Grass Roots America is a corporation registered in Florida. I believe that they are a wholly owned subsidiary of an overseas company, and as such they can file bankruptcy without the parent company having any liability for their debts. That is apparently what has occurred. It is possible that the Bankruptcy Court could find evidence of inappropriate transfer of funds to the parent and then try to claw them back (which would involve international treaties and courts), but otherwise the assests of the subsidiary stand alone. While it might not seem fair, wholly owned subsidiaries (even multiple ones in a single country) are often set up for the specific goal of isolating the parent fromt the liabilities of the subsidiary. One prominent example of this is the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies.

Here is the link to the Florida Division of Corporations listing for Grass Roots America, Inc.: [search.sunbiz.org]

[edited to correct two mis-spelled words]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/14/2015 04:14AM by myst4au.

I am out $40 for a restaurant shop I conducted 2/20/15.

@myst4au -- interesting that they're registered in Florida. They are also registered in New York State.

[appext20.dos.ny.gov]

The most interesting part of that page:

"Professional corporations must include the name(s) and address(es) of the initial officers, directors, and shareholders in the initial certificate of incorporation, however this information is not recorded and only available by viewing the certificate."

We may be able to verify that at one point, the Grass Roots Group was indeed 100% owner.

@ItlianDiva wrote:

Yes, but I do not know my shopper ID without being able to log onto the website anymore. I was asking if the shopper ID corresponded to any other number that I would automatically know. My user name was my phone number (10 digits - too long). It doesn't appear to be listed in any old emails I received. Any other ideas?

Welcome to the club. I have the same issue. My username consisted of letters and numbers. From what I know, there is no way to recover the number and activate the card. I tried emailing Grassroots as well as card company. No luck.

I'm owed $80. I guess I should just write it off my taxes and forget about it.

Wendyfred,

Email Coyle's support. I was underpaid once. It was easily resolved after an email I sent them.
Ronnie B.,
I'm sorry for you. $600 is a lot of money. I hope you'll be reimbursed for your expenses. Maybe contacting hotel manager or owner and explaining this situation to them would help? Maybe they can at least return money spent on a room?

I hate to do that, but maybe I will try at least one phone call. It appears that MSPA is totally unwilling to try to help us. So ... so much for professional integrity !

This might be a silly question, but if the shops were paid for using a credit card can you not go back within in a certain time frame and do a chargeback? I worked in credit card security at one point and if a customer claimed they did not receive the item the burden of proof fell on the company to prove that the item was indeed received. So, would the same principal apply here? GRA would have to provide the burden of proof on the restaurant shop.

The service was provided. They ate the meal. They stayed in the hotel. The fact that they were supposed to be reimbursed does not change the fact that each personally actually received the product / service for which they paid with a credit card. The party to the transaction is the restaurant / hotel, not the MSC.

GRA does not appear on any of the credit card slips. When you use a credit card, it is a legal transaction between you and the provider of the service.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2015 01:05AM by myst4au.

@Wendyfred wrote:

I was short changed by Coyle Hospitality, which I believe was part of the Grass Roots America group, on several occasions this year.

Here is what I was paid this year.
On 3/31/15, I received the following payments:
$45.72 for [client name removed] restaurant. This was the full payment I was entitled to.
$100.00 for [client name removed]. This was the full payment I was entitled to.
$115.16 for [client name removed]. I should have received a dinner reimbursement of $92.80 plus a payment of $30 for completeing the report. I was short changed by $7.64. I have not received an explanation from Coyle. My report was accepted with an excellent rating.

On 4/30/15, I received the following payments:
$148.54 for [client name removed] restaurant. I should have received a dinner reimbursement of $150.00 plus a payment of $15.00 for completing the report. I was short changed by $16.46. Not only was I not paid for completing the lengthy report, I was not completely reimbursed for the dinner.
$115.00 for [client name removed]. This was the full payment I was entitled to.

In summary, I have been short changed by $24.10. It has been difficult because I was unemployed at the time. I have never received any explanation of the reason for the small payments.

Mod note: Welcome to the forum Wendyfred. Please do not link the client with the company that shops them. It is one of the rules of this forum and an ICA violation. Thanks.

@Wendyfred

If you are not 100% they are part of the same group you should not be posting that in your post. That is information that impacts another businesses money and you owe it to them to be honest about it.

