Can someone help me with an issue with Ipsos? I signed up with them to do mystery shopping several weeks ago and since then I have not been able to pick up any shops. When I try to apply, I get a message saying my account is deactivated. I emailed them and received the message that my Social Security number has not been verified yet but it’s up to the IRS to do that, and that can take up to 10 days. Since then, I have emailed them a few more times but not gotten any response back. All told, several weeks have elapsed. Is there a current 800 number that anybody knows of? Or I wonder if there is some other issue and they just gave me the Social Security runaround to make me go away? Thanks for any help. It has been several weeks and I have not gotten anywhere with them. Maybe this is the universe telling me some thing lol. I am active on several other platforms.

If you go through the threads on this forum, you will see that you are not the only one having communication issues with Ipsos. If there's an issue with your SSN, you can apply for an EIN (on the IRS website, easy, free, and usually done within moments) and register your account with the EIN instead. I do not know of an 800 number for Ipsos. Good luck!

This is the number listed on their website, but it is unlikely you will have better luck with the phone number than with the email address
Phone: +1-833-782-0500

I've tried calling their toll free number and another non toll free number with the same result -- no answer and straight to voice mail. I thought they said it was supposed to be better than emailing them, but it isn't.

You can call 833-782-0500 Monday-Friday

Karen we all love you (promise!), but no one answers that number or returns messages left in the attached voicemail box. The only actual way to get someone at IPSOS to respond (you and other schedulers being the notable exception) is to either message them on Facebook or go to Carey Medina directly. 100% shouldn't be this way and its not with a single other MSC, but asking people to keep calling an unmonitored phone number just adds to frustration.

Hi,
So the thing is that isn't true - they answer all the emails, or forward them to a scheduler if there is one and return all phone calls. The phone is not unmonitored and a human answers during business hours.
Every time a shopper has emailed me with specifics of emails or phone calls not answered - they always have been responded to and I have seen them. Perhaps they go to spam, or I really don't know, but I hear what you are saying, but from my end, every time I have checked out a specific person and their specific emails I have seen that they have been responded to. Shoppers may not get an immediate response, because there are tons and tons of emails, but they are all responded to.
If you have a case where that hasn't happened, email carey.medina@ipsos.com and she will look into it and take care of it. I myself am forwarded tons of emails from that email address for shops that I schedule.
And of course I can only speak from my experience, but I have never looked into one that wasn't responded to. I will also say that shoppers email that email address and say they have emailed me several times and haven't gotten a response - and I can always come up with the response that I sent (unless it was maybe 1 hour later). i go to peoples spam ALL the time - so there can be some of that as well.
So as a shopper - I still recommend that email address and give it 24 hours and then email again -- or call. The phones are only answered during business hours, so after that leave a message.
And if you have this happen often - I would let Carey know that as well - Carey I have emailed 4 times with various issues this past month and never got any response. I promise you that is not what is supposed to be happening and Carey and her team really really do work hard to get back to everyone.
There are zillions of shoppers, so there are times it gets really overloaded but they all work very hard to help shoppers.

When my account was deactivated without warning because I had the audacity of warning shoppers of issues I had with Ipsos, I emailed Carey Medina and never received an answer. The email dates back to February 16. We are June 4th, and I never received the courtesy of an answer.

Hi,
If you never received an answer, what makes you feel you were deactivated for warning shoppers of issues that you had?
And I have absolutely no knowledge of the specifics of your particular situation, and I am not saying that isn't the reason, but there are a lot of shoppers who tell other shoppers issues that they have had and they still shop with us.
If you sent 1 email on 2/16 it is possible that that one went to spam, was lost, etc., so I might have emailed again.

Hi Karen,

I suddenly became unable to self-assign postal shops on Insta Presto shops, and the message I received on Insta Presto when trying was that I had been blocked from self-assigning those shops. So, I reached out to the mystery.shopping@ipsos.com email, since those shops were handled by Ipsos on the Shopmetrics saide and here is below the answer I received.

I reached out to Carey and explained myself, and asked to understand why an issue with one client of Ipsos got me deactivated from all other clients, all this without warning. I never received an answer.

