How many of you shop for Market Force? I applied with them when I first got into shopping. I tried to sign on thier site and I couldn't get on. When I emailed them they sent me an email saying I had been denied as a shopper, but gave no reason why. I see jobs in my area all the time on Jobslinger. Sometimes they say they need a shopper immediatly, and have bonuses. I tried to email them again saying I am available to shop in this area, and they sent me the same email saying they could not let me work as a shopper. I don't get it. Anyone have any idea why they won't let me shop for them when they obviously need shoppers in my area? Maybe they have too many white female 30 year olds???

I shop for them, but they are NOT one of my fav's due to the impersonalness of how they set up their business. One the good side, I can pick my shops without waiting, so they are good fills when I am going to be in the area of one for something better paying, and I still do the SG banking ones from the MFI site, as they still pay SG banking rates.

I had never heard of them turning anyone down. Did you maybe flake on a shop at the beginning of your shopping career? Or with one of the companies they own? They are not the forgiving type of MSC.

I have signed w/ Market Force and several others and have heard nothing for months> Now I understand most companies won't contact you unless you are needed, but when I see jobs listed and apply and still hear nothing, leaves me to wondering why?
dee
cedar city ut.

It is very likely that you have little in your area and if they have a shopper or two, that is more than enough for them. I just did a quick check of the MF site in the "Blue Portal" area which is the old Shop 'n Chek jobs. Within 30 miles of your city there are 2 telephone jobs. This morning within 30 miles of my city there are 24 jobs and within 30 miles of a shopper friend there are over 60 jobs.

When you don't hear back from a company, don't take it personally. In a month or two try applying again. If you are in their system but just haven't been approved, you won't get allowed to put in a second registration. But systems drop registration applications from time to time due to computer glitches or human error.

With a couple of companies I finally got approved when I saw a job posting in my area and dropped them a note indicating I would be happy to help them but my application had never been approved. From my records I could give them the date I applied, and of course I supplied the name and email address used for sign up.

ahh as usual great advise...thanks Flash I will make note of that.I don't take this sort of situation personal just don't want to waste my time.
dee
cedar city ut

Thanks for the info. I didn't really take it personal since I had never shopped for them before. I just wish in thier email they had said. "We don't have a need for shoppers in your area" instead of your application has been denied. They gave no reason at all. Sounds like I am not missing out on too much. I just see jobs for them on Jobslinger all the time. Why would they post there if they don't need shoppers???

There are markets where they have a great need for shoppers, especially the ones for their cheap ff shops that they resort to 'sweepstakes' entries to try to persuade shoppers to take in hopes of being a 'big winner'. Of the 24 shops currently posted for my area there is not a single one I would be willing to perform for the fee offered, even if I was driving by. But this is not always the case. I have found some really nice shops through them and since I have 'paid my dues' with junk shops, I do see the better stuff as well. I still on occasion take a list price junk shop (I have one scheduled for December) to keep on their pets list, but mostly I do the junk when they call and offer a substantial bonus.

Personally I find them easy to work with because I rarely interact with them except when a needy scheduler calls. I can be gracious if the money is there. I won't always help but it is always couched as a scheduling conflict. I know better than to tell them their website is being funky--I'll just try again later. I did notify them when my scheduled job date was the day a hurricane was scheduled to hit the area and requested permission to do the job a day earlier than their window. That request they couldn't honor, so the job was rescheduled to the last day of the window in hopes that if we got hit things might be recovering in the area by then. Generally I try not to have any 'exceptions' with my reports--no reschedules, cancellations, lack of receipts or things I forgot to do. I stay out of their hair, they stay out of mine and the payments get processed as contracted for.

I have recently signed up with Market Force and been accepted. When I log onto my account I have seen the same six shops for the last 2 weeks - they are a ferry ride away! However Shadow Shopper has emailed me about at least 30 other Market Force jobs in my area and 60 in the next area. I know some jobs go quickly but I can't believe not one of the jobs appeared on my job list. Previous to Shadow Shopper's email I had been checking Market Force several times a day.
Do Market Force restrict new signees to certain jobs? I understand if they do but I had a lot of problems with submitting my application form due to errors in their software and wonder if there are problems with the job listings. I would appreciate some information about how Market Force work. Thanks.

