When I was awarding a genuine winner, people asked what was going on, and the woman i was awarding explained. They ran inside, grabbed decals, came out, slapped them on their car, and demanded a gift card.

I consider that cheating, but I took their info and picture anyway. Going to email and ask if they should be included in my survey.

they didnt have the decals directly at the pumps? As long as they
stuck it fully on then it is okay. Those things dont come
off easily. The sunoco stations I go to here always have the decals
right at every pump on the front of it.

They did, but the people got them from inside. Well, two of them did, and passed them out to other people.

it didn't feel right.

BBird0701, I had a similar experience where the attendant began slapping decals on every car. It wasn't in a great neighborhood and it actually became really intimidating for me as people were lining up to claim their gift card. This blocked the pumps for arriving customers to use and it became chaotic. To ease the congestion, I allowed customers to fill out their own survey form and in the chaos I didn't have chance to check all the information given. Didn't get paid for that one. Apparently the forms weren't completed correctly. To be honest, I was just glad that I made it through the nightmare. It didn't feel right to me either but there was nothing in the guidelines that hinted at where to draw the line.

I did 4 this weekend. I don't think you can consider it "cheating" that the other customers got the info from the winner you were photographing because all but one of the Sunocos I visited had the big sign saying "Get the Decal, get spotted and WIN". It does sound like a pain for you that she told the others, but what can you do?? I was surprised that 2 out of the 3 winners had to be convinced it was a "real deal". Like I really wanted to spend 4 hours of my weekend dressed in a Sunoco hat and bright green vest hanging out at Sunoco for the "fun of it" ha! ha!

On these shops, I've been flipped off three times, cussed out four times, and hugged by a happy winner just a little too long for comfort.
My favorite negative, though, was having my car photographed by cell phone and my own photo taken by some whack job to show to the police. Her three cars were all at home with stickers on them and she was just in to buy gas at this particular location that very morning and she was going to the cops now because I wouldn't give her any gift cards. When I encouraged her to bring her cars in to the station, she demanded the cards now. When I said that I needed to get a photo, she told me, "Get a photo of this."
And then she showed me what I could get a photo of.
I did not get a photo of "this."
In fact, I'd very much like to remove all memory of "this" from my brain.
Oh, and then she left the gas station, with her lottery tickets, in a taxi that had been waiting for her the whole time.

On the upside, I've been thanked, thanked, and thanked again, seen smiles brighter than I ever thought $10 could elicit, had a man dying of cancer ask if he could give his son's name instead of his own because he won't be around for the grand prize drawing, and had a woman break down into tears because it was her birthday and she didn't think she'd be getting any gifts this year.

deleted - enlightened by another poster about "guidelines change".

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/01/2014 05:02AM by sun&fun.

elcarev68, I am floored by your post.

Harriet12, yes, it was intimidating. I had the one winner, and then 23 people immediately after. 6 at first, and they were calling others who were racing in and slapping decals on.

I ran out of forms for that location, and when i told them I'd met my limit for that location, a woman spit on me and pulled my hair, and told me I wasn't leaving until she got her gift card. I went to my car to get forms from my other locations, she followed me and kept asking where her gift card was. I told her I didn't have any, and she kicked my car.

another woman walked up while I was filling out a form, tapped on the back of my head, told me she was at Pump 9, and ready for me to buy her $20 of gas.

A man refused to fill out the form because he had warrants out for his arrest, snatched my camera, and deleted the picture of himself. He then demanded his giftcard right then. I stated for the millionth time that I didn't have any, so he demanded $20 cash.

Sun and Fun ... read through the thread before beating up on the OP. When the OP posted, that -WAS- all it was. They then changed the rules, and it became more involved for not enough money.

I signed up for eight of these on Friday, when they reached $75. Did all eight yesterday and today. But mine were all small stations in the middle of nowhere. I had four winners over the course of eight hours. At two od the stations I saw less than 10 cars during the entire hour.

Not fun in the Florida heat, but very nice.

BTW ... did you know that it is possible to drive an air boat up a hill on dry land? Though it sounds like a motorcycle killing itself in the process! Learned that on one of these shops yesterday.

Sounds like good practice for video shops.

Sounds like, as miserable as my time was, I was lucky compared to some of the rest of you!

Spitting and hair pulling and ... wow!

I am never doing these again, no matter how high the bonus.

BBird0701, you really have been traumatized. My heart breaks for you. I am so sorry you went through this.

The people they were calling, it was like they kept changing the terms of the contest when they called them. People were showing up saying "Where's the $50 gift card?" "You're giving away $5000 in giftcards today? I'll take all of them" etc etc....

It was not a nice area, and...they were not nice people.

I now understand the bonuses on those locations, and why the previous shopper backed out.

