I'm not sure gas prices are up everywhere. I filled up several days ago, because I was driving on fumes not because of an anticipated increase. If the price is higher today it is only by five or six cents. Nothing beyond fairly normal fluctuation.

Keep in mind, gas prices are also not the deciding factor for a lot of us. I have to work and would have to do so whether it was mystery shopping or something else. With mystery shopping the mileage deduction more than covers fluctuations in the price of gas and I would not have that deduction for a normal job commute.

I totally get the 15 mile radius. Now that I'm down in Atlanta, the traffic is so much harder than it was in Michigan. I could tolerate a 60 mile radius then. Now I can't stand going to the next town.

Maybe they are hoping that you might be travelling that way...who knows. I hear you though! What STILL gets my goat, after 20+ years is schedulers that insist that we are getting a "free" meal or gas. That's just not true - we have to work AND we have to accept gasoline and gas station food as payment. That is why some of the shops are such a tough sale. I will continue to keep my chin up! Best Wishes!!!

What I wanna know is how hard is it to just ignore an email if it doesn't pertain to you or you're not interested? Holy crapola people will find anything to complain about.

I lived in DFW area before. This is far from Houston and the coast. I live in new orleans now. Gas prices is up all over. You are not any more special than the next shopper to a scheduler. When my name is used i feel special, the scheduler is hopping that i can help
I have a full time job working M-F i cannot take shops that i have taken before but i would not want to be shunned for it. I like to see what is out there. I plan on retiring in next few years and i want to make that 3 to 5 thousand a month. So keep me informed on what is out there.
15 miles is great but that great restaurant or favorite place you like to visit in keller or grandbury comes avaliable it lets you jump on it.
My radus was 50 that way i could go to dallas and eat at that fun insulting restaurant or do pet store audits all over.

Those affected area shops have been on the board waiting to be taken by a shopper since before Harvey rolled thru. Thetes shops for Miami and orlando right now and a company and scheduler cannot take them off the board because Irma is out there. Same is true when it snows or floods in areas. We just tell the MSC/schedulers that we have bad weather and need to reschedule. Don't take my job/work from me til the company pulls it or i cannot go because it aint there no mo.

Trust me, they don't know. I had one MSC's schedulers calling me during Harvey, when I could only get about .8 miles from my house before encountering a bridge under water and uncrossable. One offered me a fast food place in town, 1.2 miles from my house, and was offended when I said I couldn't do it. "You 've done it for us in the past! And it's so close!" When I replied that we were having a flood and the roads were underwater, and besides, the power was out in that part of town so the store wasn't open anyway, she hung up in a huff. A couple of days later she did call back and apologetically ask if I might be able to do it next week?

Another one - a hotel shop 200 miles away - was upset that I told him I couldn't get there. He said, "It's only a tropical storm." I said, "I've gotten 40 inches of water at my house and it's still raining. I'm hemmed in by roads and bridges under water. I can't get there from here." A couple of days later, he called back to ask if he could reschedule it for me, and commiserated about the flooding. By then he'd seen it on the national news, I guess. At least he had begun to understand.

During these past two weeks, I have been off. I am very pleased that the offers are still coming. I had some damage that I'm going to have to cough up a couple of grand for my Home Owners deductible. I welcome then and glad that not all of the shops have been just pushed aside.

I can over look personal emails. Schedulers see cities and they may not know how close a smaller city is to a large metro area. With that being said, they send out the emails with a chance, that it may be worth your while.

Another example, I work near a very hard to fill pizza location. I got a call one evening with the scheduler saying, I know this location is far from you but do you think you can squeeze it in for an extra $$$. I gladly took the highly bonused shop but in all fairness, I took one of the lower paying ones that was 5 minutes away.

I for one have been extremely grateful for the outpouring of support that I've received from schedulers from several different mystery shopping companies. All of the emails that I've received have expressed care and compassion. And any scheduler from any company that is offered me a job during this time knowing that we have been impacted by a hurricane has been more than happy to offer me travel pay or extra money because gas prices are up without me even having to ask so I'm quite certain that if you asked it would be given to you also.

There are times when I love you 'griff!

Right there with you. I dealt with a MSC a few years back, when homes were floating down rivers on national television. I live in a 'special' neighborhood. It if floods, barricades are put up on the end of the road, so we don't do something stupid. If we have a freeze, barricades are put up on the end of the road. Flash floods make me nuts. Can't get out, can't get to the chickens, basically can't do anything until it quits raining. Schedulers can get over themselves, since my flood issues are normally national news. Last flood/flash flood event cost me $3000. My driveway is history and it happened the very night of the driveway was repaired.

I'm not a flaker, but I will not perform a shop if it puts my life or my car in jeopardy.