I could carry on sending emails to Carey, but as other shoppers had pointed out, a general feeling is that Ipsos never answers emails, so it makes it feel useless to continue trying.
--------------------

From: NA Mystery Shopping <Mystery.Shopping@Ipsos.com>
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2023 6:36 PM
To: Charles H. Moarbes <charlhenri@hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: Blocked from claiming

Hi Charles,



Thanks for reaching out. Based on your reviews encouraging others not to work with us, it appears your account has been temporarily deactivated. To be considered for reinstatement, please reach out directly to carey.medina@ipsos.com



Best regards,

Ipsos Shopper Support Team

ok thanks - so it is one of 2 things I would guess - Carey didn't receive the email, or didn't respond because she decided not to remove the deactivation.
I, of course, a not involved in that type of thing unless a shopper emails me with an issue, and I can honestly say I have never known Carey to just not respond - absolutely not saying that didn't happen with you of course!

I completely understand, and I am not pointing fingers are you at all. I'm merely demonstrating that, no matter the reason (whether Carey received that email or decided not to remove the deactivation), I never received an answer - which was the point of this thread: some of us never receive answers from Ipsos, and that ends up having a negative impact on the image of the company, should Ipsos be worried by their image.

I never had, in 10 years of shopping, a similar experience. Some of my shops were rejected, and I always received 1) an opportunity to explain why the guidelines were not followed, 2) a formal email rejecting my the shop. I have never been deactivated by any other company than Ipsos, so I don't know if other companies decide to deactivate shoppers without letting them know. Whatever reason the company has to deactivate a shopper, I find it to be a poor managerial behavior to not let the person know.

All the companies that I have worked for have deactivated shoppers without telling them and a few of them would not tell the shopper why even when they asked (not ipsos). Since we are independent contractors these companies can decide not to partner with us at any time.
I was deactivated by a company and I emailed them over and over - never knew why. Years later I scheduled for them briefly and found out that it was because I was a scheduler for another company so they deactivated me, but for years I didn't get any response as to why.
I am sorry you had that experience and didn't get a response one way or another, I know that is frustrating and agree, that is never the goal to have unanswered emails.

Well, maybe they are working on the communication because of their huge growth. Because on one of their fuel shops that changed to ISF format only, the email notification states: "We are 1000% here for you regardless of this change..." It seems like they are aware of the need to be available and respond. Hopefully, that part will get beefed up. Hopefully.

Yes I feel that 100% that that is something to continue to work on and that they are aware it needs to get better. So fingers crossed!

@charlhenri wrote:

Hi Charles,



Thanks for reaching out. Based on your reviews encouraging others not to work with us, it appears your account has been temporarily deactivated. To be considered for reinstatement, please reach out directly to carey.medina@ipsos.com



Best regards,

Ipsos Shopper Support Team

WHAT????

I just scrolled through your posts here on the forum in the last few years and can honestly say that I found no effort on your part to discourage shoppers. Your comments were certainly not anti-Ipsos and definitely not as negative as other posts. Did you take out a full page newspaper ad? Picket one of their workshops? I doubt it. That seems like some paranoid reasoning on their part. Of course I don't know the whole story. My own de-activation may be next!

I must have said something that was too true at some point lol - it's mostly the lack of communication that I find inappropriate. I get it that as IC we're disposable goods, but severing a relationship of a few years like this is never a good business practice. But there's a silver lining in everything, I rearranged my MSC activity with other companies with which I have long-standing relationships, and while I'll miss some of the Ipsos shops, I do make more money now with other MSCs. There are enough competitors out there to work with...

Reviews aren't just on this forum. I do some jobs with them here and there, have not had any major issues.

Like the last comment here - there are many other companies to work with. Sometimes we pigeonhole ourselves without realizing it. It is good to get out of our "regular" companies and see what else is out there.

Based on the responses from Ipsos, they monitor this forum:
[www.trustpilot.com]

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2023 08:51PM by joanna81.

Thank you - but if you don’t mind, could you edit your message and remove the link to the review as it contains my real name. While I don’t mind having my name on the review, obviously, I would prefer my identity not be divulged without my consent. Thanks

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2023 08:19PM by charlhenri.

