Wow - Customer Impact has sunk to a new low. We all know their penchant for lowballing on the fees, but a certain project manager is extra-stingy. I just received this email regarding a client that I do locations for each month and have for several years:

"Due to limited resources and being out of the office this week and some of next, I will be posting ALL locations for [client name redacted] on the job board. Feel free to apply to any you have completed in the past.

This is also a good way for us to get locations staffed at lower rate for the new year. You will not be receiving any prestaff emails for this round. Locations will be 1st come basis as this email is being sent out to several reps in the area.

Let me know if you have any questions and I will get back to you a soon as I can. Apps will be assigned later today.

Blessing to you and your families ❤ Happy New Year!"

Seriously? The $12 I make for these shops is fair based on the time and effort required. The standard $9 Customer Impact pay you'll now offer me is insulting.

But hey, happy new year! Good luck feeding your family!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2023 09:09PM by drdoggie00.

Some of the staff totally get why I need more and others are oblivious to how far some of the locations are from anywhere. I had one person send me a offer for a $9 shop and the location was a 57 mile round trip from my house. I send them back my offer, they decline it and unusually it will sit on the board for weeks until it goes up.

I found it highly insulting to say, "This is also a good way for us to get locations staffed at lower rate for the new year." How could she think that's an appropriate thing to say?

To follow that up with blessings and happy new year? Totally insensitive.

Perhaps @dprice will chime in on this one.

i know what you mean, it was misplaced… no one is going to want your “well wishes” after you basically tell us the company’s objective for the new year is to pay us even less. i miss Lyndsie Theiss. feels like the overall vibe has shifted a bit since she left and some others have stepped up as project managers. CI has been one of my favorites since i started, but i feel like i put in too many miles, and have completed too many assignments to be lowballed. on another note, has anyone done the wholesale club sticker jobs? i asked them if they could send me the guidelines but never heard back. pay on those is decent

I ask for higher fees as well and when they tell me no, I say ok, no thanks. $9 in pay is absolutely ridiculous and the thing is, people will often take those jobs at that rate and it kills me because then I have less chance at a higher rate.

Sorry, jay, can't help you with that one. Those aren't in my area.

Also, why isn't anyone checking applications over the break? I guess they don't really want the jobs done by tomorrow.

CI was one of my favorite MSCs but I haven't worked for them since they pivoted to merchandising.

I don't blame any MSC or scheduler for trying to maximize profits as long as it is done skillfully and professionally. That scheduler's email is clueless and unnecessarily crass.

Y'all know that saying "it's not personal, it's just business"? There's another old saying: "You get what you pay for." I will no longer go out of my way to provide extra photos and notes about what may be happening in the stores as it relates to the client. Nope. If you're going to pay me a bare-bones fee, you're going to get bare-bones results.

I hate like hell that I need this job as badly as I do, but I can't afford to pass up the pay at even $9 per location. This just makes me want to cry. :`(



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/30/2023 10:59PM by drdoggie00.

I am sorry.

It's good that you will no longer reward CI. I generally provide free extras only to a few companies. They pay fairly and treat shoppers professionally.

The following is, at least, my second recounting, but it addresses the fee situation.

The year I completed my first shop, 2003, I also stumbled upon the Volition forum. One of the first posts I accessed dealt with the lowering of fees. Now, a score later, the situation has continued to frustrate many folks. The owners of some MSCs are acutely aware of the desperate plight of a percentage of shoppers and exploit that need.

I completed my only job for CI nine yrs. ago. so I do not have experience by which to judge the company. However, from 2005 to 2007, I was contracted with SpeedMark Web and Shop 'n' Chek, two predecessors, completing 27 shops at an acceptable fee. That was then and this is now. I was an utter failure as a full timer, but quite successful as a situational shopper. My plan, though, requires one to be perfectly content passing unless they will considerably profit from the task.

Due to my eye sight and brain problems late at night, this edit will include a single word needed in the original post. In addition, going forward I will never post after 18:00.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/31/2023 12:32PM by shopperbob.

@shopperbob wrote:

The following is, at least, my second recounting, but it addresses the fee situation.

The year I completed my first shop, 2003, I also stumbled upon the Volition forum. One of the first posts I accessed dealt with the lowering of fees. Now, a score later, the situation has continued to frustrate many folks. The owners of some MSCs are acutely aware of the desperate plight of a percentage of shoppers and exploit that need.

I completed my only job for CI nine yrs. ago. so I do not have experience by which to judge the company. However, from 2005 to 2007, I was contracted with SpeedMark Web and Shop 'n' Chek, two predecessors, completing 27 shops at an acceptable fee. That was then and this is now. I was an utter failure as a full timer, but quite successful as a situational shopper. My plan, though, requires one to be perfectly content unless they will considerably profit from the task.

I get it, bob. I truly do. As a general rule, many (not all) MSCs view us as disposable, faceless, nameless, interchangeable minions who scurry around like cockroaches, grabbing at every dollar dangled in front of us like a carrot and doing the grunt work their employees would never lower themselves to do. I think that's true with Customer Impact and especially true with this specific scheduler. All of these folks need to take a moment to realize that without us, they would not have their jobs.

