Beware if you have Yahoo your Exxon shops with more than 4 pictures will not be paid. The company blames Yahoo but I work for a lot of companies and the other companies don't have any problems with pictures. It's just a lame excuse to tell the shopper their software is junk.

I'm confused with the connection between yahoo and a shopper's software.

Now, when I used a yahoo address with CoRI, I had a hard time getting their emails so I switched to a gmail address for them.

We've been doing a similar headscratch with a similar post by this poster to a different thread.

I've been with Yahoo since my first computer. Why should I have to change email address to please them. The should fix their software.

It seems to me that the ball is in their court. If your email provider cannot get the information to them, that is hardly their problem. But I'm not at all understanding why you are submitting photos via email rather than through the website.

Of course you could probably resize your photos to fewer MB and have them go through. The issue on these things is rarely the recipient but rather the maximum size Yahoo is allowing you to send. When my son uses his Yahoo mail to send me the pdfs of materials to do his tax returns he needs to zip the file in order to get it to send.

Like I said I don't have any problems with the other companies I shop for.

Corporate Research is a somewhat pompous, imperialistic MS company. In their minds, shoppers are stupid, second class citizens while they hold themselves to be faultless. To make my point, their proprietary report submission system will not work if accessed through a Mozilla Firefox browser. (Firefox is the world's most popular internet browser) It will only work if accessed through Microsoft's Internet Explorer. They make no apologies for their deficiencies and resent hearing any suggestions from shoppers. Although I don't see the connection between Yahoo email and Corporate Research, don't expect much cooperation from them. BTW, their system is tedious and primitive compared to better systems like ShopMetrics.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/17/2011 07:55PM by Sunnyside.

Pompous. Do you think? LOL You should see the emails I'm getting from one of the schedulers. We have to have correct spelling and grammer. I can hardly read the email from this one schedular. Her sentences run together and I don't know what she's talking about sometimes.
Your right they should go through Shopmetrics, Prophet or even Sassie for their software. Get with the program. LOL

WOW. No wonder I just use these people to fill in when I don't have enough shops for a certain city. Yesterday we had a bad snow storm where I could hardly see across the street at times. I asked to move my shop to today and the other shop to tomorrow. They moved yesterdays shop but refused to move todays shop. When I explained the other shop was totally in the other direction they removed me from the shop and put it back up for 01/18-01/20. Why didn't they just let me do the shop?

This is the worst company to work for. I just got fired from them because a schedular screwed up andtried to blame me for it. It was a high paying job so after trying to contact and get paid and they never returned my emails or calls I contacted the company. Wrong is guess but I put alot of work into it and had to go back a second time. I will not miss them but watch out they do not care.

Is anyone here doing food service audits in convenience stores for them?

I'm not. They're lucky I do any shops with them.

I wanted to move a $5 shop to the next day. They denied it and unassigned me. Then they put it back up for $34. Nothing like cutting their nose off to spite their face, huh?

Flash Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It seems to me that the ball is in their court.
> If your email provider cannot get the information
> to them, that is hardly their problem. But I'm
> not at all understanding why you are submitting
> photos via email rather than through the website.
>
> Of course you could probably resize your photos to
> fewer MB and have them go through. The issue on
> these things is rarely the recipient but rather
> the maximum size Yahoo is allowing you to send.
> When my son uses his Yahoo mail to send me the
> pdfs of materials to do his tax returns he needs
> to zip the file in order to get it to send.


I think I have figured this out. CoRI's Internet Explorer forms submit your painstakingly filled in data BY EMAILING THE RESULTS using YOUR EMAIL SOFTWARE. So, if sending an email on your computer fires up Thunderbird or whatever and sends it via Yahoo's mail server, then that's what CoRI's "form submission" software does. If Yahoo has a file size limit for email, that's what goes wrong. Have you noticed the "format" of the report copy you can save? It's a bunch of text which gets emailed to somebody who eventually looks at it and decides you submitted something.

Slightly more modern systems like Sassie and Prophet actually save the data you submit (and files you upload) in their database. CoRI's system must have been written in the late 1980's or something.

I learned right off the bat that I couldn't stand them. I did about a half dozen shops for them back in Sept., didn't get paid for a couple that were submitted a few minutes late (the shops were a long ways away and I was unaware that they had to be submitted via IE, and by the time I figured out what was wrong, the clock had ticked away) and only partial payment on some others without explanation. Several times the town they provided didn't match the street address and they couldn't seem to straighten it out on their end. I decided I'd had enough just after those few and parted ways with them. I don't miss them one tiny bit.

I'm only using them for grocery and big bonused shops. When are they going to figure out nobody wants shops that are $3?

I was amused to see that a recent email they sent me did not show the prices shops had been bonused to 2 cents at a time. It rather looked like a transplant of their job page where the current fees were only accessible by going through the training. The "delete" button was really easy to find.

I guess I am one of the few (maybe?) that has been happy with CORI since I've been working with them. I only pick up shops that are bonused, but luckily where I live, they get up to $30 and $40 by the end of the month. My husband has gotten into mystery shopping, and he did a few routes for them with only 3-4 stops, and made almost $150 each time.

That being said, many of the shops posted for June have already been taken at the $3-$5 mark by someone else in my area. I don't worry though, because it happens every month, and every month the shops don't get done and keep getting bonused higher and higher. I won't take ones for less then $15, and I won't do the reveal shops (you would have to pay me much more than even $30 a pop to do those!)

Really, the gas sation shops are the only ones I do for CORI. I find that the others are not worth my time.

