got a lead on a shop

Remember i said i am just starting out. Well, this morning i found a shop on Shoppers Critique. it is close to my house and I was very excited, so i requested it. How will I know that I got it. They haven't emailed me and i did see a place for me to find out. I would appreciate any help

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Hi Cindy57:

Congratulations on becoming a member of the mystery shop community. Requesting a mystery shop doesn't always guarantee that you will get it. If the scheduler does accept you, they will usually notify you by e-mail informing you that you have been accepted and the details of the shop. The only other mystery shopping company that I know of that you will notify you that you have been accepted for an assignment is Market Force formally known as Shop n Check and they also own Certified Reports and Certified Merchandising Associates. Good luck on your new venture.

I'm either notified by email almost immediately or once I accept the shop the page turns to my assignment page and there it is listed. Then they send me a reminder a couple days ahead of schedule.

I do a lot of apartment shops and they send an email saying "there are shops in your area" and the link to get to the shops. Then once I accept the shop it automatically takes me to my assignment page.
There are no reminders for apartment shops but I'm kept pretty busy getting everythng I need to do the shop. Not likely I will forget something like that. :-)

chancesrwrote:

"Market Force formally known as Shop n Check and they also own Certified Reports and Certified Merchandising Associates"

this where I start to get confused, how do you keep track of who and how many different names are attached to one company-taking notes does help but w/ o you guys so willing to share I would have given up by now.
dee

For me it is easy--I don't work for the various old Certifieds so my records just show 'Market Force' for the shops I do through the Shop n Chek portal. My bookmarks still say 'Shop n Chek' and 'Speedmark' and 'SG Marketing' because that makes them easier for me to find, though probably next year I will have been integrated enough into the new system they will go by the new name and there will be a fresh bunch of 'mergers' and 'buyouts' to deal with

Flash I thought of the mergers & buy outs right after I posted...something to keep in mind as my anal organizational mind tries to put all this together that makes sense to me.
dee

Then there will always be the year end client shuffle. After the beginning of the year you will see a bunch of clients you expect to see with one MSP are no longer there and/or the same/similar shops are being posted by other MSPs. Just this past week I have noted two clients I thoroughly disliked the MSPs that shopped them are now being offered by more shopper friendly MSPs. Quick, change the list of who shops whom!!

During all of 2008 I never found who was shopping a particular bank that has been really productive for me in the past. Yes, I found a couple of competitor shops, but not the bank itself as a steady client. One of my favorite restaurant shops has not been posted by their MSP for two months, so I have to assume they have either halted shops or moved elsewhere, though I haven't found them yet.

This is a business in a constant state of flux. One of the benefits of the forums is that they give you a heads up on changes. What companies are not paying on schedule, what clients have moved, what companies have either changed ownership (or disappeared entirely), what companies have suddenly become a pain to work for.

Twice, I have received the new MSP's name from the clients. Would it be kosher to ask the client who their new MSP is, if other avenues are unsuccessful?

Yes Flash yrs ago when i first started MS i don't think there were forums if there was I wasn't aware of them...sure makes my life easier....thanks to good people like you.
dee

Mert Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Twice, I have received the new MSP's name from the
> clients. Would it be kosher to ask the client who
> their new MSP is, if other avenues are
> unsuccessful?

It has been known to happen

The few times I have tried, only once have I gotten a straight answer. Similarly I have asked a couple of companies who shops them and have been told that they were 'shopped monthly' by XYZ msp which never has any shops. MSP won't tell me either if they ever shop the client. So who knows? By far the best information I have gleaned is by taking the time to check clients nationwide for MSPs from time to time and from chatting with other shoppers on forums. Even if they give no direct hints, from their other comments you can usually tell who they are talking about.

Flash--considering that bank went belly-up, I don't expect they're paying for shoppers any more. LOL

You would be surprised how many are still being shopped. I guess bail out funds weren't so necessary for some of them

I wonder if their accountants are categorizing the bail out funds as 'windfall profit' or 'outstanding debt'?

Didn't Wells Fargo buy them out? I still see the old name on the banks.

The government gave Citigroup the right to buy them out and then Wells Fargo came in with a bid for the bank at approximately 2X what the government granted Citi the privilege to buy out at. Citi was irate, declared the Wells Fargo offer illegal for the bank to take. Citi was going to take it to court if the bank accepted the Wells Fargo offer. I don't know where that stands but since there has had to be a second specific 'infusion' of taxpayer cash into Citi, I am not sure they have a leg to stand on as evidently they were NOT a 'ready, willing and able' buyer. In any event, the change over of the bank would not occur until 2009 anyway.

I find it fascinating that through all this slop, Wells Fargo seems to have been about the only well run bank that played by the rules, used 'prudent man' standards for risk in lending and is about the only major bank not lined up at the trough for taxpayer funds. It must irk them enormously to have their competitors all surviving bad management and banking practices with taxpayer money.

HI banks were also prudent, and have been written up for weathering the storm due to this. This probably has something to do with the lesser foreclosure rate here than some other places. However, s--t is hitting the fan big time here with the lack of "visitors", and there have been a tone of people looking for work in the last month or so, when previously we had one of the lowest if not the lowest unemployment rate in the nation.

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“Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling."
~Gilbert K. Chesterton

Yes, we are sweating the absence of "snowbirds" here as well. There are no lines hanging out the doors of restaurants. You can easily find a place to park in virtually any mall parking lot. The roads are almost as civil as summer time etc. We will probably have many many restaurants and retailers close down after the beginning of the year.

Amazingly, you can get a reservation almost anywhere here right now, and the Sheraton Waikiki had $650 dollar Ocean Front rooms for $199 a night, even on Christmas day, which is unheard of. We were all set to pay our bucks and spend Xmas eve there in one of those, when we got the pay cut. Luckily we had not done it due to lack of time. Now, as my husband says, if we had, it would be our last farewell to living high on the hog. I burst out laughing. I was like,
"I doubt anyone would consider our standard of living before in that category, but compared to this, now, it is!" We were just going to spend Xmas on the sands of Waikiki. Instead of being able to view it very distantly from the balcony we might not have when we pitch tents and join the working homeless here in January. :-) The only places with lines still in Waikiki are Cheesecake Factory and Yard House. For the former, I keep asking myself why everyone including my husband loves this place. Its okay to me, nothing special. Not worth a two hours wait, especially when if I were a "visitor" I could go much better places not found in my home town for less hassle, wait, and better food for the same price. :-)

dee shops Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
Not worth a two hours wait, especially
> when if I were a "visitor" I could go much better
> places not found in my home town for less hassle,
> wait, and better food for the same price. :-)

I always wonder about that as well here. The worst of the lines usually are at Olive Garden, Macaroni' Grill, Outback and Carrabba's. There are purely local eateries and chains that are both local and regional that offer more interesting fare. My guess is that with pages and pages of choices in the yellow pages it is just too overwhelming to choose so visitors go to what they know.

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