Ipsos + SASSIE: A turn for the worse

Looks like they've updated the site. The changes they've made to the Job Search page SUCK!!!

Now search range is limited to 100 miles, meaning I have to do multiple searches when planning a route (I used to set my range for 300 miles from a location in the center of things).

And you can no longer see a complete list of search results. They are broken down in groups of 50 which you have to select from a pulldown menu.

Now it will take considerably more time to try to put together a route with their meager offering of jobs these days.

THANKS FOR NOTHING, IPSOS!!!

Have synthesizers, will travel...

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Came here to say this as well!!!
I will travel for certain jobs because I can find great flight deals. Limiting the search radius means I will miss out on jobs or it will take me three times as long to plug in different destinations. Why would they make it HARDER for shoppers to pick up assignments? This makes zero sense.

It's not just IPSOS, it's across all MSC who use Sassie. Really disappointed with this change.

And if it returns more than 500 results, it arbitrary chooses which shops will appear in the results.

Keep it up, Sassie. You're making Shopmetrics look better and better.

If your path dictates you walk through hell, do it as though you own the place. -unknown

I am happy for John Hsu but sometimes wish selfishly that he was still with SASSIE.

Oh, boy! That's not good.

Shopping Arkansas, Louisiana, & Mississippi.

I agree the groups of 50 shops per page is limiting, and the 100 mile radius is too low for shoppers who travel.

With every "Improvement" it gets more difficult to use. First they took away the search by map or state functions. Then they turned it to mobile view so I have to keep putting it to desktop to see more at once instead of endlessly scrolling. A 100 mile limit makes for more work. I keep a list of zip codes within 300 miles but still a pain. And it was days before I figured out that there are only 50 per screen. I thought the rest just disappeared. Do they get paid per click? They've quadrupled the amount of time we have to spend wandering around the sites to find jobs! Oh, wait. I forgot - shoppers' time is unimportant. Okay. Makes sense now.

Somebody's got to know who, at Sassie, I can contact with my concerns. Please share! Otherwise, I'll have to send Shopperbob over there to break some kneecaps!

I have never posted before but I came on to complain about this too. Does anyone know of someone at Sassie that we can complain to? This makes NO sense at all. I am happy to travel out of state and to new destinations all over the country for hotel shops, and now their updates make it impossible for me to easily scan what is available. I really would like to complain to someone at Sassie.

As I commented elsewhere, this is not a general Sassie issue. Other MSCs that use Sassie still allow much broader searches and a larger number of results. IOSOS has apparently implemented an option that allows them to restrict searches. If you want to see that it is not an overall Sassie change, check the ath Power Job Board.

Sassie is a reporting product provided by SurfMerchants. Each MSC that uses Sassie is a customer of SurfMerchants. Complaining to Sassie about the policies implemented by IPSOS is not going to change how IPSOS operates.

@laloweryshops wrote:

I have never posted before but I came on to complain about this too. Does anyone know of someone at Sassie that we can complain to? This makes NO sense at all. I am happy to travel out of state and to new destinations all over the country for hotel shops, and now their updates make it impossible for me to easily scan what is available. I really would like to complain to someone at Sassie.

Shopping Southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware above the canal, and South Jersey since 2008

info@surfmerchants.com?

I agree, I think they are going to lose mystery shoppers because of this. I search for new shops every morning before I leave for the day. I have a limited amount of time. This change makes me go to other mystery shop companies first. Unless I see one of their shops posted on Jobslinger, I don’t have time to deal with their website.

I recently complained about their filters as well. I won't do fast food shops. I have to scroll through hundreds of these to get to the shops that I am interested in. Too much wasted time for me.

The company reps and schedulers have not chimed in about this. Not even an email about the format changes. I'm sure they knew they were making it difficult for us and dared not even try to pass it off as some kind of "Great, new, user friendly improvement."

Should we have really expected anything different, though? This is the company that felt it was somehow beneficial to take away access to the printer-friendly view. We figured out a way around that - I wonder if there's a way of bypassing these other things?

I'm not a techie - we need a techie.

If your path dictates you walk through hell, do it as though you own the place. -unknown

Some of the new "improvements" aren't just with Ipsos, though. Ath, IntelliShop, and others now have the 100-mile maximum search limit. To me, that's the gravest of all the new sins.

If your path dictates you walk through hell, do it as though you own the place. -unknown

I stand corrected. ath Power now has a 100-mile search radius. I always hit the limit on the number of results long before I get 100 miles out, so I hadn't noticed. But it does impact my ability to easily see phone shops from clients in New England, for instance.

@drdoggie00 wrote:

Some of the new "improvements" aren't just with Ipsos, though. Ath, IntelliShop, and others now have the 100-mile maximum search limit. To me, that's the gravest of all the new sins.