Market Force does, indeed, restrict what newly signed up folks can see. (I am talking about the 'blue portal' that used to be Shop 'n Chek, not the 'purple portal' of Market Force that is/was Certified.) Once you have done a few shops for them in a timely and complete fashion you are likely to see 'better' jobs. There are some attitude problems with Market Force that you do best not to get tangled with. One is the mention to them that their website is flaky. They will deny it and I'm sure put you down somewhere as a 'complainer'. (I've been around computers long enough that when a website does the same flaky thing with several different browsers and using several different machines, I know it is not my problem but theirs. So wait a few hours and try again. Chances are there will be some naive soul who will complain, take the hit and insults while they repair the site.)

For some reason Market Force seems to get a little mixed up on its shopper lists. A friend got a little bent when he got a 'congratulations on completing 250 shops' email when he has done more than 1500 for them. Meanwhile he was getting banned from ff shops because the receipts he received were too light to darken adequately for proper submission. Other long term shoppers have had other issues with them and the more you seek justice, the more shops you get excluded from.

I find that the best way to deal with them is to keep my head down, self select what I want, when they call indicate that a shop I don't want 'won't work with my schedule--maybe next time' and don't get too involved in bonus negotiation. If what is offered is not enough, it 'won't work with my schedule'. If the website isn't working, try again later. If the website is limping, keep making my upload a smaller and smaller and smaller file until it goes through.

Flash the problem is they have never let me shop for them at all. I cannot even log in to the site. I never received a password or ID and when I asked they said I had been denied as a shopper and I had never done any work for them or certified. I haven't even been given a chance to shop for them and I keep getting emails from them through shadow shopper that they need shoppers in my area. That is what is so frusterating. They won't give me a reason why I cant shop for them.

Don't expect them to give you a reason--and in fact if there is a reason it is probably bizarre and their problem rather than yours. And once accepted you are still subject to arbitrary malarkey. One shopper was told they could no longer do a particular client but that Market Force couldn't reveal why. The shopper had done a fair number of the shops and had never had questions raised or shops rejected. One has to wonder about possible mistaken identities. For example, have they previously had a poor shopper with your same name and they think you are that shopper pulling a fast one on them by using someone else's social security number? You have no way of knowing if they won't even discuss it with you.

Luckily Market Force is not the only game in town. Do check Jobslinger.com to see who is shopping your area.

flash thanks for the info. I am shopping for several companies and getting plenty of work so I don't need them. I guess its really their loss they have an experienced, hard working shopper under there nose and they don't even know it!!!!

Yup. That is what they get by being arbitrary

No wonder they work with criny, they sound just like them.

They and CRINY are part of the same co, or MFI owns CRINY, or some such thing.

They removed me from bank, saying that I was the cousin of a branch manager. That was a load of mule piffle, I have no family and am not even from this area. In retaliation they not only removed me from EVER doing banks again (saying "the client doesn't want you" Funny when ABC company also does this bank and the client likes me just fine with ABC) They also removed me from FF AND cellphone. I've been stiffed 6 fees from them and now my husband got sucked into their vortex as a newbie shopper (a nice FF dinner by himself on Christmas Eve thankyouvrymuch.) I'm gonna kill him but that's another thread.....

Hard for me to dislike them as my Christmas feast is provided courtesy of MF and SI reimbursements.

MF has produced 2 screwups in the past month, one of which was an overpayment and the other was that I couldn't upload my receipt an CPI because they had already been verified. Email about the first led to them acknowledging their screwup, thanking me for pointing it out and telling me to keep the excess. Email about the first led to them acknowledging their screwup, a brief nonsensical explanation, thanking me for pointing it out and telling me they had cleared the items so I could upload my materials. Neither issue took significant amounts of my time to get handled.

I have only had 1 issue with MF so far. I received a call from a scheduler to do a FF shop for 5x the normal fee if I did it that day, and it was a 50 mile drive R/T. I accepted, went online, and got the instructions and CPI. After performing the shop and attempting to report, the shop changed from a drive-in (eat in car at stall) to a drive-thru. I noticed this as I started answering the questions, which were different from my printed instructions. I emailed the helpdesk immediately. After 14 emails and sending them my documentation that came from THEIR system, they said they weren't sure how it could have happened, and were only going to give me the base fee (1x) plus reimburse my meal.