That said, I do work for Coyle and have never been shorted or paid late. Ive been active with the company for over 5 years. They have top notch support, training, and are one of the best in the business in terms of life enhancement shops.

If you were underpaid, message them. Why wasn't that literally the first thing you did? They respond in under 24 hours, every single time.

@Wendyfred wrote:

I was short changed by Coyle Hospitality, which I believe was part of the Grass Roots America group, on several occasions this year.

Here is what I was paid this year.
On 3/31/15, I received the following payments:
$45.72 for [client name removed] restaurant. This was the full payment I was entitled to.
$100.00 for [client name removed]. This was the full payment I was entitled to.
$115.16 for [client name removed]. I should have received a dinner reimbursement of $92.80 plus a payment of $30 for completeing the report. I was short changed by $7.64. I have not received an explanation from Coyle. My report was accepted with an excellent rating.

On 4/30/15, I received the following payments:
$148.54 for [client name removed] restaurant. I should have received a dinner reimbursement of $150.00 plus a payment of $15.00 for completing the report. I was short changed by $16.46. Not only was I not paid for completing the lengthy report, I was not completely reimbursed for the dinner.
$115.00 for [client name removed]. This was the full payment I was entitled to.

In summary, I have been short changed by $24.10. It has been difficult because I was unemployed at the time. I have never received any explanation of the reason for the small payments.

Mod note: Welcome to the forum Wendyfred. Please do not link the client with the company that shops them. It is one of the rules of this forum and an ICA violation. Thanks.

Wow. This post is crazy for so many reasons!

#1 How is Coyle connected to Grass Roots? I am reasonably certain that they are not.
#2 Why on earth would you be wasting your time doing Coyle dining shops if you were unemployed? $15 payment for work (What's that about $3 an hour?) and having to wait for reimbursement.
#3 A simple email would get your explanation for your missing $24.
#4 No way that none of the tattletales didn't email Coyle already. Why on earth would you include client names in a post?

@SoCalMama wrote:

Wow. This post is crazy for so many reasons!

Agreed...bizarre post!

There's absolutely no reason that I can see to suspect a connection between these two MSCs, and this thread is about non-payment from a MSC that has declared bankruptcy...while Coyle is clearly operational and paying shoppers.

Wendyfred received over $500 in payments/reimbursements within the guidelines of the payment schedule and is concerned about a $24 differential. A sensible thing to do would be contact the MSC for an explanation, since bashing them with inappropriate content in an unrelated thread gives the impression that this shopper may not be the best at following instructions. Based on that, I would tend to believe that the payment was most likely reduced for not following shop instructions.

Coyle is one of the most reputable ones out there, and they are not affiliated with Grass Roots.

Wendyfred seems to be another 1-hit-wonder, but unlike groups which have a number one hit and never manage it again, her single post is riddled with mis-information which unfortunately will be picked up by the internet spiders and catalogued as "truth".

Yes, they owe me money.

They owe me $160 for dining hall shops that should be on my VISA, and a $50 gift card for a seafood restaurant shop all from March.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2015 10:38PM by simpson83.

Good read. Raw deal.

[www.bizjournals.com]

Audialyn30 - Indeed a good article. I was surprised that they had as much in assets as they did:
"Grass Roots America listed $2.2 million in assets, mostly the contents of its offices, accounts receivable and intellectual property such as 85 registered domain names."
I suspect that a lot of that is in the perceived value of the domain names, which will have to be sold.

The biggest chunk of their debt is owed to Haliburton ($5.4 million). If there was a way (and without access to their Corporate records, I don't know a way) to contact all of the mystery shoppers who are owed money, I think it would pale next to just the Haliburton debt. I haven't gone back to add up the amounts listed on this Forum as being owed to shoppers, but it is low. I don't think that anyone is owed more than $1000, most much less.

Even if there were no attorney's fees, the $2.4 million in assets versus $14.5 million in debt would represent 16 cents on the dollar. Attorney's fees get subtracted first, and according to Jacob, money owed to shoppers is not even included in the $14.5 million of debt.

File a claim with the court. That should cost nothing if you do it yourself. Even if you only get 5 cents for each dollar owed, 5 cents is more than nothing.

BTW, why are you surprised that MSPA can't / won't do anything? They are a trade association for the benefit of the MSCs. They are not an insurance company. They are not a bank. They are not a pension plan. Your mystery shopping payments are not guaranteed by anyone.

