Good morning Mystery Shoppers,
I am new to the community. I have only completed a handful of shops. I received an email a couple days back stating a company had shops they needed filled and they were offering a very small bonus. The shops listed were hotels names and I have never worked with this company. I responded and said I was interested. They told me I needed to take the certification. I went to the website and saw it was valet. I decided to not sign up, but went ahead and completed the certification in case I wanted to in the future. I did not apply to these shops. They are small pay and a 20 minute drive from me and not really worth it unless I had another shop in this area. I DID NOT apply. I get a text late last night stating I had been assigned for the shops I was wanting because they saw I completed my certification. I feel bullied into doing these. How do I tell the scheduler I didn't want these shops and thats why I did not apply? I honestly would have appreciated confirmation before just assigning me shops. I dont want to completely ruin the relationship though. I do feel angry though and slightly disrespected because of the circumstances of just assigning me the shops on the basis of me stating "I am interested. Where can I find more information?"

Sorry for the kind of rant. Has anyone experienced this? Does anyone have advice?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2022 01:44PM by whitney00hope.

I would just email them and explain that there must have been a misunderstanding and after further review of the instructions and distance, you don't want to do the shops for the low pay. I always try to mention low pay for rejecting a shop just so they get that feedback and understand we don't want to work for pennies.

It really doesn’t sound too much like this is a bullying case, more like a scheduler with 300-500 emails a day to answer simply made an error.

(Trust me; when you are bullied by a MSC or scheduler, you will KNOW it!)

I guess ones definition of feeling bullied is determined by the person in the sitution. What you consider bullied may be a little bit more extreme than me. I feel bullied because I am new to the industry, and I feel it does not look good for me to turn down/cancel assignments. I now feel obligation to complete assignments I did not apply for to maintain this relationship. I guess all it took was a quick email to make sure I was ok with assignments before assigning them, or maybe I should have never asked for more information.

Try emailing something like: "While I have completed the certification, I DID NOT APPLY for any of the jobs. However, I have been assigned some of these, but due to the low pay scale, I cannot take these at this time, and request an immediate cancellation of these shops. I do appreciate your consideration of me, and hopefully we can work together at some point in the future"....something firm yet polite.

And SAVE EVERY EMAIL communication you get from this MSC.

It was probably just a misunderstanding. Generally, when I say that I am interested, it is a go. They probably didn't think any further about it than that. Nobody is negating your feelings, but there is a whole lot of vituperative behavior and flat out bullying behavior toward shoppers. Just email back and say that you are sorry, but there was a misunderstanding and the assignment isn't going to work out for you.

Being real though, there have been times when I went ahead with something I wasn't that excited about because I wanted to get my foot in the door with a particular company. A lot of them won't even consider you for a better paying assignment until you have built some kind of reputation with them, which is likely going to mean a little bit of grunt work.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/30/2022 03:43PM by GinnyLynn.

I agree with Guysmom, sort of. I wouldn't use any caps, 'cause sometimes people interpret that as yelling.

I would add another sentence explaining that you are new so that if you did something wrong, you apologize

Groveling never, ever hurts! It just never hurts to say "I'm new at this, and I still have a lot to learn."

Best of luck.

And if the pay is too low, don't hesitate to ask for extra pay!

Sometimes you have to take a hit to your pride, but remember that pride is a renewable resource.

I sincerely doubt this is a case of you being bullied or disrespected (sorry, but that word is overused and abused). You may feel that way, but it's not personal, and I'm sure there was no intent. Schedulers handle multiple jobs with multiple applicants and may get overwhelmed. They're human, just like us, and are juggling far more shops at once than most of us are. Some schedulers will purposely assign shops in the hopes you'll feel obligated to do them, but I think that's rare.

The scheduler probably saw "I'm interested...." and mistakenly assumed you definitely wanted the jobs. Just email and explain, as others say, that there was a misunderstanding, you can't do the jobs, and so forth. And it can't hurt to say, "I'm sorry if I wasn't clear."