The link goes to all the reviews for Ipsos, not specifically your's, I do think it is valuable info for shoppers to know that the company in question appears to monitor/read reviews there. In the event there's another shopper who has an issue, that might be a place they can try to post to get to a resolution.

@charlhenri wrote:

Thank you - but if you don’t mind, could you edit your message and remove the link to the review as it contains my real name. While I don’t mind having my name on the review, obviously, I would prefer my identity not be divulged without my consent. Thanks

I'm worried about Ipsos' retaliation tbh lol

from the looks of it they could see from your review that you said you weren't going to work with them, and they said that they respect your decision, so removed your account, and I would guess? that that would be the end of it? I would hope

Well, at least your spelling and grammar were stellar compared to the other posters!

Karen, their response came after I deleted my account when I saw that Casey was never going to reply Of .course, by then, when they answered the review, it showed that my account was deactivated by myself. That's what happens when they take forever to answer, as highlighted many many times in this forum lol

But yes, that is the end of it - and at least those reviews reassured me that I was not the only one having issues with them. I appreciate you trying to explain things, I still am appalled by the way they do business and it's definitely for the best to end the collaboration there.

@sestrahelena wrote:

Well, at least your spelling and grammar were stellar compared to the other posters!

Thank you - this means a lot to me as English is not my native language and I always make extra efforts to make sure I write properly - you just made my day!

Your awesome mrs. Karen

Maybe this is just too logical, and probably someone at IPSOS will get mad at the suggestion, but why can't a company with $3B in revenue and 13% operating margins simply hire a few customer service reps (60K a year, maybe 80K fully burdened...meaning including benefits) to answer the phone or emails? US Growth is 25% YoY, so investing in a few people here would be in line with normal operating practices - when your business grows, your headcount should grow proportionally. Instead, IPSOS has made most projects self assign (which as a shopper is great, but which means they no longer have the expense or experience of schedulers). There are so many frustrated shoppers in the US and UK, which would be addressed by someone(s) who could answer an email (current response rates is less than 30%, average response time is over 3 Days - neither of these work for time-bound project work, nor approach industry standards) or a phone call? Umpteenth reports and examples that show that happy employees produce great work, and while shoppers are just contractors, the logic would still apply. I truly don't get it! I will only do IPSOS shops that I've done before where I am 99% sure I'll never need to ask a question. It is not as if IPSOS can't afford to invest in some resources, or even if they did so, the impact to their bottom line would be completely without notice.

Ipsos does have a team that answers emails and phone calls.

But, yet they don't actually do so. I appreciate your steadfast loyalty to them but there are hundreds of posts here and other forums complaining about the lack of response. Maybe they need more people, better tools, training, a sense of urgency, ownership, leadership. I don't know...but whats in place is not working. I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.

The thing is that they do - emails sent to mystery.shopping@ipsos.com are answered and there are people answering the phones Monday-Friday during business hours. Again - anyone who has ever said this to me and emailed me their info - I have been shown that they did get a response.
I am not saying that that is not your experience, but shoppers will say they didn't get a response and they have missed it or it is in spam. And yes, I would also imagine that there are some that slip through the cracks, but not intentionally.
Shoppers may want a faster response or they may not like the response that they receive and feel it isn't helpful and clear but it's just simply not true that they don't respond to emails or answer the phone.
I am not saying that improvement cannot be made - of course it can. But the perception that emails and phones are never answered and that Ipsos doesn't seem to care that this is happening is just incorrect. There is a team of very hard working people who answer the emails and the phones and try and respond to everyone as quickly as they can.
Again - I 100% understand the frustration of not being able to get an answer when you need it - sometimes you are at a shop or ready to go do it and have an immediate question so it is frustrating if you cannot get someone at that time.
As far as posts on this forum - frustrated or upset shoppers tend to post the most on here - asking for help, what should I do, etc - and often they will post that an issue was resolved, but often they do not, and the issue has been resolved. Which is fine of course, they still had the issue.
And yes, you are right, in the end we have to agree to disagree, I just really do hate to see that perception when I know how hard they are working to make this issue better.