Beware! They (presto, Ipsos, whoever) will reject your shop and your only recourse is to appeal. Then, new rules are made up or old rules are re-interpreted to allow for your rejection!....including Catch-22's (must have "closed" sign in photo --- except sometimes stores have no closed signs or the sign is not turned around!), or a salon is by appointment only and does not have items for sale, or none for sale under $20 in cost! These shops are IPSOS' way of ripping off the shoppers!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/28/2024 05:56PM by salisburync.

Agreed. This has happened to me many times in this program and those rules they reject you on are not in the guidelines

I am very selective when doing these. Just had one rejected because you need to purchase two identical items. Both receipts show the same item. In my eyes, i did a great shop with no reason for rejection. I appealed and also escalated to someone else because that was just not a valid reason at all. It is very frustrating.

They need to get a handle on these editors. Maybe we should just check each other's work and get paid for editing too.

I had one that paid me $8 reimbursement when it should have been around $15 (cheapest thing). After I appealed, they gave me $1 more and said my fee was actually lower than I thought. I thought it was $20 and they claim it was $14. I have no evidence of the fee since I never took a screenshot. Oh well!

To everyone who is trying these Presto shops...You have about an 80% chance of getting your shop through and in getting paid, even when you do it perfectly! Ipsos makes up rules for not paying you, that are not in the instructions. I was rejected for a shop because they said both of the receipts I received (asian take out business) were not the 'type' they needed. Those receipts were all I was going to get! These people run a tiny business and do not speak English! I appealed. ....still declined. I raised a stink about it. Now I am 'BLOCKED' I can't wait to do a face-to-face with the IPSOS people at the next MS convention opportunity.

These are the worst shops. I don't know why anyone does them. There are so many other projects that pay the same or better, with an almost 0% chance of rejection assuming you do whats asked in the timeframe posted.

Some of them are very simple and offer an appealing selection of items that we can get for the reimbursement, but I am very selective to avoid issues at the more difficult locations.

@salisburync wrote:

To everyone who is trying these Presto shops...You have about an 80% chance of getting your shop through and in getting paid, even when you do it perfectly! Ipsos makes up rules for not paying you, that are not in the instructions. I was rejected for a shop because they said both of the receipts I received (asian take out business) were not the 'type' they needed. Those receipts were all I was going to get! These people run a tiny business and do not speak English! I appealed. ....still declined. I raised a stink about it. Now I am 'BLOCKED' I can't wait to do a face-to-face with the IPSOS people at the next MS convention opportunity.

Ohhhhh you can meet these people? I'd love to ask them to explain to me why some of these were rejected.

@Cassiespark wrote:

These are the worst shops. I don't know why anyone does them. There are so many other projects that pay the same or better, with an almost 0% chance of rejection assuming you do whats asked in the timeframe posted.

Agreed. The new rules where you buy the same thing twice, and have to look for an item with the price posted make no sense for restaurants/delis. And of course, the low reimbursement makes no sense for other places. I don't even want to think about service places like nail salons.

There are still about $300 worth of shops in my town. I'm still passing, even at $20.

I just joined this forum and made another thread about these shops I should have looked at the discussions because I figured I was not the only person this is happening to. Please stay away from these shops. It will kill your pockets and more than likely the shop will get rejected. There has to be something we can do about this!!!! I’m pissed they just rejected 5 of mines in a row so I lost out on $100 in shop pay and like almost another $60 un reimbursement because you have to get the same thing twice and some of these items were like $8 or so. I think they have some kind of deal with these small businesses to put more money on their pockets at our expense!!!!!

@salisburync & @Cassiespark you guys make great points about this shop. I don't know of any other shop they have that has such strict criteria for approval. I know that some of the declines have to do with luck - bad, as in the editor that you get. It seems that it is the same ones that decline shops. After having their shops declined, some have posted that they know what is going on. That's great, but you aren't getting that money back on the required purchases on declined shops. It sounds like some posters did everything correctly and still had it declined and had to fight it on appeal, but there is no clear guideline on who reviews the appeal, status, or when it will be reviewed.

Someone on one of the threads about this job said they had a 10% failure rate. That is not good. You gotta figure the low end of the range in outlays per shop is around $11 total. Inflation has something to do with it and some locations have a $5 minimum.

@MisterBill I think the deli should be easy because they have a menu board or menu with pricing on it. I canceled a shop when I was on site because the menu tv board wasn't turned on and instead of getting menus reprinted they had someone scratch out the prices on the old menus and write the new price. I figured that it would get rejected so instead of risking it and submitting the menu pic as proof, I walked. The editor could've said how do I know YOU didn't manually scratch out the prices or the menu doesn't look professional, you should've asked them for one. These small places don't want to incur the cost until it is necessary.

I amazingly won an appeal on mine and was shocked. I am glad that is not money lost to me this time but i am hesitant to do any more. I am also selective with these. Such a shame, there are hundreds of these all around.

