Hello,

I am fairly new to mystery shopping (3 months) and my husband has recently started as well. He has been shopping for marketforce regularly and got an odd email today from marketforce cancelling all his upcoming shops and saying he is no longer eligible. Has anyone had this happen?

Thanks.

Not unless they are booting him entirely as a shopper. He should contact them for a better understanding. Is it shops for just one client (which could be caused by having been indentified) or is it any shop/any client? Did they reject or question a shop? Did he get one reported late or without the proper proofs and CPI? There are so many possibilities where they may wonder if he is suitable for MSing and then there are so many screwball things that MFI does. They do have some sort of computer algorithm that kicks out shops/shoppers that fit MFI's presumption of a non-objective shopper. My guess is that it is a crock, but I gather it is part of their "safeguarding the integrity of our reports" propaganda to clients. Of course they won't tell you (or the client) what the criteria are for a kick out--who knows, it may be as cheesy as every 4,444th shop that runs through the system they boot the shopper.

I haven't had any of my shops cancelled. Haven't seen their new web page yet either. I log in on the blue portal?

He has done five XXX shops with them and one XXX grocery store. He was scheduled to do two more XXX for this week. He submitted his two latest reports on Friday on time. One shop they did not accept because they said he rounded, when he didn't. Another shop XXX told him the receipt was in the bag and it wasn't. There is a box to check on the form if they failed to give you a receipt. They had questions for him via email after three of the shops, but never mentioned any problems with the quality of the reports.

The email said all shops are cancelled and he is no longer eligible to work with Marketforce. Do they ever reverse this?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2010 01:57AM by jmstead08.

jmstead08 - When you agree to work for MF, or any other MSP, you sign an Independent Contractor agreement that prohibits you from revealing, among other things, client names. You need to edit your post and remove the client names so as not to be in violation.

You may want to edit the client names out of your post because mentioning them in the same thread as the company is an ICA violation.

Evidently they are looking at his overall performance: 3 of 6 shops they have needed to do follow up with him; 1 shop out of 6 rejected for 'cause'; 1 shop no receipt. It sounds to me like he got off to a rocky start with them and they are concerned. Under this situation, I would suggest that he politely contact them and ask for another chance. Let them know that he is just getting started and can see how they thought he had rounded, though he knows that the time just awkwardly worked out that way. Promise to make sure in the future that he gets the receipt in hand--even if he has to fish it out of the bag. If there were issues in the emails, promise to be more diligent with those as well.

I have literally stayed in the car for a minute so I do not arrive on location at exactly 12:00 with these guys. So 12:01 it is just to make sure it doesn't look like I rounded. A timing that is 5 minutes and 0 seconds I am likely to call 4 minutes and 59 seconds. Yes, it is falsification, but they are obsessive about their roundings. I guess to them there are no second free minutes or minute free hours of the day, yet one in sixty timings should have zero seconds on average and one in sixty entry times should have a round hour time.

Thanks. I edited the post and appreciate your feedback.

Flash Wrote:
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> I guess to them there are no second free minutes or
> minute free hours of the day, yet one in sixty
> timings should have zero seconds on average and
> one in sixty entry times should have a round hour
> time.

I've thought that often, how statistically every so often, your timings will have to be an even number. I do occasionally in my reports put a time of 'x' minutes and 00 seconds because the time really had 00 seconds. I just make sure not to let that happen often.

I find it fascinating because there is a meal shop for them that I quite frequently take along my significant other (it is not prohibited). When I go by myself I am there 25 minutes almost every time. When I go with him, we are there 30 minutes almost every time. I couldn't tell you how or why it works that way. It doesn't seem to make a difference whether it takes 4 minutes or 7 to deliver the meal. Of late we have been 'sitting it out' for an extra minute or two to break the '30 minutes most every time'.

They also have questioned the money spent. In CA, our sales tax went up in Jan. Even though the reimbursement is up to $14, when it goes over $11, they question him about it. It is just crazy. Does anyone know of other companies that do fast food so he doesn't have to deal with MFI? I never do those because I have our kids with me and it isn't allowed.

Gapbusters had them also in the past, but I can't think of any company that offers nearly as many of them as MFI or offered them as systematically. I have picked up other varieties of ff, but most frequently a one wave deal done by soda companies to check short term special promotions or signage.

SI does one FF company in my area.

I have done FF in CA, and never had a problem with the tax. This sounds strange, I would call and ask for an explaination.

Ha there explanation is that they think his receipt is fake. We about died laughing. They want him to send in the originals for review. Really, he is going to waste his lunch hour, fill out your survey and not get the food...he just made up a receipt?

I think he is done with them after this. He enjoys other companies better.

If they think it is fake, then they probably think he didn't "waste his lunch hour," and just made up the data to get the money. It certainly has been done before. I'm not saying that your husband did that. I am just saying that there is a reason that MSC's come up with that, because some unethical people do it.

edited to add:
If he is getting good marks from other MSC's then he should just let it go, let MFI fall by the wayside. OTOH, if this is the only company he has ever shopped for, and they questioned this many reports, maybe he is just not cut out for shopping. I know my husband would not be successful at it. The skills it requires are not his strengths, and the skills he is successful at are not required.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/16/2010 06:22AM by dee shops.