Shopping Southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware above the canal, and South Jersey since 2008

When they recently changed Sassie to the "Mobile" view, it didn't show up on all sites the same day. It took a few days before all MSCs showed that way.

So, back to the theory that the changes were made by Sassie, not any specific MSC?

SurfMerchants was acquired by LiveShopper in 2020, according to their website. Their addresses and contact info are here:

[liveshopper.com]

And the contact options are sales, Presto, security and to "contact the specific MS company." There is no option for questions, complaints or comments directly to them, except if one wants to write a paper letter to the physical address provided. Maybe we should inundate them with letters? To what department, though?

Yes, I am a shopper for over a dozen companies that use the Sassie boards, and every single one of them has implemented these changes.

I will start by emailing the Sales department and ask them to point me in the right direction for who to contact instead...

The page I linked says this:
"For technical issues relating to the app, please contact support@prestomobilesurveys.com, and our support staff will be in touch." Since our complaints are about the software, that's probably the best email address.

Or just use info@liveshopper.com.

@sestrahelena wrote:

And the contact options are sales, Presto, security and to "contact the specific MS company." There is no option for questions, complaints or comments directly to them, except if one wants to write a paper letter to the physical address provided. Maybe we should inundate them with letters? To what department, though?

Just released from LiveShopper/Sassie:
On Monday, June 3, 2024, a core update was implemented to reduce the maximum limit on the job board search feature from 999 mi/km to 100 mi/km. This change was made as an urgent measure to decrease server load and ensure continuous server uptime availability. The decision to modify the limit was taken by our management team based on insights gathered from the extensive scheduling experience of our team members.
Following the implementation of this update, feedback highlighted that the 100 mi/km limit may be overly restrictive for some shoppers. As a result, we are currently working on modifications to the underlying job board code that will allow us to reinstate the 999 mi/km limit. Meanwhile, shoppers have the option to search based on a specific city/zip code or their current location if they are not at their home address.
In addition to exploring ways to adjust the search limit, we are actively addressing an issue that is currently limiting the search to approximately 62 km instead of the intended 160 km. We anticipate that a resolution for this issue will be available by early next week.
As a recap our remediation timeline is as follows:
Deploy a fix for the 62 km limit on June 10, 2024
Reinstate the limit of 999 mi/km as soon as June 13, 2024

- interprets that as: -

"Our servers can't handle the current traffic. The MSCs won't pay us more so we can upgrade, and we don't want to pay for it out of our profits, so we'll just take the cheapest route possible regardless of how it affects shoppers because, hey, our managers used to be schedulers and they say it'll be fine!"

@ShopperGirly wrote:

Just released from LiveShopper/Sassie:
On Monday, June 3, 2024, a core update was implemented to reduce the maximum limit on the job board search feature from 999 mi/km to 100 mi/km. This change was made as an urgent measure to decrease server load and ensure continuous server uptime availability. The decision to modify the limit was taken by our management team based on insights gathered from the extensive scheduling experience of our team members.
Following the implementation of this update, feedback highlighted that the 100 mi/km limit may be overly restrictive for some shoppers. As a result, we are currently working on modifications to the underlying job board code that will allow us to reinstate the 999 mi/km limit. Meanwhile, shoppers have the option to search based on a specific city/zip code or their current location if they are not at their home address.
In addition to exploring ways to adjust the search limit, we are actively addressing an issue that is currently limiting the search to approximately 62 km instead of the intended 160 km. We anticipate that a resolution for this issue will be available by early next week.
As a recap our remediation timeline is as follows:
Deploy a fix for the 62 km limit on June 10, 2024
Reinstate the limit of 999 mi/km as soon as June 13, 2024

If your path dictates you walk through hell, do it as though you own the place. -unknown

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2024 02:17PM by drdoggie00.

While it's a step in the right direction (they still need to get rid of the multiple pulldowns to access more than 50 shops), they are still displaying tech ineptitude.

If indeed a 600-mile max radius was causing server issues, adjusting to less than that should reduce server issues, while still meeting the need for a more efficient UI.

I can only speak for myself, but 300 miles used to be my personal default when planning multi-day routes. Plugging that into the ZIP for my first night's targeted stop would give me usable results for the first 2 or 3 days of work.

Have synthesizers, will travel...

@ShopperGirly wrote:

Just released from LiveShopper/Sassie:

Released where?

.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2024 06:08PM by shopnyc.

I, too, was wondering where ShopperGirly found that nugget. Impressive! They sure didn't email me. And who did they get negative feedback from while we're still over here figuring out how to contact them?

Also, wouldn't it be awesome if they got with the 21st century and replaced those 3-part date and time pickers with something similar to Presto or Mobi where the current date and time pop up and you can single-click that or adust it as needed? Now that, THAT, would be a step in the right direction!

I saw it in a FB group.

Thank you for keeping us non-socials up to date, SG!

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Ipsos + SASSIE: A turn for the worse

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