They are no longer my primary source of income either. I don't even trouble my self with them as a reliable source of income. I am a full time MS and there are MANY other companies looking for shopers. Lately I have only come to look at their site twice. Once at the beginning of the month to take note of the shops available then toward the end of the month to see if any unlucky sodd had taken the shop. If it's still available AND bonused then I'll consider it.....

Their latest twist is that apparently Kern will be scheduling at least one of their clients. They seem to be making bad and worse decisions.

And i just signed up. : (

Me too. I have had no problems with them except for the exams. I passed one and the other roast beef place.. I just as soon not eat their food. They (SI) used to have lots of shops around here but I did not take any cuz I had other work.

Service Intelligence! Oh yes it is the company whose staff has wonderful communication skills, poor grammar, not an ounce of common sense and oh so rude,conceited, arrogant, patronizing, insulting, the only one I've officially deactivated from, even with a ten rating for more than ten shops! They struck me as neither intelligent nor dedicated to service.

I havent even seen any work from them. I signed up a couple of months ago, took the tests, but only see compliance shops when I look for shops.

They lost the account I did for five years, I'm a little sad, but have replaced it....their loss.

I just got an offer to do a hair cut assignment. The riembursement is $15.00 and the pay is $5.00. Well I know the Salon and their least expensive hair cut is $35.00. There's no way I'm going to accpet this shop.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2011 09:08PM by PMW.

Sometimes the 'discount' will make a shop worthwhile, but philosophically SI has always covered on reimbursements for jobs I have done with them. You may want to check the salon and then contact SI about the price discrepancy and see if they would be willing to either change the reimbursement or bonus it to the actual cost plus fee. You also will want to take the client name out of your post (if that is the client name) to avoid ICA violation.

Are people still having trouble communicating with Service Intelligence these days?

My email about a detail about a shop was left unanswered. Since it was only about covering additional reinmbursement (which was 18 cents over), I didn't worry about it (the required purchase was 18 cents over the maximum reibursement). I decided not to worry about whether I would get the 18 cents.

But I am annoyed that my email was ignored.

And today I see on their own forum that people are confused about who to contact and some are not getting responses... so I'm glad I'm not alone, but I worry for those that complain in that forum and what retaliation SI might take against them.

Athena34 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Are people still having trouble communicating with
> Service Intelligence these days?
>
> My email about a detail about a shop was left
> unanswered. Since it was only about covering
> additional reinmbursement (which was 18 cents
> over), I didn't worry about it (the required
> purchase was 18 cents over the maximum
> reibursement). I decided not to worry about
> whether I would get the 18 cents.
>
> But I am annoyed that my email was ignored.
>
> And today I see on their own forum that people are
> confused about who to contact and some are not
> getting responses... so I'm glad I'm not alone,
> but I worry for those that complain in that forum
> and what retaliation SI might take against them.


I got a very unpleasant email from the moderator of SI's Forum informing me that I would be deactivated for 30 days because of my "negativity" on their forum and it would go into my file. I emailed her back and very politely told her I wasn't the only one complaining, along with several other things, but if that was the case they could just deactivate me permanently, which they did. I had been contracted with SI since 2001 or 2002 and they were at one time, my primary source of income. I've seen several companies they had contracted with them now with other Mystery Shopping companies I'm contracted with now.

I'm sorry that happened to you!

Alisha Hicks seems to be on a bit of a power trip. She picks/chooses which people to be unreasonable with. Unless you post only positive, happy messages in their forum, you run the risk of being punished, even if your posts are accurate.

If you accurately describe bad service from "Service Intelligence", then you will be accused of being negative.

Athena34 Wrote:
Unless you post only positive, happy
> messages in their forum, you run the risk of being
> punished, even if your posts are accurate.
>
> If you accurately describe bad service from
> "Service Intelligence", then you will be accused
> of being negative.


Read the posting guidelines. They are very upfront that the forum is to provide "Positive, encouraging community support". They are not providing a forum for complaints. Why on earth would they?

They should ditch that forum because it's completely useless.

I read Mrs. Hicks' posts and found her tone to be arrogant and somewhat exasperated, as if the posters were idiots complaining about nothing. People are having major communication issues with SI since they moved from Canada and the new "bosses" are unwilling to acknowledge that they've dropped the ball. I still do lots of work for them and have found that they're reachable by phone. Avoid their Vox system and avoid the forum at all costs. If you need any help, pick up the phone and call them. It would be nice if they just posted their contact info in a nice "contact us" link but, for whatever reason, they haven't.

An example of their diligence: I had not put my paypal addy in their new site when I signed up there. When my first pay period came around, I was surprised at not having gotten paid, being used to direct deposit from them. A few days later, Rudy emailed me directly and asked me to input the info so that they could pay me. When I still managed to flub that, Rudy input the info for me and my pay was received the next day. I was impressed! What a nice change from companies where we have to run around like chickens with our heads cut off to get paid ~ this company was actually contacting me to make *sure* I got paid!

BTW, I've been working with them for over 10 years. They were the very first company I signed up with.

I've worked with them a long time as well and during the past 18 months, about every month or two I am ready to throw in the towel. Arrogant, rude and unable to read and digest an English sentence are what come to mind as descriptors. Captive forums are just a bad joke, whether it is SI or the MSPA or any other in my opinion.

The shops I do don't have a 'Rudy'. They rather have schedulers who threaten, whine and @#$%&. You make 1 error in 30 reports on one character in an 18 character string and they start threatening because you are 'sloppy'. Lord help you if you do that twice in 100 reports! You will go straight to Purgatory if not to deeper depths. The most recent personal folly was getting an irate email several hours after submitting shops and receipts that they did not receive one of the receipts. This of course accompanied by the threats of rejecting the report if they don't receive the receipt in a certain number of hours. Hmmm. My fax shows it went through. Oh well, send it again. Get an irate email that I sent the receipt TWICE!!!!

Then of course there are the threats that you must not wait for a bonus or they will hire more shoppers. Followed the following day by an email indicating that if they sent you to Purgatory already and limited your number of shops, contact them and they will consider reinstating you because they need their shops done.

The shops I do just got handed over to Kern for scheduling. This should prove amusing. "Don't contact us!! Contact Kern for any questions, rescheduling, bonuses, etc." Add 'clueless' to their repertoire of attributes.

Flash, sounds like you could use a good "Rudy"! lol

In fact, it sounds like Rudy should be dealing with all the shoppers. He was kind, patient and did what needed to be done in a timely manner. Maybe he should train the rest of the staff.

Yes, my guess is that one of several possible scenarios happened when they brought the shops in from Canadian scheduling. Either they put the extra work on some folks who already felt they were overworked or else they put the work on folks who never had any customer service experience and don't realize that there is a way of getting your message across without it being adversarial. Whatever the deal is, though, they have set themselves up for having shoppers long for the days when the Canadian schedulers were scheduling, and that can do nothing for the ego of the NC crew.