Low paying shops that are flaked or rejected, then requiring a bonus up to ten times or more its face value must work for CoRI. Presumably, the majority of the cheapos are accepted shops.

I am selective with their shops. I train and test for the ones that I would be willing to do, if the fee were fair. Then I'm ready to accept them only when the fee gets bonused to an amount that's acceptable to me. In actuality, there are very few of their shops that get to the point where I'm willing to bite. Still, it could happen

We've posted for years of their ridiculously low fees and laughed at the absurdity of a .02 bonus. Nevertheless, they continue to do business in the same manner and they seem to keep their clients. I have to wonder about their shopper base. New shoppers have a high attrition rate, and may not be able to be depended upon to a large degree. Experienced shoppers can find more rewarding shops, maybe using CoRI as filler. I would rather do a $30 shop that takes 2-3 hours than 10 $3 shops that takes roughly the same amount of time. Maybe I'm the minority.

Ah, but 10 $3 shops gives them 10 opportunities to contact you and complain, 10 opportunities to reject and 10 shops for you to do bookkeeping on. How could anyone resist???? And 10 shops lets you do more driving in most situations than just 1 shop, so again, how could anyone resist???

I still work for them as does Ron. We do gas shops and I've picked up some $15 drive thru's at the ice cream places along my route. They take about 5 minutes to do and the reports are easy. I did a few for about $5 close to home but drove 30 miles one way to pick up one along with a gas station and a $15 McD's the other day. Things were slow that day and a friend and I went on a drive and made a few dollars doing it.

Ron and I also pick up big bonused hardware and other shops out in the boonies. Got one on our gas route the other day for $33. I hate doing the narratives but I'll do them for that kind of money. But $4 you can keep!

Hey Flash, A little sarcastic are we? LOL

Mert, Their low fees are why they keep their clients. Which would you rather pay someone? $3 or $30?

Sarcastic? Moi??? Frankly my reaction is that CORI has something to offer the mystery shopping world--reasonable training and 'training wheels' shops. Of course there is no reason for them to pay 2 cents or 5 cents more than they must if shoppers are willing to continue taking shops at those fees. For the new shopper, if there is a problem with a shop, it can pretty much be treated as a learning experience because the out of pocket is tiny and you weren't planning to pay the electric bill with the fee either. The fast pay keeps you from getting discouraged when you start. It was six long long weeks between my first shop and my first payment, during which time I was wondering if it was just a scam.

The old Dick and Jane readers were excellent for learning to read because the same words were used over and over again. "See Spot run. Run, Spot, run!" allowed even the most inexperienced reader to read aloud with moderate fluidity. But there comes a time to move on to other books or other shops that have more interest and more reward.

That's the get what you pay for part. And, I'm not strictly referencing shoppers. Clients get Y/N/NAs, which can never replace a few well chosen words.

I have only done 2 shop for this company. Both were when I first started. The first one had a really good bonus. The second was rejected because I did not stay in the shop for the required amount of time. I never see anything on the board that's worth it but I guess to some shoppers as long as they can stay busy they will sign up for as many shops as they can.

muwahhahahahahah!

there are 3 CRI shops that have been undone for a while ( couple weeks at least).

they've just bonused them.

the bonus?

3 cents.

Ugh.

I got back and forth with this company. Right now, I'm happy with them. for the last couple of months, I've been doing their convenience/gas shops. They have to types: regular one and what they call wholesale branded. The regular shops are simple mystery shops with about 4 pictures that are easy to get. These are the ones that are the 3.00 ones. I have done several, and the prices have ranged between 10 & 15 dollars. They have gone through without a hitch and payment was fast and reliable.
The wholesale branded ones have been a different story. They require the date/stamp to show on the submitted photos.kept After two months or working with and fiddling around I contacted Olympus and discovered my camera will not upload a photo with the date stamp. The first shop I did was rejected, but I have to say I was very impressed the the scheduler/editor was very helpful and understanding. She extended the due date so I could work with the photo further. I ended up printing the photos, scanning them and then submitting the scanned copies. that worked and I was paid. The second one I did, I did the same thing, but my printer started running low on ink and the photos could not be used. I agreed with that, the printed copies were no quality photos. Again the editor was extremely easy to work with and offered to extend the date, but we came to the mutual decision that it wasn't working. The shop was rejected, my rating lowered, and I was not paid. I am okay with this because I know it was my problem.
I have just found a program that could be bought online for 20 bucks that will imprint what is called the EXIF file information on the photo. I just accepted another shop for today and can't wait to do it and send in the photo correctly.

How long will this happy relationship last? Who knows, this is not the first time I have shopped with them for a few months, then threw in the towel and said never again. But while it is lasting, I am enjoying the bonused shops and will continue to do them when the price is right. Would I do them at the published price at the first of the month? NEVER!!

Funny thing about those gas shops, I totally forgot to set the date/time stamp and I did 5 of them last week that were heavily bonused. Never heard anything back from them and I looked at the website and all shops have been accepted and approved for payment, guess I just got lucky.

At first I was a little put off by CoRI with all the hoops they make you jump through just to get signed up with them and all the training just so I can see how much the shop pays or should I say how little they pay. However I have since done quite a few jobs for them, but I don't even think about touching them until they have been bonused up quite a bit. Luckily most of the shoppers in my area will let the jobs sit til they start reaching $15 and the fact that they pay on a weekly basis is nice too.

The regular shops with the 4 photos have always been accepted without a question, but the 2 wholesale branded have both had problems. I'll see how the one today goes.