now for CI (btw, I also installed many of the displays for Pat Henry Group years ago...I probably installed 200 of them).

It's all about working with the office so that you can be there when the rooms are empty. That means early morning, lunch, when a provider using rooms is out of the office, or late in the day. You can also convert wait time to productive time by opening boxes and brochure packets while waiting for a room to open up. The big problem occurs when you are out on a route and cannot arrive at the office when the rooms are empty. In that case, you are forced to hope that you get lucky and not have to wait for a room to open up.

Fortunately, the offices that I visit all have some down time during the day, and I work my schedule so that I can be at the office during that down time. During the last rotation, though, there was 1 office where there was a 2+ hour wait for the last room to come available. I actually went home and went back later in the day. That visit was a money loser, oh well.

I have one urgent care and one specialty office. There are no "good" times. Urgent care takes them as they come, often non-stop, and also provides routine appointments for some patients. Even on surgery days, the presumed best time at the specialty office, patients come for appointments with the nurses. I truly do not mind this. I get to sit and do what teacherguy suggests. I organize and open packets, separate old materials from new, and generally think good thoughts for best outcomes regarding whatever situations are happening in those exam rooms.

I've done a few with big bonuses while on a route. I always make clear to the scheduler I will make the attempt but if they won't let me in when I get there I will cancel. Ended up not having any issues and the staff were super friendly and helpful. I actually enjoyed them and once I got my system down they went quickly.

@teacherguy wrote:

I did the brochure replacement job years past when Pat Henry Group had the contract, and also now for CI (btw, I also installed many of the displays for Pat Henry Group years ago...

@teacherguy,
I also did a TON of these for the PHG, and then Premium Retail got the contract and I did a TON for them also. I don't do them anymore bc of back/disc issues. But I did like you have done. I had 7 or 8 locations I did every time they came available, I think it was quarterly back then. I learned which offices had free time at lunch or early mornings. For some, I'd get there at 7:30 before the patients started. For others, I got there right at noon when they closed for lunch but would let me in. I would prepare my boxes at home, before I left. That way, all I had to do was remove the old and put in the new. Each room took less than 5 minutes. So that one practice that I had with 9 rooms, I'd be in &out in 45-50 minutes, and did it during their lunch hour. I did all my locations either early morning or at lunch. It helped that I was their "regular" person for several years, they got to know me and let me do my thing.

Quick Q: Who decides which merchandisers receive materials at home and which will work with materials that are delivered to the locations?

@Shop-et-al wrote:

Quick Q: Who decides which merchandisers receive materials at home and which will work with materials that are delivered to the locations?

I’m not 100% sure but I’m thinking that the closer it gets to the deadline, the more apt they are to mail directly to the medical office.

I’m envious of those who had no issues. I’ve been a shopper for 11 years and I’m very organized. Like someone else mentioned, I did have a system. All brochures were unwrapped and It still took a long time because it was a busy pediatrics office and it was a logistical nightmare trying to get into an exam room for only a couple minutes in between patients. There was nowhere for me to sit while waiting for a room to open up. I could have easily shaved off 30 minutes if the app wasn’t so redundant or if the office allowed me in before they opened or after they closed.

I was told that if an office had regularly misplaced their boxes in the past, then boxes would be sent to the merchandiser.

Thank you for the head's up, folks, I darned near grabbed one tonight.

Thanks for this! I will be conducting some of these this week and its my first go-round. Your tips are great because in my mind, I was wondering how I would go about making this EASY on myself and you hit it right on the head with " I open 1 box stand up all the brochures so that i can lay the old brochures next to it." I was picturing myself doing the exact same thing!!!

Thanks for your input! Keep us posted! :-)

Thanks for your input, very helpful! Any tips for sorting the materials that are in the boxes or is it a "no brainer" when you open the packs you can clearly tell what goes where? Did you ever bring a basket or something to take away the old brochures? Thanks again!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/16/2022 10:05PM by VBanks.