A long time ago, I did a lot of the QSR shops for two of their clients. I am positive they still have these two clients in my area. However, I am not seeing these shops anymore. I didn't see shops for these clients for a couple of years, but I assumed they lost them as clients. Until I saw the posts on the forums. Is there a limit on the number of shops you can perform for a client? Not sure what's up.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/2024 04:57AM by Okie.

I would email the helpdesk and ask why you're unable to do shops for those clients. That's the only way you'll find out.

I was banned by MF in whole for a late report 17 years ago. I requested reinstatement recently, and I'm now back in their good graces. As such, I have no experience relative to them.

But it is possible to be banned by brand.

I was banned from Chevron Customer First shops when an ambiguous street address caused a lengthy exchange with an apparently testy editor. As that ban was by the MSC I was able to plead my case and get the ban overturned. And I am thankful. Without that program I could not make a majority of my routes work.

I was also banned from Sinclair. The reason cited was I did not spend enough time onsite. Pretty sure I was in the right as the locations in question were card locks. But the ban came from Sinclair and cannot be appealed.

I haven't worked for MF in years (keep meaning to get reinstated), but many, many years ago I was banned from a fast food client for supposedly being spotted.

Yes, I was banned from a grocery store after submitting a negative report and being told I was identified. That store has since stopped their MS program, at least with MF as far as I know.

I was banned by an apartment company/management company because a leasing agent spotted me. It turned out that the guy saved every single phone number that called, so he knew that I was a shopper because the incoming call showed a phone number that a mystery shopper from the year before had called from. This was a recorded call, so I had to call a certain 888 number and input the shop number. He waited until I was walking out the door to tell me that he knew that I was the shopper. I have since read on reddit that this is a common way that the leasing agents spot shoppers, but unlike this guy, they just play along. I'm not sure why the companies are not deleting out information from their systems as soon as they find out who has shopped them.

If anyone cares, another way that leasisng agents spot shoppers is when someone asks to go see the apartment RIGHT away. Regular people aren't asking to head over to an apartment complex as soon as they get off the phone. They also spot a shopper when they don't park in the open spaces in front of the leasing office. They definitely know a shopper is on their way when someone insists on visiting the property even though nothing is available. No regular person is wasting their time doing that.

I was also banned from the blue bank shops because my brother works for them. Back then, the bank had to approve shoppers, and I guess their check showed that I was a sibling of an employee. Keep in mind that I don't have a relationship with my brother, so whatever background check they did was pretty lengthy.

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/2024 06:20PM by AnonymousGirl.

@MsJudi wrote:

Yes, I was banned from a grocery store after submitting a negative report and being told I was identified. That store has since stopped their MS program, at least with MF as far as I know.

They complained about me too. It was in north jersey and they said I didn’t visit the bathroom and that the stacks of soda in the aisle didn’t constitute blocking the aisle.

I wasn’t banned but from then on I intentionally gave them low scores because of that complaint. The scores we were valid, I would just wait around longer and have less grace than before when it came to adherence to the policy.

My son has been banned from a car wash shop, and grocery shops, and all Chevron shops. When he first started mystery shopping I made the mistake of making him a time sensitive route for doing Chevron shops, back when Image and Customer first were all in one shop. Because he needs to engage EVERYONE he meets or sometimes just random people he sees in conversation about one thing or another, he didn't make it to the last shop before 22:00. And he lied on the shop to say that he did. So he was removed from Chevron. A similar thing happened with the car wash shops, he offered his opinion, which wasn't welcome, to the manager of a car wash he was auditing, and several days later he was removed from all of the car washes at that company. I'm not exactly sure what the problem with the grocery store was, but at the end of the round the scheduler told him that he couldn't do grocery shops for them anymore. But my guess is that he offered "suggestions" to someone who then made a fuss about it. That is definitely his MO.

I have been deactivated by 3 MSCs. One was a restaurant, my very FIRST restaurant shop. I still don't think I did anything wrong, I did everything that it said to do in the guidelines. For some reason the waiter started being rude to me and my guest shortly after we arrived, I wouldn't be surprised if he spit in all of our food too. And then when I asked for my receipt after I paid with my card, he refused. And he got his manager. I never did get my receipt, and both him and his manager kept yelling at me and calling me and my guest names all the way out to my car. I evaluated the restaurant exactly as it said to in the guidelines, and I wrote some pretty horrible things about the waiter and the manager. The editor wanted me to change my report and not be so harsh. And I refused. And I was deactivated.

the second one was Sinclair, because I didn't return one of the items to a Williams Sonoma. And I refused to go all the way back to OC and redo it for a $5 shop. After spending the entire day at that huge mall in the OC making myself sick for $45. It cost me more than that to drive to the OC and back the first time. The only thing I missed about Sinclair was being able to get free pizza for the yardsale folks. I soon found other pizza shops with better pizza for the yardsale folks.

And CFA, because a theater owner lied and said that I was watching the movies. I wasn't, I never have. But that didn't seem to matter, I'd been doing trailers, opens and ad checks for CFA for years with no complaints (that I knew of), and ONE man lying about me got me deactivated. The theater is long gone, even the building is gone. It's a parking lot now. And I still don't work for CFA.

The only individual client I've been removed from was one of the gas stations. It was during the transition from Maritz to Ipsos, one of the KSS schedulers was "helping" if you want to call it that (He also had my son removed from a different gas station for several years.) I was involved in a car accident in the middle of my route. I had just left a station and was heading to the next station, I got to a signal and stopped, still behind the limit line, with my right turn signal on. Next thing I know my car is sitting sideways in the lane, my foot was still on the brake, my car had never moved. The truck that hit me pulled out and turned left in front of oncoming traffic and the Honda that was doing 65 MPH hit that big white Ford truck, and pushed it into my car. They guy in the Honda left in an ambulance, the guy in the Ford truck tried to tell everybody that someone had signaled to him that it was ok to turn. But no one did, not the other folks at the signal that didn't get hit, or me, I never even noticed him until I had no choice.. Anyway, the KSS scheduler seemed understanding, but I had some mental health issues because of this accident, and it took me almost a year before I could drive myself again. He wouldn't let my son take me to the rest of my shops to complete them, and he removed me from the approved list. I have been reinstated to do these shops again finally, just recently.

Yikes, sorry to hear about some of these experiences. It does seem like my hunch is correct, but I'm not in a rush to dig into it more.

I know with one of the clients, I generally had positive feedback. Only on two occasions did I have anything critical to mark. Both times, the MSC asked for further explanations. In response, they said not to mark off for that or perform that specific aspect of the shop differently.

At the time, I think they were doing some general QSR study and rankings. I have no knowledge of this, but I always thought that maybe had something to do with it. I know another MSC ran a similar study.