40 dollars gift card and 40 dollars on the visa card that is not working. Since these are both well known companies, I have reached out to both and have contacted me credit card companies as well to dispute the charges made. We will see......

They knew, I was offered and assigned three shops the day before they closed down. Some were being spiteful, sounds terrible but its true.

Many shops were posted and auto-assigned for April during the last week of March and then canceled 4/1 by their system. I suspect the employees did not know the company was closing and that they were losing their jobs. I think they learned on 3/31 when they were dismissed. I think the laid-off employees may have been even more surprised than we were.

Just remember the Grass Root employees need an income as well. I hope all of us get paid soon. My last shop was March 23.

Please keep us updated. Thanks!!

Why do you think that you are going to get paid? the company is bankrupt. Their liabilities exceed their assets by a a factor of 7 (for every $1 they have, they owe $7). Mystery shoppers are unsecured creditors. The best thing you can do is to file a claim with the bankruptcy court. IF you get anything, it will likely be pennies on the dollar, and it won't be fast. The GrassRoots employees have a much better chance of collecting any pay which was owed to them because - they were employees. We are contractors. Not employees. Florida doesn't appear to have a state wage and hour board, so the employees will have to hope that the US Department of Labor argues on their behalf.

@wiseshopper wrote:

Just remember the Grass Root employees need an income as well. I hope all of us get paid soon. My last shop was March 23.

The title of this thread is, Does Grass Roots Still Owe You Money? I take it from wiseshopper's post, he or she did a shop on March 23 and has not yet been paid.

@spaztck wrote:

The title of this thread is, Does Grass Roots Still Owe You Money? I take it from wiseshopper's post, he or she did a shop on March 23 and has not yet been paid.

Wiseshopper is asking when they is going to get paid. IMHO, s/he is either very naive or simply in denial.

@wiseshopper wrote:

Just remember the Grass Root employees need an income as well. I hope all of us get paid soon. My last shop was March 23.

@AustinMom wrote:

Many shops were posted and auto-assigned for April during the last week of March and then canceled 4/1 by their system. I suspect the employees did not know the company was closing and that they were losing their jobs. I think they learned on 3/31 when they were dismissed. I think the laid-off employees may have been even more surprised than we were.

I don't think I said it in this thread, but I did a cheescake job ON 3/31 and received the card. It was a dinner shop and I must have been the last shopper to get processed back to the client! The editor who sent it to the client probably didn't get paid.

I received the card very quickly.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2015 03:43AM by scanman1.

Interesting. I did not get my last CKF gift card, and I performed the shop in early March.

A contact list was posted here earlier. Does anyone still have that?

Actually, if I were owed money by Grass Roots and had put it on my credit card, I might try to initiate a charge back. It would have to be accepted by the institution who your card is through. I would call your holder, explain the situation and provide lots of supporting evidence. You may need evidence in some form that you were contracted to perform a service for the client of the MSC, a copy of the bankruptcy filing, and that they failed to pay you.

I do not know if this would fly, but if I were owed more than $50, I would find something. I used to work in charge backs for credit cards and although it has tightened, I could parse a charge back reason that would make it more cost effective for the client to pay me off rather than defend it.

I also did a shop at the end of March (my first one for that client!) after all these years of shopping and I am still waiting for my $50 payment or bonus card.

You would think that they would have had the bonus cards in their possession already, right? So what are they doing with them? Do they just not having any employees to mail them anymore?

It just does not make sense... It is not like it is money...its a bonus card... They can't use it to pay their expenses.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/23/2015 04:15AM by TanyaBai.

Today I got a new Visa debit card in the mail from Grass Roots Visa. After the initial excitement of thinking perhaps Grass Roots was sending us all some "I am sorry" money I discoverered I could not register it. Thank you Mystery Shop Forum for saving my money as I went out last week and spent all the money on my old Visa card before it expired.. I feel for all of you who had done shops recently and did not get paid.
I assume there was some glitch in notifying the company sending out the Visa cards for them to stop or no notice was sent at all.
As far as creditors go there is a hierarchy of payments out of assets. I know paid employees are one of the first paid out of assets in a Bankruptcy case and business creditors are somewhere near the top of the list (this being companies that actually are owed money for goods they sold to Grass Roots). They do not just divide the proceeds of asset sales among all the creditors equally. I have no idea where contracted employees would stand.