If you've ever seen the movie Office Space, imagine Lumbergh walking over to her desk and saying, "Yeaaaah, in 2024, I'm gonna need you to do the same amount of work for 25% less pay, okay? And hey, Happy New Year!" I'm sure she wouldn't like it. That's exactly what she's expecting of us.

When I first started, I mistakenly gave one MSP free intel about a shop location that had closed and did not realize I should've taken the job and gotten something for it. That free info generated a zero return for me. I got an oh yeah thanks for telling me that location was closed a couple of emails later.

Another time I told another MSP that went the cheap way that the person didn't do an accurate job. I sent them images and I got a thank you from the scheduler.

In both cases and there were a couple more, no good or benefit came of it. In the two examples above I asked the first one if they could assign me something else in the area and he told me no it was out of his hands. In the second example, they sent a mass email on opportunities, and I responded a minute later applying for a couple or locations and still was not assigned.

Shopper Bob pointed out in another thread this weekend that some job was paying the same today as it did 17 years ago. I am sure they've tacked on a little more work too.

In the beginning I thought these companies would reciprocate good info and thorough work. It is obvious that they don't. No more Mr. Nice Guy. When I get the rare highly bonused shop, then I will put in some extra work in the form of images or narrative.

In the case of CI, they are putting at risk their golden goose by trying to do the job as cheap as possible. They will get sub par effort at base and lower pay range. If the client does their own channel checks and sees out of date items on the shelf where the work was reported as done, the client will have tough questions and could send their business elsewhere. If they lose that client just to save a few bucks, CI will find out how costly going on the cheap can be.

@Momomomo wrote:

In the case of CI, they are putting at risk their golden goose by trying to do the job as cheap as possible. They will get sub par effort at base and lower pay range. If the client does their own channel checks and sees out of date items on the shelf where the work was reported as done, the client will have tough questions and could send their business elsewhere. If they lose that client just to save a few bucks, CI will find out how costly going on the cheap can be.

Thank you for this, Momo. I appreciate it.

Good morning all,

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season. This was brought to my attention last week and we have already begun addressing it. This is not how we want to present any of our projects for you or our clients. While the team keeping their budgets down is always important, it should always come secondary to finding an acceptable rate for you all that do such a great job and we should always be emphasizing loyalty and quality over the bottom line.

Please accept my apologies and we will be immediately reinforcing this with not only this Project Manager, but the entire operations team.

As always, if you need anything or want to reach out to me directly any time, please email me at dprice@customerimpactinfo.com or PM me on here (which some of you do and I appreciate!)

Daniel Price
Chief Operating Officer
Customer Impact, LLC
dprice@customerimpactinfo.com

The different MSC that now has BJ's is going in the wrong direction for 2024. Just lowered their already low $5 fee to $4.

I have been shopping with CI for many years and have had a generally good experience. Fortunately, my area doesn’t have the low fees others have mentioned and they seemed fair and easy to work with.

But I have not had a great experience with the newer staff in the last year or two. There’s one scheduler in particular that takes forever to assign shops. This is super annoying for the shops that have an early cut off time and can only be M-F (even for those shops where they send out a last call emails for). There have also been multiple times schedulers have not appropriately assigned locations in GSC. I was really frustrated this weekend on a shop that was absolutely due on the due date and was a high paying shop. I drove 50 miles one way to get there only for the shop to not be assigned properly and I couldn’t reach anyone. On Tuesday after the holiday (which I didn’t know CI was closed for) I didn’t even get a response from the scheduler after frantically trying to reach out to someone to help me with the shop the day before. I only got an email that the shop was cancelled on Tuesday. GSC even noted it wasn’t assigned properly and crickets. It’s really sad because I really used to enjoy the merchandising shops and I feel like these things it so difficult for me to continue shopping with them because I legit wasted a whole day. The prior staff was so much better than the staff that handles shops in my area now.

Good morning ndp...

If you would like, shoot me an email at dprice@customerimpactinfo.com with a little more info about both situations and I will address it directly with my team. We're always looking for teaching moments to continue to improve.

Thanks!

Daniel Price
Chief Operating Officer
Customer Impact, LLC
dprice@customerimpactinfo.com

@ndp1234 wrote:

I have been shopping with CI for many years and have had a generally good experience. Fortunately, my area doesn’t have the low fees others have mentioned and they seemed fair and easy to work with.

But I have not had a great experience with the newer staff in the last year or two. There’s one scheduler in particular that takes forever to assign shops. This is super annoying for the shops that have an early cut off time and can only be M-F (even for those shops where they send out a last call emails for). There have also been multiple times schedulers have not appropriately assigned locations in GSC. I was really frustrated this weekend on a shop that was absolutely due on the due date and was a high paying shop. I drove 50 miles one way to get there only for the shop to not be assigned properly and I couldn’t reach anyone. On Tuesday after the holiday (which I didn’t know CI was closed for) I didn’t even get a response from the scheduler after frantically trying to reach out to someone to help me with the shop the day before. I only got an email that the shop was cancelled on Tuesday. GSC even noted it wasn’t assigned properly and crickets. It’s really sad because I really used to enjoy the merchandising shops and I feel like these things it so difficult for me to continue shopping with them because I legit wasted a whole day. The prior staff was so much better than the staff that handles shops in my area now.