It is rare for me to get a "bonus" fee like that, so I was so excited just to be let down and told it was my fault. Blah.

Your CPI is your contract with them. If it showed the 5x normal fee then that is what they are obligated for for the job and you can push hard. If the download showed only the 1x fee and you didn't insist that it be marked to the 5x before you headed out to do the job, then it is a verbal contract which is hard to prove and harder to collect on. Certainly your experience with them is annoying, irritating and exasperating. I recognize that this company often seems to have strange things that happen and they seem to specialize in denial. I too pull the CPI and instructions and save a copy on my computer as soon as the job is assigned to make sure that they are what I contracted for.

Flash,

The fee wasn't the problem. It was the fact my CPI stated a specific type of shop (drive-in) and then the shop mysteriously changed to a drive-thru shop by the time I went to report it.

I understand that. And my point is that your CPI and its fee is/was your contract with them and I would push hard to have it honored. Market Force is not a company that accepts that they screwed up without proof and your documentation of their CPI is just such proof. Indeed if they don't honor that documentation as proof that you did the correct shop, then you need to rethink how important it is to work with them at all.

I am rethinking Bestmark because an in-person shop scheduled at one fee finally came through as a phone shop at a low fee. Because of the in-person shop I scheduled a bunch of cheap shops along a route to that in-person location. When the shop magically turned into a phone shop I was just left with the cheap shops I had scheduled along the route to make the whole thing worthwhile, so the route was an economic loss. They really aren't worth my messing with any more.

Bestmark does not have hardly any jobs anymore and Marketforce will take you to court if they like.

Cettie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> They removed me from bank, saying that I was the
> cousin of a branch manager. That was a load of
> mule piffle, I have no family and am not even from
> this area. In retaliation they not only removed
> me from EVER doing banks again

So they found out about you and the goat.

Angellique Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Marketforce will take you to court if they like.


In theory any of them could, just as in theory any of us could take any of them to court. And in fact anybody can take anyone to court on the mere accusation of having wronged them. That does not mean that we do or that we will, so the statement is meaningless.

With any company, the value of your contract for a job has many components, including how easy you find the company to deal with. Like any company, there will be a variation between employees in staff attitude and cooperation. The more a company feels 'burned', the less they will trust shoppers to do what is right. As shoppers, it is annoying to be treated as if you are a cheater, but you will find that extensively with companies that attract mostly newbies who are clueless about how to perform and report shops. How many shops responsibly done by responsible shoppers does it take to overcome the 'burn' by one shopper who did a mediocre at best shop, reports late (or does not report at all) and screams to be reimbursed when they didn't even get the required receipt? A few of those every day and you would quickly come to the conclusion that all shoppers are liars and untrustworthy. Unfortunately few shoppers actually make it to forums so there is little chance of getting the message to them that when they "flake" or do substandard work it hurts all of us because it builds poor attitudes at the companies.

Oh these were not the reasons for that!

Market Force is not the best. One of the worst that I've dealt with actually. They pay very low compared to other companies, their reporting process with those CPI's is a pain, the reports are terribly detailed for the money, and they are as impersonal as a company can get. I currently do work for 23 different companies- and this is just my opinion, but Market Force is the the worst, with Certified coming in a close second. I like to work with companies that use schedulers. The highest paying jobs are there, the respect is there, the cooperation from all parties is there. It's a win-win situation.

I do not like MFI for many of the reason you stated, SusanMB. I still do a select bunch of shops for them, most of which are bank shops that I did for SG before they were acquaired by MFI, and that still pay the same. But now, without the loving contact with SG folks (except when they have ?'s) I am signing up for less and less. I like the contact with PEOPLE. And being paid fairly. Most shops at MFI i just ignore.

I've shopped with MF less than six months, doing very low-paying jobs as fill-ins and route building. Recently, different and much better paying jobs have become available to me. Maybe I've earned my wings.

I know you don't meet the schedulers when you use the board. Try to meet Izzy Jett if you can, one of the MFI scheduler for the Northeast. She's a lovely person, and offers me bonused shops pretty regularly. We have a friendly relationship. She's also referred me to a few other schedulers. Their pay is not tremendous, but they're my only grocery MSP, and I make sure I'm properly bonused for them.

I see your wings sprouting right now, Mert. You look like a fly.

Fly away Mert, fly away!