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I just received this email from Mystery Shopper's Manual.
Market Force Acquires Tell Us About Us

Posted: 28 Mar 2011 09:09 AM PDT

Boulder, Colorado-based Market Force Information has acquired Winnipeg-based Tell Us About Us (TUAU), Canada’s largest customer intelligence solution provider. This is Market Force’s fourth acquisition since 2005. Market Force claims to be the largest mystery shopping company in the world and one of the largest price audit and analytics firms in North America. TUAU is also a leading customer intelligence company that provides a range of customer feedback solutions. Both companies provide services to many national and international brands.



The TUAU acquisition will enable Market Force to expand its services, including web and interactive voice response survey capabilities, employee satisfaction surveys, social media monitoring, 800-call center live support, as well as broader Canadian mystery shopping services.

“This is a milestone acquisition for us,” said Karl Maier, Market Force’s CEO. “We’ve grown our Customer Feedback portfolio over the past several years and, with TUAU, we’ll have greater capabilities spanning even more markets and geographies. What’s more, TUAU’s 800-call center services and social media monitoring and outreach naturally complement our current solutions and will give our clients even more resources for their customer intelligence. We’ll now have a new Center of Excellence headed by [Tell Us About Us CEO Tyler Gompf] and his talented team.”

What does this mean for shoppers? I am not of the opinion that the ongoing consolidation of the mystery shopping industry is necessarily a good thing. However, it is not likely to change soon. Like many other industries, mystery shopping appears to be headed down a path where there will be a few mega-companies handling large corporate accounts and a number of smaller boutique companies dealing with everyone else. Fewer companies can mean less competition; however, that has not led to fees going up (as you might expect) but has created downward pressure on fees (both those paid by clients and what we shoppers receive). The good news is that there are many of the smaller boutique companies that provide premium service for premium fees and pay their shoppers well.

How can we make the current environment work for us? Have relationships with mystery shopping companies large and small in order to have access to the greatest number and variety of mystery shopper jobs. Choose the assignments that are best for you and work for the companies that value you and treat you well, whether they are large or small.

It certainly is an interesting event. I was not that impressed that TUAU was particularly large. I did note that they had a long list of certifications available for clients that were not in my area so perhaps they are indeed big in Canada. To the best of my knowledge, they have used Kern for scheduling, but after the lost their client with a presence in my area I never heard any more from them. I do check their site occasionally but there is nothing near me.

Of course many of us were saddened when SG Marketing was acquired by MF and eventually all of their schedulers were released and the jobs moved on to the blue portal before some clients ceased entirely.

Overall I like working with company schedulers more than outside schedulers as I am closer to the decision making and the actual payer, so I am not at all disturbed to see TUAU move to MFI, though I know others will be incensed.

As shoppers we do need to have a varied 'diet' of shops and companies. Most every year there will be a client pop up in my area that becomes responsible for a goodly amount of income and most every year there is a client who has been a good source of income that decides to stop shopping. It is all part of the ebb an flow of this business. My smaller company that was my biggest income producer in 2009 lost the client in 2010 and my smaller company that was my biggest income producer in 2010 has lost the client for 2011. That is just the way this business goes. Market Force hangs in there with a fairly continuous stream of reasonable jobs such that they are never my biggest income source but consistently in the middle.

I work for Marketforce a lot. This is a rural area and they call a lot and want me to quite a few mile for good bonuses.

TUAU has one ff in my area. Occasionally I do these when they off a bonus and I am not on rotation.

I just received 8 emails from TUAU for my monthly restaurants (took two). I'm bummed, even though they are reimbursenent only. This market has only a couple restaurants from TUAU and were a great company. No one ever complains about them!!

You never know, Irene. They could move from no pay to a $2 fee now!

Kidding aside, I think that larger component of TUAU was the IVR and other technology systems. I've seen it on receipts from a lot of places that were not necessarily shopped by them. I don't think MFI has much of an IVR in place (I could be wrong), so it seems like it's just the part of the old, "Why invent it when we can purchase it," attitude from them.

