Hi I would like to know if anyone is having the same problem I am with shop n chek. I love to do the gas station shops for them but when it comes to upload the photos to them a report takes me about 2 hrs because you have to wait for the pictures to upload and it takes forever. I even went to the extreme and bought a new computer system. I had XP but now have Vista. And I tried again and the same thing it took me 5 hours to input 3 shops with photos to their site. Anyone have any suggestions?

It may have more to do with your connection speed than your operating system. Do you have DSL?

No I have sprint wireless. It was worse when I did have DSL.

I too have problems with the pic to shopnchek. It took me 13 hours to upload for 2 shops. I contacted them, and of course it was" MY Fault". They said I must not be doing it right. I didn't get paid for several jobs, that were well over my distance to travel. One was over 60 miles away(no pay).They don't pay enough to do their jobs, for the hassel of the uploads.

I know what you mean. I love to do the shops here in Washington state because they are so close. But they don't want to admit that there is a problem at their end. I don't know what types of system they use and how old it is and how they upgrade their system. Right now I have all new equipment and it should work and they don't pay enough to take 2 hrs to upload all the pictures required for the shop.

Me too. I have a new system with Vista and a cable modem and it does take forever. I only take them now when the price goes wayyyy up.

Nice to hear it isn't just my problem with these! I had xp and had to go to vista with the new computer. I did email them, because I couldn't get it to upload after 5 hrs the first time. I told them the problems I was having, and went to bed. Tired and frustrated didn't help. I agree, the pay needs to be much more in agreement with the time needed. Does anyone else have problems with the linking pictures to the questions? That takes me a long time too. The new ones do have the questions in a better format, and you can upload all of them at once now.

I tried to do a couple of shops for them the other day. I did just one the first day and it seemed to be better with vista. But then the next day I did 2 and the first one was okey but then by the end of the 2nd shop input it seemed like it was kicking me off about every other upload so I would have to go out and back in to even to finish the 2nd shop. I think that their operating system doesn't agree with ours because they probably need to updat their system. when I told them that I updated my system they didn't really have anything to say. It seems like it will take one shop but you have 4 or more a day then it seems like it doesn't want to take the data. You would think that they would figure it out by now with so many having trouble doing these shops that they would investigate the situation. Or someday they are going to find that nobody wants to do the shops anymore.

First I would check my picture size. My wonderful old digital is a 1.4 megapixel and even then I can set it to a 640 size. A jpg file from this size is only about 150KB and uploads quickly. With my new digital camera (12 megapixel) at full throttle the pictures are around 1,500KB, or 10 times as large. MSPs gain very little with the extra information and many of them even suggest you set your camera to the 640x480 size as it gets them the information they need without clogging up their servers with too much information or their bandwidth with big uploads.

Now this is not to say that their website is not flaky, nor is it to advocate Vista or XP or one type of internet connection or another. I run XP on a satellite internet connection (which has its finer moments and its other moments) and by keeping the files small have experienced very little upload problem.

I will go ahead and try to minimize the pixel on my camera. I usually set it at 3 megapixel. My camera goes up to 7. And see what happens. If this works then I don't mind doing shops for them. In my area alone I found about 35 shops.

Hi, could you tell me a little bit about what you are required to do on these shops. I got a digital camera for Christmas. I am a little leary of these shops and uploading the pictures. Now I read this and I'm really leary!

Thanks
Brenda

Don't be I have done photo for other companies it seems like Shop N Chek is the hardest to get to upload pictures on. CRI the Exxon's that I do it is easy to upload to their sight. So you just have to check them out or ask questions.

I have done these assignments and had no problem at all with uploading the pictures. My guess is that you need to resize your pictures down to 640 by 480 . Large pictures will take f-o-r-e-v-e-r to upload. There are lots of free resizing programs on the web, if your camera software didn't come with a resizer of its own.

I can usually do these shops in about 15 minutes onsite, then anothe 10-15 to complete the report, so it comes out to a decent hourly pay.

