I recently went on a fine dining assignment and a few hours later, I began having chest pains, I waited several hours more before deciding I should visit the hospital. Before I left, I remembered that my report was due, even though I was in serious pain. Thus, I chose to complete my report, however, it was now late, but I did get it done. But I probably will not get paid. So I guess I'll be out $150.00. Secondly, I accepted another restaurant assignment with an allottment of $60. There was no way that my guest and I could eat at this restaurant on $60, and it was mandatory that dessert was required, which I my credit card could not hold, as I only had $60 left on it at that time (they did not receive my most recent payment). The check was approximately $20 over the allotted $60, plus tip, plus parking, plus the dreaded gas. All of this means that I paid for this assignment. Then I came home and began completing this lenghty report and my then brand new all in one printer just died on me. I worked with my printer provider, who told me it was a hardware issue, it was a new printer and that they would replace it, thus, I could not submit my report timely. I retyped this lenghty report three times, in an effort to get it submitted before realizing it was a hardware issue, and kept my scheduler informed as to my status. He finally cut off communication with me. Does this mean my ratings with other schedulers will fall or have fallen with these two incidents that were beyond my control? PLEASE LET ME KNOW I'M THE NEWBEE ON THE BLOCK. THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR ANY INFORMATION YA'LL CAN PROVIDE THIS SOUTHERN BELLE!

I'm sorry about your problems and it does sound like you will be paying those jobs out of your own pocket. Keep your receipts, though, as they will be deductible as a business expense on your taxes even though the reports were not accepted and paid/reimbursed. Stuff happens. Your experience is one of the reasons why many MSPs will not assign high reimbursement shops to newbies and I always advise newbies to never do a job with a reimbursement they can't afford to lose.

In the first case you didn't mention if you had contacted or attempted to contact the scheduler. It might or might not have done any good since the visit was complete, but it might keep you from being marked as an "unreliable shopper".

All the mystery shopping companies are in a bind themselves with late reports because they won't get paid if the results aren't sent on to the client quickly. Deadlines loom all up and down the pecking order. I have one editor who generally gets back to me within an hour and a half of when I submit a dinner report. When I don't get finished until 1AM, she still will have an approval or request for more information in my mailbox by 2-2:30AM. Although I could wait until the next day to respond, I usually stay up until I hear from her so she can get to bed too. One of the hotel/resort places I do reports for must have the information to the client 24 hours after I check out. That means I need to find an internet connection to finish the checkout and departure part of the report usually within 4-5 hours and get the entire report uploaded, including massive narrative and photographs. I've just about missed plane connections in airports because the upload is going slowly and I won't be on the ground again until after the deadline. And if I am late, everybody else has to work overtime.

If you scheduled these shops directly with the mystery shopping companies, you may still be okay with other companies. If you scheduled them with a scheduling company, you may be declined for jobs with any of the companies they schedule for. A reputation is hard to build and easy to damage.

Generally for a restaurant shop you will be required to purchase specific types of items. Failure to purchase any of the requirements or tip at least the minimum required amount will invalidate your shop. I rarely accept restaurant shops from Second to None or from Bestmark because a quick trip to the menu on the client website will show you that their reimbursement will cover only half to two thirds of the required purchases (at least in my market). Life is a little short for just a subsidized meal and a long report.

Equipment failure will always be a problem and requires creativity. I have an old printer/scanner I keep around as a backup. I can take photos of receipts with a digital camera that are legible (and CPIs in a bind). I have both a laptop and a desktop and if one is flaky, I can still use the other. Our internet connection is by satellite and goes out when there is heavy cloud cover. I know a half dozen businesses in my area where I can sit in their parking lot and catch enough of an internet signal to do a report. There are also the restaurants, including an all night IHOP that have free internet access for customers, so I have enjoyed coffee and pie until 3AM putting in reports. Then there is FedEx/Kinkos where you can rent time on their computers 24/7 and of course the public libraries if you have needs during their open hours. One in my area has even made their internet access wireless. And when all else fails, I have thrown myself on the mercy of a nearby hotel where they were amused enough by my plight that they didn't make me rent a room to get a passcode for their wireless access.