I don't give two figs about my scores or reputation with any scheduler or MSC that gives me guilt about getting a job done & doesn't care that my life is in jeopardy. Had to deal with that a couple of years ago. I no longer work for those companies. One of the schedulers told me, when my area was under flash flooding, to go anyways or I would get dinged.

I got dinged! Completed the shop, but got dinged.

Just adding my two cents. I definitely can understand your frustration, but the schedulers don't know everyone's situation. I live in upstate NY, not near a large city. My default travel distance is 40 miles. My area doesn't get hurricanes, but we get snow. LOTS of it! We call it "lake effect snow," because we are at the east end of one of the great lakes. It is not unusual for areas within this 40 miles, to get 4 feet (yes feet) of snow in a 24 hour period. I can't count the number of times that I have had to explain to a scheduler that a shop that I've done in the past, or is within 20 miles, is impossible because of snow. It's so crazy here. You can literally be in a blizzard one place, and nothing when you are two miles away from that spot. Don't take offense. It's just part of our "business."

Okay so I originally read this response as "we get FORTY feet of snow" and I was thinking holy crap until I thought that one through and realized what that would mean, lol.

When I complained that the reimbursement would not cover the required meal, the scheduler told me to "just think of it as a $15-off coupon". Great, but I wouldn't go to this place without being paid for it, so you want me to go somewhere I wouldn't go on my own, pay for some of the food I don't really like, and write up seven pages of survey, some of it narrative? Not likely.

And I do not think that the client would not want you to review a shop if you start out by looking at it with a NEGATIVE, OPINIONATED, ATTITUDE.

eyeslove, cool quote. If it doesn't apply, let it fly

@bgriffin wrote:

What I wanna know is how hard is it to just ignore an email if it doesn't pertain to you or you're not interested? Holy crapola people will find anything to complain about.

And... and... and... some people will even complain about complaints! *neenerneener*

Sounds like someone needs to grow a thicker skin and not be bothered by every little thing. Yes, the same thing peeves me but I'm not going to whine about because I get no cheese for it.

OMG I love cheese.

If my little part of the world were in distress (most likely to be buried under avalanche or shaken, not stirred by a rare earthquake), I might come here for solace or at least empathy.

@OP: In all of our postings here, did we provide any empathy or solace for you? If not, please forgive us. We are mere silly humans who make lots and lots of mistakes. But our MSCs still love us and we mean well sometimes. I hope that all is well in your world now.

@dulcew wrote:

Okay, that is really the truth of the manner. I don't like the emails that pretend to be personal when they aren't.

I've set up most of my profiles to drive less than 15 miles. That means 30 miles round trip. I frequently get email that asks to drive much further than that -- I delete most of them and get on with my life, but its irritating.

I'm even more irritated now, and have even emailed a few schedulers back -- anytime we have a hurricane on the coast, a portion of our refineries get shut down. First our gas prices go up, and in a few days we will start to see gas shortages -- already many stations in the state haven't received regular deliveries.

Don't they know this?

And yes, I've even seen shops asking people to shop the affected areas, like the store is even going to be open.

Sometimes they do not know the hurricane either directly hit or otherwise affected that area.

A lot of schedulers will send to everybody within a state. That's fine when the state is Rhode Island up to maybe something like Ohio. In Texas (Alaska, Montana, California as well I think), across the state could easily be a five hour drive or longer. Even in Ohio, I wouldn't want to shop in Cincinnati when I lived in Dayton without getting bonused heavily for it.

I commented on this to a scheduler who said that it was always possible that I had plans to go to that part of the state anyway, so they sent the mass mailings to everybody in the state. She couldn't explain why I would get one that had no locations in my state listed.

Sometimes I like the mass emails. I travel the country and Canada for work, so I'm always on the look out for extra money. I've made my best money in the most remote towns out west.

@dulcew wrote:

Okay, that is really the truth of the manner. I don't like the emails that pretend to be personal when they aren't.

I've set up most of my profiles to drive less than 15 miles. That means 30 miles round trip. I frequently get email that asks to drive much further than that -- I delete most of them and get on with my life, but its irritating.

