Hello Fellow Shoppers:

I wanted to take the time to warn all of you about shopping with the company Service Trac. I have had nothing but bad experiences with this company. The first time I performed video shops for them, it took over 5 months for me to get paid in full for the assignments. I got every story in the book, how they were restructuing and how they fired everyone in the company etc. I did however eventually get paid in full. About 6 months after that fun experience, I was contacted by the owner, Brock Nowell. He practically begged me to help him with some video assignments in the San Diego area. I told him of my reluctance to work with them again and reminded him of the mess I had to go through the first time. Brock assured me that everything was back to normal at their company and assured me that I would not have any trouble being paid this time. I agreed to help him with the video shops. Well..not such a good idea. First off, they "forgot" to send me a return shipping label and I had to pay over $40.00 to ship the equipment back to them. It is now 7 months since I performed the shops and I am still yet to be paid in full. Every time I call, I get the "I'm looking into this and will get back to you" story, then no one ever calls back. Be warned shoppers. This company is a mess and if you shop with them, you may not be paid!!!

This company is famous for "The dog ate your invoice," and other classic dodges. In addition, most of the really active video shoppers quit shopping for them more than a year ago. At that time they owed, not hundreds but, thousands of dollars to a couple of shoppers who had done long multiday routes involving up to 2500 miles of travel.

There is a long thread at the v-site about them.

Thanks for your response. I had not seen any negative feedback about them prior to my posting. Although they do not owe me a ton of money, they DO owe me money and I fully plan to take them to civil court here in CA if I am not paid by the end of this month. FYI.. I also found out that as an independent contractor, if we don't get paid our wages, we are entitled to interest on the money as well. I am not sure what rate, but will be checking with the courts before filing.

You mentioned the V-site? I am not familiar with this. Can you send me a link?

She is referring to Volition.com which is another forum for mystery shoppers.

I worked for them in October and November and they owe me $300. They require an invoice and it says you get paid approximately 6 weeks from the date of invoice. I've had a pretty good relationship with my scheduler. Anyone have positive things to share?

All I can say is good luck getting paid. I didn't have any problems with my scheduler either, she was wonderful. Unfortunately, when they started screwing me around to get paid, she told me that she had nothing to do with that and I had to contact the office. I have had nothing but problems with the office staff. They were supposed to send a return shipping label, but never got around to it, so I had to pay out of pocket over $40.00 to return the equipment. I worked for them in April & May, and did not receive my first check from them until the end of July, which was considerably short. I have contacted the office repepatedly and keep getting the run around. I have sent over the invoices 5 times now, but they always mysteriously get lost. No one ever has an answer about when I will be paid the balance of what they owe me. I just recently sent them a formal demand letter in which I have advised them to pay by 12/15 or I am going to file a civil case here in California against them.

I would be interested to hear if you actually get paid. Let me know!

Best of Luck !!

They treat their schedulers like mushrooms....keep them in the dark and feed them manure. They would be the last ones to know about the payment process. You need to get to the owner and/or the comptroller.

don't be surprised if they deny ever getting your invoice. They must have several dogs that do little besides eating shoppers' invoices.

I did one job for them once. They were to send me a recording device to use during the shop. They never sent one, so at the last minute I went out and bought one. It cost about sixty dollars (Someone at Service Trac claimed these could be bought at Wal-mart for about thirty five dollars, but this was news to the Wal-mart staff. They did not have any recorders from which you could upload the sound to a computer for that price.).

I did the shop, submitted the report online, and sent them the recording device as they had instructed me to do so that they could upload the sound themselves (I could not upload the sound to my computer but that is a whole other story).

Months later, I had not yet been paid and they had never returned the recorder. I sent them a bill for the shop ($25.00) fee and for the cost of the recorder plus the cost of mailing it. They finally sent me thirty five dollars! In other words, what they did was send me twenty five dollars for the shop fee and an additional ten dollars for the cost of the non-existent thirty five dollar recorder which was not available at Wal-mart.

The bill that I sent them came close to ninety dollars and they sent me a measily thirty five after I sent them a bill.

After my "demand" letter, I received a response from William Nowell, apparently the true owner of the company. He responded by saying that he finds it interesting that when "us" shoppers make mistakes they are the bad guys, commenting on "incorrect billing" etc. He went on to ask me if I was serious about threatening to sue them and said their company does not owe any shoppers any money. He then praised their 17 year history and said that they have had thousands of shoppers, but only a few that have ever complained. I find this amazing as I had only posted my first comment on December 5th and I was surprised to see how many of you have had problems with this company as well.

Shortly thereafter, I received an e-mail from Kathy, claiming to be in charge of their accounts payable. She said that they receive the invoices from the scheduler who gives me the assignment and stated that the invoices I sent to her do not match the invoices from the scheduler. What is amazing about this is that Brock Nowell was the one who assigned these shops to me, then later passed me off to a scheduler when I started complaining about being underpaid. She went on to say that their invoices do not match my invoices and stated that I have been paid in full.

Of course I responded accordingly, re-attaching the invoices for the assignments and the receipts for shipping. I also broke down their payments and what was owed to me based on what Brock had told me I would be paid for the assignments. Kathy responded by telling me that she would need to see the e-mails from the scheduler approving the mileage and shipping re-imbursements. This was done verbally with Brock over the phone, so obviously there is nothing in writing. What is funny is that if you take the amount I paid for shipping and the mileage re-imbursement I was told I would be paid, it adds up to be far more than what they shorted me on the check. Since I sent her the last e-mail, breaking everything down etc, I have not received any response from the company.

All I can say is if any of my fellow shoppers are crazy enough to even consider working with this company, BE SURE to get EVERYTHING in writing!!!

Best of luck to all of you... and Merry Christmas.

Spikeconnie@aol.com Wrote:
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> All I can say is if any of my fellow shoppers are
> crazy enough to even consider working with this
> company, BE SURE to get EVERYTHING in writing!!!


This is SO TRUE with every company you work with. If a bonus does not appear on the job board or my shop log assignment where I can capture it with pdf, I won't play. If mileage is promised or other consideration that can't quite show up on the job board or shop log, I want it in an email. I have no apologies for this EVER. We are talking here about my livelihood in contracting to do the company's work and while it would be wonderful for a verbal agreement to be enough, I want it in writing. This is especially true when outside schedulers are used, but frankly it is often difficult to determine whether the scheduler is a company employee or an outside scheduler. If it is important enough to the scheduler to get the job performed, it is also important enough to at least email me the special consideration.