Most digital cameras come with software to transfer your pictures from the camera to your computer. You need to check and make sure that the transferred picture is in .jpg or .jpeg format as the extension (just like a Word document is saved in a .doc format). I find it easier still to just directly copy files from the memory card into the computer through a card reader and rarely use the memory space provided on the camera itself.

Once on your computer you can handle them like any other file. When I do the explore on the hard drive's files and find the pictures, I go to the "details" view to see the size of the file and rename them if necessary. If the file is too big (I don't like to try to upload a file larger than about 250K I can use the software that came on the machine or the software that came with the camera or my old copy of Photoshop to make the file smaller and save it in jpg format. Then when I am entering the shop and it wants the photos uploaded (or receipts or whatever), there is a "Browse" button that lets me select the file on my computer and then I hit the "Upload" button. It really is pretty simple and pretty quick if you aren't trying to push through really big files. For SASSIE companies you usually see the file that is being uploaded and have an opportunity to click on the image to see what it will look like to the recipient.

Thanks for the tips I am going to be doing 3 shops for them today. And we will see what happens.

Thanks for your replies. My son showed me how to transfer the photos to the
computer and I do scan my receipts to shopnChek. So maybe I will venture out and do some of these shops. I really need the extra income right now.

Brenda

Like anything else, it gets easier and faster once you have done it a few times. Certainly call on your son to "supervise" your endeavor to help you learn it. While I don't think SNC requires that the photos be renamed to identify what they are, I just habitually do it because it also makes it easier for me to remember "pump" rather than "DSC00083" when I want to find the picture. For my hotel and resort shops there are likely to be 100 photos taken but only 12-18 uploaded. I always shoot more photos than needed because there is no more expense to taking 10 than to taking 3 and it gives me more possibilities for appropriate photos to upload. I also find that reviewing the pictures is likely to show me "problems" to talk about in the report that I may not have seen on site. It also resolves that issue of something it totally slipped your mind to check if it is or isn't in the appropriate photo.

I too take extra pictures, in case I missed something the first time.. I take all pumps, around the buildings, inside and out, even if the area "passes". Photos do go quick..it s the report times that I have the problems with. When you use vista, and name each photo, is there a 'quick ' way to do this? I seem to have to go back and start over each time to do each photo... whereas in xp you could do each one at once. Now SNC wants each photo labeled like that, and that alone takes a while for me. granted, I don't know that much about computers, but I am learning.. as a need to know basis.

Haven't dealt with Vista and don't plan to because of a whole lot of compatibility issues (both practical and philosophical). You can't just right click on the file name, hit "rename" and rename it? I usually do that in the "thumbnail" view where I can see what I am naming, but of course that is in XP.

I did my shops with the photo's and I decided to do some reading on the site to see if there was something that I may of missed to be able to do it faster.
And I found it. When you go into upload your picture it says either do a batch load or single. Well if you look it says that you can down load the Adobe Flash.
So I did. And wow what a difference. I batch loaded my pictures it took maybe 5-10 minutes. Because I did 2 shops yesterday that had about 25 pictures each. There was alot of bad compliance at these stations. And hit upload and it uploaded 25 pictures in about 1 minute. I tried the other shop as well and man what a difference and I passed up Adobe Flash because I already had Adobe downloaded in my system. But I am glad that I did and now I will be doing shops for Shop n Chek and no have to spend 5 hours to put in 3 shops. It took me about a hour to do 3 shops. So check out that Adobe Flash I am glad that I did.

would you happen to know which adobe flash you are using? unfortunately, when the motherboard fried on my old computer, my son got me the new one with vista.. so it is back to basic on learning the computer again... I do like xp much better than vista... but then, it took me two years to figure that one out ... hopefully the learning curve is much quicker

Where I found adobe flash it was a free download off the shop n chek website.
When I went to put in my pictures it said that in order to upload the batch you need the adobe flash and it was free to download so I downloaded it before I put in my pictures. I to tried to upgrade my old computer from XP to Vista and when I did it screwed up my computer big time and so I ended up buying a new computer and they all come with vista. I bought a 150.00 upgrade for XP for nothing. And so my husband is going to what I call bare bones the hard drive so we can sell it.
The computer is only 2 years old. He has a degree in electronics and computer programing.