I just had this happen to me. A company that I like to work for but that rarely has shops in my area had three high-end handbag shops in a mall and with nice bonuses. They were posted last week, offered as a package. The total was a nice sum, but the mall is about 1 hour and 15 minutes one way for me, so I wanted to be sure the total time was going to make the pay worthwhile. (I love shopping and dining at this mall, so it would have been some fun, too). This MSC doesn't post jobs on a typical job board, so you can't see anything about the job until you ask for it. So I wrote to the scheduler, explaining the distance and time involved for me and asking for more information, particularly about how long the on-site portion should take. She wrote back, and after looking at the requirements, I decided that these weren't worth my time. I meant to write back to her and explain, and I forgot. No further emails were sent out during the past week, and since the jobs were due by 9/30, I assumed they'd been taken.

I replied to the scheduler about three days ago to thank her for having sent the information to me last week and apologizing for not getting back to her, having assumed the jobs had been taken by now. I said I was interested in them in the future. Next thing I know, I'd been assigned all three shops. So as not to disappoint them, I would have gone Thursday, but I had no car. I had other things scheduled for Friday. So I wrote back, said that I was probably not clear in my email but that I couldn't do them. Apologized for the misunderstanding and again expressed my interest for the future. She didn't respond, but cancelled them and sent out another e-blast.

I'm sure she wasn't trying to bully me into doing them or "disrespecting" my statements to her; it was just a misunderstanding. And I really should have gotten back to her sooner. But the core issue was that she misunderstood my response and/or I wasn't clear enough.

Good luck with your shopping career; this forum is a great place to be. Please be prepared for this type of thing and don't take it personally. Stuff happens--not necessarily this exact thing and not often, but there will be hiccups.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/01/2022 04:36AM by BirdyC.

Servimer has to own this mistake.
We are very sorry, whitney00hope, for misunderstanding your intent. When you contacted me to ask for information about how to apply we honestly thought that you wanted the shops. I received a truly delighted email from your scheduler to let me know that you had followed up on her certification request and passed the quiz so quickly (kudos to you!) and that she had been able to assign the shops to you in time to get them done.
If the shops are not a good fit for any reason, feel free to decline them with no negative impact to your shopper rating. Please know that it was not our intent to force anything. I'm sincerely sorry for making you feel in any way disrespected, and I truly hope that we will still be able to work with you in the future.

^^^^Very very classy of you, @ServimerScott.....many kudos to you!!!^^^^

Ditto that. It was indeed a very classy response by @ServimerScott.

... Maybe this was all just part of a Shop on Servimer itself and whitney00hope was contracted to present a scenario here to see how Scott responds!

@Amarsir wrote:

... Maybe this was all just part of a Shop on Servimer itself and whitney00hope was contracted to present a scenario here to see how Scott responds!

Ooooh, very meta, very deep fifth dimensional chess. Nice!

@ServimerScott wrote:

Servimer has to own this mistake.
We are very sorry, whitney00hope, for misunderstanding your intent. When you contacted me to ask for information about how to apply we honestly thought that you wanted the shops. I received a truly delighted email from your scheduler to let me know that you had followed up on her certification request and passed the quiz so quickly (kudos to you!) and that she had been able to assign the shops to you in time to get them done.
If the shops are not a good fit for any reason, feel free to decline them with no negative impact to your shopper rating. Please know that it was not our intent to force anything. I'm sincerely sorry for making you feel in any way disrespected, and I truly hope that we will still be able to work with you in the future.

Thanks for your response ServimerScott! I appreciate you making contact and following up. I see now that this was a misunderstanding. After reading what others said on Friday, I went ahead and completed the shops. Although they weren't shops I was planning to do at first, as others pointed out, it gave me an opportunity to show you guys at Servimer my ability to accurately and effeciently complete a shop. I hope to be able to work with you guys again in the future.

@Amarsir wrote:

... Maybe this was all just part of a Shop on Servimer itself and whitney00hope was contracted to present a scenario here to see how Scott responds!

Um, just no.... Scott ALWAYS represents himself and Servimer in a polite and professional manner. Even if the shopper is 1000000000000% in the wrong and most normal humans would be at their breaking point he is still calm and polite.

P.S the only one above Scott at Servimer are the owners....

Interesting, Servimer never has valet stuff around me, but they do pay really well for what they offer. And yeah, they're very easy to work with.