Market Force permanently signing me up for assignments without asking me?

I'm wondering if anyone else has had this happen. A couple of weeks ago MF called me up, asking me to do a job at Walmart blowing up balloons. They gave me a bonus, so I said yes, I would do it that particular day.

I completed the job and submitted the report. Imagine my surprise when I go into my "permanent assignments" and that Walmart balloon job was assigned to me permanently! It's a weekly job, they pay is not good and the scheduler had mentioned to me that she can't get anyone to do these jobs.

Pretty sneaky of MF, I think. I went in and cancelled them and for reason I explained that this was a one time only deal.

Has this happened to anyone else?

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It is industry standard with "merchandising" that when you take on an assignment it is going to be routine visits. I understand you thought this was a mystery shop, which functions differently. Once again, a failure of communication adequate to the situation is at play here.

I guess the confusion lies in that the scheduler told me it was "just one time" and then I saw that I was permanently assigned to it.

Flash Wrote:
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> It is industry standard with "merchandising" that
> when you take on an assignment it is going to be
> routine visits. I understand you thought this was
> a mystery shop, which functions differently. Once
> again, a failure of communication adequate to the
> situation is at play here.

I have not found that to be the case. I have never been permanently assigned jobs after I have done one-time merchandising jobs for Marketforce or any other company. There have been a few times in the survey that I have been asked if I am interested in a permanent assignent, but never auto-assigned.

Perhaps not with Market Force, but most of the merchandisers I know who were former shoppers like it because they are permanently assigned and know where they are going and roughly when as well as roughly what they will be doing and for what pay. They often quit when district managers change or have additional work offered to them when others quit. While they may have one time set ups or resets, mostly it is routine, such as restocking the balloons once a week or the sunglasses or the greeting cards, etc.

I'll have to agree with Rainy here, Flash. I have been merchandising for several years and I have never been permanently assigned a job just because I did it one time.

~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~*~~~~~* Shoppin' Mama of 4 lovely & unique girls and Nana to Bella, Delilah and Lincoln, shopping in Oregon and parts of Washington

Only Merchandising company that ever did that to me is Market Force. And once I got hip to it and started saying no to their amazingly low jobs they gave me the boot.

My other merchandising schedulers email and call me often to make sure I am doing a reoccurring assignment. They ask me every month, are you still available to do this.

I've seen the purple ad for the balloon assignment and it's always said it's available for permanent assignment. I've never taken one basically because of past experience with merchandising assignments inside Wallyworld NEVER being as advertised.

An appreciated improvement ~ ~ ~ Mid-July, MFI will begin accepting electronically signed CPIs.

I used the back of the CPI to write my shop notes on. Now, I'll reach for the pile of scrap paper for their shops, as I do for shops with most other MSPs.

I did a 6 week merchandising job for Petsmart. I was told excatly what was involved, had to sign papers, got a work sheet, it was very organized and precise. There were no surprises, received a weekly email, kept in close contact with Co., got paid weekly and knew exactly what was expected of me before taking it.

I have never heard of an MSC assigning permenant merchandsing jobs. I am speculating here, but maybe by accident you signed up for it.

Live consciously....

I hope that is for the mystery shopping side, too.

The electronic cpi submission is for the blue portal. As for being permanently to merchandising jobs by the purple portal this can happen but I believe you must accept and complete the first assignment. I had a ridiculously low fee assignment offered yesterday and the paperwork said this assignment may be available on a permanent basis.

That is different than actually signing you up to do it without your knowledge.

Live consciously....

Irene_L.A. Wrote:
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> That is different than actually signing you up to
> do it without your knowledge.

The original poster said they did the assignment the first time and then found it assigned to them permanently so I believe what I described in my previous post is what happened.

In my situation, I saw the posts for balloons and went right past because of low pay. The scheduler called me and asked if I would do the project. We talked money and I agreed. The store is 7 min. from my house. The project is super easy and I requested to be permanent. They are still paying me what I requested on the first one and now I have 2. I think the 2 key words are "request" and "scheduler." I personally think Market Force "purple" is a great company and the schedulers are super. And as far as the "store" mentioned above, I just signed up 13 projects with them.

vickeet

You have the problem. It is right in the instructions that if you take that shop, you will be permanently assigned. Lots of Marketforce shops have it in the description.

Unless they are super easy and on my route I stay away from purple portal merchandising jobs. However if they call for me to go to the movies for the concession check I always go; yes its just reimbursement and a pepsi but nights like last night when it was still so humid at 7 pm I loved getting into some free AC and took the kid with me to see Mr. Popper's Penquins (and made someone's night as they won both prizes).

I signed up with Marketforce about a month ago....I was interested in merchandising. Since signing up I haven't found a lot of jobs in my area that interest me, but they call all the time. The last time they called, they asked for help with an audit they told me it would be only a couple of items and it would take me no time. I agreed on the phone but when I printed out the forms it was 29 pages! Does this happen to anyone else? Everytime I get a phone call from this company the scheduler lies to me on the phone to get me to agree to the job.

Some of the purple portals jobs are very low pay for a lot of work. I've cancelled a couple of them after reading the full description. I remember once instance at a pretty well known $ store that basically had you counting every fixture and shelf unit in the place plus of course other duties. The complete description was only available after you accepted the job. If I am going to cancel however I try to do it immediately (within minutes)

I got majorly screwed one time putting together an "oh so easy" display at a local theater. I had NEVER done one and they suggested to bring a friend to help me out with this easy job. The display was for THE GREEN LANTERN - all electric and I had no clue what to do. My girlfriend and I were at a loss of what to do, no one at purple portal picked up and I had to have my husband come and help me out do it - which wound up being worthless because the "bonus pay" basically paid said friend to watch my kids while we did this 8 hour job. Never again - they can call until they are blue in the face and I told them I would never ever ever do one again; not just because of the low pay but the lie I was told to sucker me in.

Never happened to me, but I have heard other shoppers complain about schedulers doing that to them. I think that is a great assumption on the part of a scheduler. Especially when they do not know what your schedule might be.

To Suzieboz been there done that never again. After an electric one once I wondered what would happened if it was assembled incorrectly and there was an electrical issue later? Those things are cardboard! Up in smoke pretty. No thanks.

The theater displays (standees) can be VERY elaborate and time consuming. Most of them of them have 3-d effects and many many pieces. Luckily the company I do them for pays for actual time spent on the project. They do say it "should" take x minutes to assemble which is usually pretty unrealistic. The most elaborate was for the movie "Tangled" it was 8' tall 15' wide and 5' deep. It took 2 of us 4 hours to assemble and we're both experienced.
I do this work for a company called Mosaic.

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Market Force permanently signing me up for assignments without asking me?

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