I guess I have been really lucky. I have run into every kind of obstacle doing dozens of various iterations of these shops and have never had one rejected. That being said, I have 3 awaiting review and maybe my number is up!

@vaunic16 wrote:

I just joined this forum and made another thread about these shops I should have looked at the discussions because I figured I was not the only person this is happening to. Please stay away from these shops. It will kill your pockets and more than likely the shop will get rejected. There has to be something we can do about this!!!! I’m pissed they just rejected 5 of mines in a row so I lost out on $100 in shop pay and like almost another $60 un reimbursement because you have to get the same thing twice and some of these items were like $8 or so. I think they have some kind of deal with these small businesses to put more money on their pockets at our expense!!!!!

Wow, that is a lot. What were the reasons given?

I've had two rejected out of around 20. I think I got them figured out, so I have 10 more I plan to do this week. It's all about what shows up in your pictures.

Yes! You can actually meet these people without going to NEW York (IPSOS offices) or finding the home addresses via Google (kinda stalking...but..who cares?!!!) Bring your can of pepper spray.

I have appealed 11 times, and won only one of them. All of them were legitimate shops. IPSOS can go F themselves....they are so unethical and dishonest!

Here's great Ipsos/Presto/VISA shop story: I did one at a nail salon where the salon worked via appointment only, except if one wanted to purchase clothing (there were racks of high priced designer clothing) or salon products (nothing under $65.00) Clearly, it was a very high end salon. I explained that in the shop. I took the required photos and submitted the shop, with detailed explanations. It was declined. I appealed. The appeal was rejected. What is worse is if you get declined/rejected where you had to purchase items. Now you are out anywhere from $16-$40, PLUS YOUR TIME! Ouch! Yet another reason to avoid IPSOS, even if they are the 800 pound Gorilla in the room!

Why did they deny it? I must admit I'm asking only because the shock factor of how ridiculous their reasons are continue to amuse me (and I'm so sorry they wasted your time, there is nothing amusing about that).

Salisbury, this is not the only project that has a high rejection rate. Trust me. Mostly because of vague, incomplete or opposite-from-what-they-want instructions. But this one does seem to be the highest in rejections. Always the shoppers' fault. That's just how they are.

@sestrahelena What other projects have high rejection rates? @bradkcrew you have super lucky. You should go buy a lotto or something with that lucky streak you have. It seems like there are at least two over there that are trigger happy with the declines. Unless you have been very selective with shops and everything was marked and they all had signs so that there were no issue. Very interested in knowing if the MSP is dumbfounded why these shops aren't moving like they thought.

@Momomomo wrote:

@MisterBill I think the deli should be easy because they have a menu board or menu with pricing on it.

Not all places have prices posted. I went into a local deli recently because they make their own mozzarella and I was curious about their pricing (not for this shop). They had no prices posted, not even on their specials board. Their sandwiches would have been more than the $8 limit, anyway, as is the case with most places around here.

sestra-agreed/ It is IPSOS darkest hour. I wonder if they are going to do anything about it...or apologize for the nasty situation they have created.

All I know is that salisbury's user name is making me hungry! It makes me think of Salisbury Steak every time I see it. Not just in this post, but every post they comment on.

@salisburync wrote:

sestra-agreed/ It is IPSOS darkest hour. I wonder if they are going to do anything about it...or apologize for the nasty situation they have created.

That reminds me, where has freshlybakedcookies been?

@Momomomo wrote:

@sestrahelena What other projects have high rejection rates? @bradkcrew you have super lucky. You should go buy a lotto or something with that lucky streak you have. It seems like there are at least two over there that are trigger happy with the declines. Unless you have been very selective with shops and everything was marked and they all had signs so that there were no issue. Very interested in knowing if the MSP is dumbfounded why these shops aren't moving like they thought.

I wonder if the reviewers are regional?

To those who have done them successfully: The price MUST be on a menu board? Not on a menu? Just checking - there are a couple that I'm willing to take chances on.

Other comment: How can the ms co be called dishonest - they cannot submit the results of our shops if they do not accept them and they cannot get paid for them. We as IC's know that we must accept the cost if our shops get rejected. Just an observation.

They haven't accepted the one I did yet, but I uploaded a pic of the menu board where it shows what I purchased, but the price isn't legible. And I posted a pic of the menu showing what I ordered and the price clearly. Push comes to shove, my son and I had some good real Chinese food, but I'd much rather get paid for it.

UPDATE: I got an email notification that my shop was accepted yesterday.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/13/2024 10:41AM by Morledzep.

@kimkenkat wrote:

To those who have done them successfully: The price MUST be on a menu board? Not on a menu? Just checking - there are a couple that I'm willing to take chances on.

I did one in a sit-down Chinese restaurant that also had take-out. No menu board but I took photos of the take-out menu and ordered my food to go. It was accepted. Also the way I handled the two purchases was... I ordered some dumplings to go and paid for them. Then I faked a phone call to the husband, who unbelievably ALSO wanted dumplings so I ordered a second order and paid for that. The plus side was that both were ready around the same time.