I love my FF shops with this MSC. I usually do 4 or 5 every month. It is important to get receipts. Always check to see if the receipt is in the bag or attached to the bag. If I don't see it, I ask for it. Timing is very important also. Get a cheap stopewatch at Walmart. It will make you money the first time you use it:-) What kills me is when they ask the question, "Whay did it take so long to pay for your order to receiving your order?" Slack employees maybe?:-)

I know. I get that one a lot. "I don't know. I wasn't in back cooking the food. That's all I can say is that this is the amount of time it took for the complete order to arrive on my tray."

OMG YES! I hate that question. I do FF's for GAP and so far everyone I've done has a page of questions like that wanting two or three explanations for why each step took the amount of time it did. I have no idea. I was sitting in the car waiting for my food. My guess would be...... the food wasn't ready yet.

I have no problem with indicating "I was unable to determine why . . .". But with ff I often can report that there was something else occurring. Those annoying things such as a customer coming to the counter because they got the wrong meal or have issues with their food. Or they make up the wrong order (rare) or they forgot to drop the fries into the oil.

The really weird one is that sometimes it asks "what was the delay...? when it was like 2 minutes total..... NO delay. I just say "I didn't feel there was a delay. I though service was quite fast." And so far they haven't questioned me...... Odd. When there actually is a delay, I just repeat how many cars (or people) in line or whatever ..... and have never had editor questions over it.

I know. I think they are supposed to serve the food in under a minute after you get your total. Scary.

AustinMom Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The really weird one is that sometimes it asks
> "what was the delay...? when it was like 2
> minutes total..... NO delay. I just say "I didn't
> feel there was a delay. I though service was
> quite fast." And so far they haven't questioned
> me...... Odd. When there actually is a delay, I
> just repeat how many cars (or people) in line or
> whatever ..... and have never had editor questions
> over it.

I've put answers like that too when I was satisfied with the amount of time it took to receive my food.

Flash Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have no problem with indicating "I was unable to
> determine why . . .". But with ff I often can
> report that there was something else occurring.
> Those annoying things such as a customer coming to
> the counter because they got the wrong meal or
> have issues with their food. Or they make up the
> wrong order (rare) or they forgot to drop the
> fries into the oil.


I have only had one where I could determine the why (the person was doing everything and any possible other attending to getting the order, hence letting it get cold...) In general, my delays have been unseen, and from the kitchen end.

Then I guess you have a whole lot of "I was unable to determine why . . ."s.

I'm considering myself fortunate that I have enough options in L.A. where I can avoid that client entirely.

There are certainly only very limited circumstances when I bother with the client. I do think the shop has some merit as a beginner shop as it has a large number of reasonable shop skills involved--timings, cleanliness, product assembly, specific requirements, receipts etc.--that are needed for other shops where there may be a whole lot more at stake than $5-$10. And we all have eaten that stuff, even if it is far from a favorite. And far better to get over self consciousness about the job and how loud the beep on your stopwatch is on a cheap shop than on one where the stakes are higher either in terms of outlay or fees.

I also got shops canceled by MFI. They canceled them the day one was scheduled. they were food shops and no explanation given, even when I asked a scheduler and sent an inquiry via email. I have done over a hundred shops for them, all but maybe a dozen were food shops for them, with under five shops questioned. One missed shop due to family emergency, unable to reschedule, and one shop rescheduled due to family problem. I did take a few months when I didn't do these shops, and when I did them again, it seems like the quality, cleanliness, etc had deteriorated, and I rated accordingly. Maybe they didn't like that. I did get contacted one time when they said I had been identified as a shopper, nope, it was another person they thought was the shopper! They didn't eliminate me from shopping, but now only other shops show up for me, so that pretty much put me out of shopping for them since I work during hours I would have to do the shops. I figure they may put me back in a couple of months because there is no one else in a three county area who shops, and it is a very rural area. I will say that the scheduler I worked with was really great. So I will sit and see what happens.

market force is a terrible company to work for, they make up bogus reasons as to not pay. They also cancel you out if you give too many good scores, in essence they want you to give bad scores when your shopping

We all know that few client sites are perfect. Certainly many that we shop are 'good enough' so we feel deductions are not worth mentioning. I understand that you are angry with Market Force. It is not bad scores for client sites they are looking for but a balance of what is good and bad. If a shopper turned in all bad reports, they would assume that the shopper had a chip on their shoulder and was not being objective. If all of your reports are good, that is equally unrealistic and leads to wondering if the shopper is actually observing. I would find that concern not bogus, especially when I hear of shortcuts to the requirements that folks mention in an open forum that they take because shops pay so little or demand so much.

On the Market Force site, when you are ready to fill out a report, they send you a couple warnings about "do not falsify your report". I think a number of companies have a problem where someone makes up the information (maybe because they have done that particilar shop before) & the company can tell because things don't match previous reports, or they figure out an employee mentioned did not work the day the report was for.

I have not had a problem with Market Force (keep my fingers crossed). In fact, they called and asked if I could take another shop for the same retailer.