Hi Daniel,

You know I don't get on here very often as I would rather be working but something led me here tonight 3/27/24. The Project Manager in question here really rubbed me the wrong way with her holiday email and lack of sensitivity. I addressed it as best I could with her but I feel like I have a been penalized and punished because of what I had to say. Two of the schedulers there seemed to have just discounted any past relationship I have had with certain projects after this fiasco and just flat out stopped giving me work afterwards. I feel like a grudge is being held against me. I also feel like they just flat out lied to me when it came to pre-staffing shops as well. This had led me to just move away from those individuals and just not even reply to their emails any longer. I noticed today that at least one of those schedulers is no longer with the company and I sort of smirked when I heard this.

I have always been grateful for the work and fun times I had / have with C.I. but over the past several months, the vibe just seems different now.

I used to do a bunch of stuff for them.

I quit while onsite when a "30-minute" slipper merchandising job was going to take more like 2 hours and they refused to change the pay.

@CoolMusic wrote:

I used to do a bunch of stuff for them.

I quit while onsite when a "30-minute" slipper merchandising job was going to take more like 2 hours and they refused to change the pay.

I'm pretty much up that point when my 15-20 minute replenishment was actually an almost 3hr reset.....

@viv0412 wrote:

@CoolMusic wrote:

I used to do a bunch of stuff for them.

I quit while onsite when a "30-minute" slipper merchandising job was going to take more like 2 hours and they refused to change the pay.

I'm pretty much up that point when my 15-20 minute replenishment was actually an almost 3hr reset.....

Were these a truck stop thing?

@weatherman2111 wrote:

Were these a truck stop thing?

Nope. They were in a major grocery company's "marketplace" stores.

They've grossly underestimated the amount of time their projects take for well over a year, and there have been a number of issues like mentioned above with jobs not being in GSC, schedulers not responding till late, no weekend staffing, etc.

In some cases, I respond and give feedback that the pay is too low, and in other cases, I feel that they know that, and it's a waste of my time to go through and respond to the lowball offers. I feel bad for other shoppers who might not know what they are getting themselves into, but that's part of this job, and they will unfortunately learn the hard way, just like we all have.

The data issues are frustrating, I've worked with them a while and have figured out how to work around some of it. Recently, I had a project that was assigned on Friday afternoon and was do-able through the weekend. The project never showed up in GSC. I tried emailing the PM on Friday around 6 but I know they close up around 5pm, and generally don't have anyone there on the weekends. I didn't spend time trying to further get in touch with someone or panic. I went on Saturday, took before and after pics, on my phone and emailed it over to the PM. They can finish entering it in GSC if they didn't get it assigned correctly in the first place. I did my part correctly.

@Bob Stone please send me an email if you'd like to provide more details. I would like to look into this for you.

dprice@customerimpactinfo.com

I hate to hear folks are experiencing issues with scheduling or pay adjustments when visits last longer than expected. We always try to have our teams work with you all as best we can when visits don't go as planned. If anyone wants to send me information that I can use as examples to coach and improve our team I will always welcome it.

Daniel Price
Chief Operating Officer
Customer Impact, LLC

@weatherman2111 wrote:

@viv0412 wrote:

@CoolMusic wrote:

I used to do a bunch of stuff for them.

I quit while onsite when a "30-minute" slipper merchandising job was going to take more like 2 hours and they refused to change the pay.

I'm pretty much up that point when my 15-20 minute replenishment was actually an almost 3hr reset.....

Were these a truck stop thing?

Yes

@viv0412 wrote:

@weatherman2111 wrote:

@viv0412 wrote:

@CoolMusic wrote:

I used to do a bunch of stuff for them.

I quit while onsite when a "30-minute" slipper merchandising job was going to take more like 2 hours and they refused to change the pay.

I'm pretty much up that point when my 15-20 minute replenishment was actually an almost 3hr reset.....

Were these a truck stop thing?

Yes

Ahh yeah, all of those projects are several different kinds of awful. Sorry you had to find out the hard way.

Hopefully Dan sees this and addresses the truck stop shops. I've found him to be very responsive to issues if they are brought to his attention.

And they used to have a fantastic scheduler who apparently retired. I can't remember her name right now.

@wrosie wrote:

Hopefully Dan sees this and addresses the truck stop shops. I've found him to be very responsive to issues if they are brought to his attention.

And they used to have a fantastic scheduler who apparently retired. I can't remember her name right now.

I emailed the scheduler right after the shop about this. Absolutely ignored, not a peep of a reply. But I did get an email asking me to go to the location again for the next month's replenishment for something $15
LOL!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/30/2024 07:51PM by viv0412.