I feel like many people just skipped the first bit here and jumped onto the hurricane portion. This person doesn't like emails that are generic but pretend to be personal. I'll say it. Neither do I. If a company (and I don't care which company - doesn't have to be an MSC, could be Coca Cola, whatever) is contacting me, sending me a generic mass email, but trying to "disguise" it like a personalized letter, that's irritating. We all get mass emails. It's part of doing business in today's world, but why try to disguise it other than to make me FEEL like they actually care about me, as an individual. And if they are going to the bother of trying to make me think they care, wouldn't it make sense for the company to actually impart information that pertains to me? I am willing to go XXX distance. It's there, in the profile. They asked, I answered. If no one reads the profile, inputs the data into their system, utililzes the data they asked for, why is it there? Did they feel I had too much time on my hands and so I needed to estimate how many miles I am willing to drive in order to utilize that time? It took me MONTHS to figure out the system when I started shopping. The mass emails that looked personal all got a reply from me, and a reason why I chose to decline that particular offer, as I was trying to build rapport with the schedulers. I feel like that was time wasted. And it would have been nice to not have that happen. Once I figured it out, I just started deleting the things, but again, why make me think you are writing just to me? "I delete most of them and get on with my life..." It sounds to me like this person is ALREADY doing what most of you are telling them to do. Of course, that is what they are doing. That's what makes sense. They said they've replied and reminded the schedulers of their milage limits, and that seems like a good plan too. "Hey Betty, you've been emailing me for the past week about these shops that are 100 miles away. I prefer to stay closer to home. Let me know if you get anything around 15 miles and we'll talk! I look forward to hearing from you about those shops " *yes, in real life, I would totally add the emoticon - my schedulers find me "quirky." Now Betty knows she doesn't have to email this person for whichever the far away shops are, helping Betty to focus on people who want those shops and the OP doesn't have to wade through 10000 emails to find the shops they WANT to take. Open and honest communication with schedulers, I have found, can actually increase shop offers and better your relationship with said schedulers. I remember there was one scheduler who offered me a shop in a small town on the other side of the state. I emailed them back and mentioned it was a 10 hour drive from my house. I told them I was willing to go, but it would cost them. They "lol"d in their reply and said they hadn't realized Nevada was so big, as they were from Rhode Island. They found someone else. I haven't been offered the shop in that town since. Should I ever find myself driving that way, I'm sure I can drop them a line and see if it's available. Meanwhile, since then, the scheduler has offered me a plethora of work where I live. But open and honest communication seems to be the backbone of success in this industry. Why wade through 10000 junk emails? It's your business - your time. You are actively losing money if you're looking at emails for somewhere you'll never go, when you could be working on another shop that you'd take.

@esleyoga wrote:

I remember there was one scheduler who offered me a shop in a small town on the other side of the state. I emailed them back and mentioned it was a 10 hour drive from my house. I told them I was willing to go, but it would cost them. They "lol"d in their reply and said they hadn't realized Nevada was so big, as they were from Rhode Island.

This is exactly what I was talking about. Harris County, Texas, alone is significantly bigger than the entire state of Rhode Island (I think about 40% bigger counting just land area but I haven't had the exact numbers in front of me in a while).

I don't get the shock and dismay over personalized emails from our clients. Reading or deleting them is part of our business. The ability to personalize correspondence is far from new. It has been utilized for decades with snail mail and now email. I also don't consider emails from my clients to be junk.

When we get job notices we are not specifically being "asked" to drive far, far away. Our clients are just letting us know about opportunities. If you don't want to drive more than 15 miles, don't. There are plenty of shoppers who would look at it as a chance to negotiate a higher fee.

@LisaSTL wrote:

When we get job notices we are not specifically being "asked" to drive far, far away. Our clients are just letting us know about opportunities.

QFT and because I didn't want it to be lost in the rest of your post. I fail to inderstand why shoppers think this way.

@LisaSTL wrote:

The ability to personalize correspondence is far from new. It has been utilized for decades with snail mail and now email.

Exactly! The ability to take information entered into a data system (like someone's name) and apply it to a bulk email is super easy. There are programs galore that will do this with a click of the mouse. Those SAME programs have the ability to sort and choose which persons in your contacts list/data field have the "milage" or "ZIP zones" that will equal your location. It's the SAME click of the mouse. Maybe one more, depending on the age of the program. Why ask me where I want to be, and then ignore my answer? Why use my name and make it "look" personal when it's a mass mailing? I'm not suggesting the MSCs should send out personalized emails to each shopper, that would be insane and the schedulers would have no time for anything else. Just take my name off. Make it LOOK like a mass email - rather than a personal one.
For me, it's a small annoyance. I know all of the schedulers I work with by name and most of them by voice as well. I can easily tell (now - after experience) from the subject line which are mass and which are direct to me. What I love about two of the companies is that mass emails look exactly like that - generic. "Dear Shoppers" or "Attention Shoppers!" or "URGENT! SHOPPERS NEEDED" rather than "Hey (my name)." It's not a big shocker that they get most of my time and attention as they do business in a way that works with my style.
But hey, whatever works right? I'm guessing from reading these comments, most of you delete thousands of emails per day anyway. Obviously there's plenty of work (and plenty of MSCs) that works out for everyone's style and preferences.