BBird0701 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I ran out of forms for that location, and when i
> told them I'd met my limit for that location, a
> woman spit on me and pulled my hair, and told me I
> wasn't leaving until she got her gift card. I went
> to my car to get forms from my other locations,
> she followed me and kept asking where her gift
> card was. I told her I didn't have any, and she
> kicked my car.
>
> another woman walked up while I was filling out a
> form, tapped on the back of my head, told me she
> was at Pump 9, and ready for me to buy her $20 of
> gas.
>
> A man refused to fill out the form because he had
> warrants out for his arrest, snatched my camera,
> and deleted the picture of himself. He then
> demanded his giftcard right then. I stated for the
> millionth time that I didn't have any, so he
> demanded $20 cash.


Why on Earth did you not call the police? You were clearly assaulted and it might even be an assault and battery. And destruction of property if your vehicle was damaged. I'm not sure if the guy who took your camera (and apparently returned it) would be considered theft or not but with him admitting to having a warrant, I'm sure the police would have jumped on that opportunity.

I took two of these when they originally came out but when they changed the rules from leaving after the first winner to having to stay for an hour, I cancelled them. And when I saw the large bonuses roll out, I knew there was no amount of money worth the aggravation.

As soon as the first incident occurred you should of
immediately ended it and left. Then when you entered
your report commented that you left after 30 minutes
because patrons were getting aggressive and your
safety was at risk.

There is no chance I would of stayed.

Hindsight is 20/20.

There is no way I would have left. I left after filling out their info and taking their pictures. It did not feel safe to leave until then.

Safety is obviously the first concern.

Did you think about getting help from the gas station employee or police?

Wow BBird0701! That is horrifying. I am glad I missed this one.

The employee at that location was one of the people calling others and was no help.

The man who snatched my camera was at a different location, and it was the only incident there. He left immediately after.

When I was uploading my photos last night, I noticed that only 3 had fully affixed the decals. The others left the bottom flap of backing still attached. Doesn't that invalidate them?

BBird, I certainly hope that you had them arrested ! Omg, how horrible for you !

When I did those for the other company, I told the people that the rules were they had to have the sticker attached to the vehicle when they came into the driveway, figuring they had no idea what the rules were.

One female went home and had her husband bring the car in; when he came to "collect", I told him that the rules stated, one per vehicle and I could not help him because i had to take a photo and turn that in.

Otherwise, I signed up for two of these this year and was accepted. It took weeks to receive my kit, in the meantime, I ended up with pneumonia and my doc wanted to hospitalize me. Every day, I'd get up and challenge myself to go out there and do at least one of the jobs, which I just couldn't do.

Needless to say, they fired me. When the emails arrived stating back up, I was on the road to recovery and mailed them back stating I would do them for free, since I still had the packet.

Nasty response from the scheduler, so I returned the packet at my own cost; I felt guilty about gipping them.

Looks like these are off the board in my area.

I signed up to do a lot of these sunoco shops. It took them almost 5 weeks to send me the cards and other materials. Then, because I didn't respond the day the stuff came they cancelled them all and accused me of being a thief! Not worth $10 an hour. That's less than minimum wage in CT (we are the only state to have passed a raise in the minimum wage to $10.10/hr.)

CotePony Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Otherwise, I signed up for two of these this year
> and was accepted. It took weeks to receive my
> kit, in the meantime, I ended up with pneumonia
> and my doc wanted to hospitalize me. Every day,
> I'd get up and challenge myself to go out there
> and do at least one of the jobs, which I just
> couldn't do.
>
> Needless to say, they fired me. When the emails
> arrived stating back up, I was on the road to
> recovery and mailed them back stating I would do
> them for free, since I still had the packet.
>
> Nasty response from the scheduler, so I returned
> the packet at my own cost; I felt guilty about
> gipping them.

Don't feel guilty. They were unprofessional about how they sent the stuff out. It took over four weeks to get mine also and they sent them normal mail with no tracking information. You would think that sending $200+ of gift card they would want to know where they were.

CotePony Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> When I did those for the other company, I told the
> people that the rules were they had to have the
> sticker attached to the vehicle when they came
> into the driveway, figuring they had no idea what
> the rules were.

Actually, the rule about the car needing the sticker as it came into the driveway was the rule that the other (last year's) company told us during the conference call for training on this project. Since I didn't see anything in the materials this year that changed that rule, I stuck with it for this year. This year, only one customer tried to claim a prize from me by adding a sticker in the parking lot and he was gracious when I told him why I couldn't award the prize. I guess I got lucky compared to some of you.

I had rural locations and my most common response from both employees and customers, both last year and this year, was surprise that spotters for the contest really existed. There were several stations where I was allegedly the first contest spotter to show up in the ten years of the contest. I even got that reaction last weekend from a station where I spotted the year before.

I just finished my one Sunoco shop on Monday. Yes, I had to stay there an hour and it was hotter than hell but I was so bummed because I did not get even one sticker. I had one guy come in and ask what I was doing and I told him. He said every employee at his business just down the road had a Sunoco sticker on it. I told him to get somebody get down here in the next 10 minutes so I could reward them. He called and told someone to come down with his car but then discovered his keys were in the truck! I had fun anyway.

These were not so bad that I wouldn't be willing to do them again next year at the same approximate rate ... but now I have to start to worry when there was such a solid deadline on them, but five days later, 8 of the 10 still have not been gone over and approved.