Aargh! I am finding that "Vista ready" means a wonderfully overpowered machine to run XP Luckily I own a CD of XP with its license, so if/when I crash or have to replace my laptop or desktop I can still stay with XP. I was lucky enough to pick up a refurb desktop this year that was "Vista ready" but with XP on it. This doesn't belong in this thread--maybe we need a tech thread?

Delighted to hear that the Adobe Flash took care of your problems, Bunny.

Thank you I am too. I know when we tried to up grade XP to Vista the computer went screwy because all the software we had and stuff we installed when we had XP went down the drain. We couldn't even hook up our scanner which was only 6 month old to vista. We had to go out and buy a brand new that runs with vista. Seems like we couldn't even go to the companies and get new drivers so we could run the old stuff on vista. And we can't even reverse the process taking off vista back to XP it just won't do it. So that vista seems like a mean dog to deal with.

Vista stinks!

The equipment compatibility issues with Vista are why I will stay away. Apparently the equipment manufacturer needs to get a license from Microsoft to make drivers that will work with Vista and Microsoft then needs to certify them. I gather this is not an inexpensive proposition. Then if, in a subsequent update of Vista, the drivers get 'broken' the manufacturer has to start the process and payment all over again. My son was telling me at Christmas of one charming scenario where the company got the license and certification, then was bought out by someone else and it is unknown whether Microsoft missed the problem when they originally Certified or changed Vista, but there now exists a huge security gap into Vista via those drivers. Microsoft won't fix it without the company rewriting and recertifying (and another payment) and the new company has basically told Microsoft to shove it.

My significant other tried to upgrade his "Vista ready" machine to Vista. He was forewarned to use a particular software to make his XP backup before he attempted it. Vista was a disaster, so he formatted the drive and put the XP backup back on. There were only mild problems. If anyone is thinking about "upgrading" to Vista I will try to find the name of the software he bought to do the backup. It was not anything I had heard of before.

When you have to name your photos with your project ID#, name the first one, then right click and copy the name. All you have to do then is click on the photo to rename it and paste the ID# and add the specific title, such as: ID# 1234567_restroom1

This makes it much faster, and like the others said - check the size of your photo. Sometimes on Shop N Chek they can take 7 minutes per photo, so just plan your time - - attach your photos to the file, and click upload - - - then go do something else while they are loading. Don't sit and wait. After a fair amount of time, go back to the computer and complete your report. Just manage your time - -it will all work out.

I do like working with Shop N Chek, because they have lots in my area.

It's more likely to be an issue with your connection speed, coupled with the size of the pictures you're taking.

I just did several audits for SnC and took 20-30 pics per shop with my 12MP camera. It's nice to have extra pictures if you need them for some reason, and I'm archiving all those on my computer. However for the actual submission I only needed 5-6 pictures. After getting all of them on my PC, I used a photo editing program on the ones I was using. I cropped any unimportant stuff out of the pics, and then resized them, 1600x1200 for the bigger shots and maybe 800x600 for the detail ones.

The resulting pictures are still plenty detailed, and they've dropped from 1,500KB down to about 350KB. I don't think it took more than 30 seconds or so to upload them.

I use the date stamp on my camera routinely for shops because some companies go ballistic about old photos (and small changes since your last visit you may not note but the store owner may) and I certainly don't want to get them riled. Because of the date stamp I don't crop photos. They get what I shot, though I am likely to adjust the contrast or brightness to make the picture more self explanatory. I then resize them and may save them with lower resolution, but generally I have gotten away from using my full 12 MP for shop stuff.

Shop N Chek has a program you can download to manage the size of the photo. Check the upload section next time you do a shop for them.