Schedulers and editors hear excuses all day, every day. Almost every call or email is a request for an exception of some sort. Remember to take a minute from time to time to drop them a short, warm fuzzy note. Keep it short and sweet and completely without demands or requests. It will help make their day.

Hi Flash, thanks so much for your reply, it certainly helped me, it was quite informative. I was ready to throw in the towel. However, I like mystery shopping. I did keep in touch with the scheduler in the first situation and in the second the scheduler simply cut off communication with me. Again, your feedback was most informative and I shall take your suggestions to heart and move forward with them. You certainly sound as if you have mystery shopping figured out, how long have you been mystery shopping, how long before one is no longer considered a newbee?

While this stuff certainly isn't rocket science, it is not grade school either. Independent contractors are just that--independently employeed persons who have taken on the responsibility for getting and performing a task to specifications for pay. My best guess is that you are no longer a newbie when you realize you have to think on your feet and get the job done and discover that your minor improvisations were acceptable to the company and the client and realize you can generally trust your instincts. As far as a company is concerned, you are a newbie with them until you have proven yourself to be responsible and reliable. Some companies may require more successful shops to get off their "newbie" list than others. Every time I sign up with a new-to-me MSP I am a "newbie" as far as they are concerned. If their standard is request only for their "newbies", that is what I will see as well. If after a dozen successful shops you get to self-assign, that is what I will see as well. Many of them require a certain score or rating with them to take on certain jobs. There I may have an advantage because having written a lot of reports I am more likely to get higher scores on my first shops for them--but that is not guaranteed because they may have their own style agenda which they sort of forgot to tell shoppers about. (Prime example: Survey says Name or physical description. You put in the name, you get an editor email saying you failed to give the physical description, you just lost 2 points yet the survey said 'name or . . .' not 'name and . . .' so at least you know for next time.)

I started mystery shopping back in the mid 1960s when it was done through little local 'market research' companies. I did it during vacations from high school and college. It was a lot different then both in terms of the clients and the types of jobs. Much of the work was for brand names such as Oscar Mayer who in those days offered price breaks based on the number of "faces" their products were given in the meat section. We would go into a store with whom they had an agreement and count the "faces" of their brand, sometimes with a purchase requirement but most often making some small purchase anyway so that we would not be obvious. We did a lot of telephone surveys based on lists gathered from contest entrants. But I have only been back shopping since I took early retirement a few years back.

miakia95--

Did you have to type these reports and scan them in, mail them in, or submit them right on the website?

Anytime you have to do a long narrative, do it in Word, and set the Tools>Options> Save to "1 minute" That way you'll never lose more than a minute's worth of work. When it's done, save the doc and copy and paste it into your report. If you do lose your report, at least you won't have to retype the long narratives.

If you're relying on a computer for work, you need spare hardware. I keep an extra printer in the closet for emergencies, and it uses the same cartridges as my primary one. If you keep 2 diff printers, keep the spare cartridges UNOPENED and at room temperature. A single function printer can be bought for $40 on sale, after you make few dollars shopping.

I also have two computers, but everyone can't afford that. I have my entire hard drive backed up onto this second one, but you might be satisfied with just backing up your data regularly or backing up your hard drive to an external USB hard drive.

The external USB hard drives are indeed a godsend. I used to always make sure I installed a second hard drive in my desktop computer to back up data really quickly and easily. Then if one hard drive died (the most frequent computer hardware disaster) the other hard drive was ready to go. While I still keep a second drive in the desktop machine, I have picked up two of the external USP drives when they had a good sale clearing out the smaller capacity ones (we are up to 1 TB drives for under $200 these days, so the 250 GB which are only 1/4 of that capacity are clearanced very inexpensively if you can still find one). Twice a year I back up my entire desktop machine--New Years and the June 1 beginning of hurricane season--and swap out the drive stored in the zip lock plastic freezer bag in my safety deposit box. If my house burns down or gets washed away or my computer is stolen, I at least have the records up to less than 6 months before the disaster.