Does anyone have experience with Judy Lombino? I'm not sure if she's a new editor or just new to me and I've been lucky.

She's not new. In my experience, she communicates clearly but wants much longer narratives on complex shops than reasonable or required by shop guidelines. In one of my shops, it was not enough for me to answer all the questions and explain all "No" or "N/A" answers. She wanted me to report on EVERYTHING that happened during the shop and ALL the questions I asked and ALL the employee's answers to my questions. She said I should include any information that would bring value to the client.

My report already took hours. If I wrote the report the way she wanted, it would probably take me more than 10 hours and my pay would have been much less than minimum wage.

I did several of these shops and none of the other editors required as much. I have not applied for any more of these shops.

Client can get better value by paying the mystery shopper a reasonable fee to match their expectations. We do not give out reports for free! Well, most of us do not.

Interesting. I submitted a report and she returned it in under 30 minutes (which has to be an editing world record) with about two dozen clarification questions. Everything she was asking was either already in my narratives or not asked for in the report/guidelines. The quick turnaround + non-pertinent questions really made me think she hadn't read the report at all. So I waited and resubmitted it without any changes. Couple hours later she returns it to me with only two clarification questions. So either she just actually read the report and realized most of her questions were redundant or she still hasn't read the report and just assumed I made changes because I resubmitted it.

Her final two questions were not things required in the report or guidelines but she insisted they were "mandatory" for the client (I've done this same report multiple times for ACL and know the guidelines pretty well and no other ACL editor has asked for what she was asking). So I added her extra info and she accepted the report but not without a snarky comment that next time I needed to follow the guidelines better.

Since she's not new and should know better, I don't know if its worth saying something to ACL. Are they receptive to feedback like that? Generally I like them and haven't had a problem with anyone else there.

I had a report returned a few months back for something absurd. I can't find it, but now I'm wondering...

I was an editor for ACL and she used to score my reports harshly. Good Luck!

I've found most ACL higher-ups to be quite receptive to feedback, especially if you have had a good history and dealings with them previously. I would not hesitate to reach out to one of them and politely share my concerns.