I'm really sad to hear this news. I do a lot of work with TUAU. They're great to work with, easy to communicate with and have incredibly easy report. They don't pay much but they pay quickly and without fail. I do mostly gas shops for them so if the clients don't follow, I'll feel the pinch.

Darn, and just as I was about to disactivate myself from MF. I don't like their shops, don't like their reports, don't like their snarkiness when there's an issue and really, really hate that they pay and reimburse me in US$. I get ripped off on both ends of that transaction: pay in CDN$, MF takes it upon themselves to convert this amount to US$ at an exchange rate irrelevant to today's market, bring my cheque in US$ to the bank because MF won't let Canucks auto deposit, and lose even more money because the CDN$ is currently (and has been for a while) more valuable than the US$. A recent example: I paid C$14.86 for an item. MF somehow converted this to U$14.54. The bank gave me C$13.62 for my trouble. Doesn't seem like much but when it happens month after month ...Ugh!

In Ontrio TUAU is one of the larger MSC approx 500 shops available. I have found that TUAU doesn't bonus until the last week of the month where as Market Force knows which locations are though to get to and if you ask for a bonus (gas money/buss money) then they'll give it.


When does this Aquirement take affect? I just got an offer from TUAU for shops available.

There is a blurb about it on their website at [www.marketforce.com] but it does not give a date for the acquisition to be complete. There are, of course, several ways they could handle this. One is to leave TUAU pretty much where and as it is using SASSIE and functioning as a separate entity. The other is to bring them into the fold and attempt to integrate databases and software. The second seems to be pretty much what they did with Shop 'n Chek, which is the blue portal. SG Marketing kept its site as well, though slowly shops were migrated to the blue portal. SG Marketing was a SASSIE company prior to purchase and once the shops had been migrated and the schedulers gone the SASSIE site was released and these days only shows a "404 Not Found" error.

It will be interesting. I worked for Marketforce, they removed me and would not give me the reasoning why other than my receipt did not match with what they had. They will not let me back and I have done over 30 shops for TUAU. Unknown if they will let me back in or not. Go figure.

Keep in mind that you have to register separately for the purple portal (Certified) and the blue portal (Shop 'n Chek) and used to have to for the green portal (SG Marketing). They may treat TUAU the same way. My SNC registration carried through to the blue portal without incident.

I hope so...

I am really sorry to hear that Marketforce took over a really good reliable company.

TUAU shop presence disappeared here, and was nothing much before that. The last shop I did for them was over 3 years ago, before they lost the few clients they had here. But, I have a 10 with them Hopefully, MF retains and builds upon the TUAU base.

Noooooooooooo!!!!!

Hey, cheer up. There are folks who love the purple portal (Certified) and can't stand the blue portal (Market Force) and vice versa. Just because all the companies are owned by the same holding company does NOT automatically mean that your relationship with the subcompany of your choice will change.

kittybratt Wrote:
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> I am really sorry to hear that Marketforce took
> over a really good reliable company.


Doesn't seem like anything has changed yet. I picked up a TUAU assignment on Thurs, performed yesterday and reported on TUAU platform as per normal. Wonder if they may just leave it as is and not fold it into MFI portal?

I am still using the same bookmark for the Blue Portal as I used when they were Shop 'n Chek. The screens still function the same way, with the same materials and the difference is cosmetic. It is also available from the regular MFI site as Blue Portal, but my bookmark still says 'Shop 'n Chek' :-)

If there is a change, I would expect it to pull TUAU off of SASSIE platform to a proprietary one, though SG Marketing was left on their SASSIE until they pretty much closed shop on it.

Don't know when this "takeover" is going into effect. TUAU has tons of jobs for April, and got a huge new account, which is odd if there being taken over. Don't see any ill effect for now. I actually signed with MF because of this, I have worked for them in Vegas, and just changed back to CA, as your not allowed to work in both places.

According to a scheduler, TUAU will be scheduling through May from what we heard.