Ipsos + SASSIE: A turn for the worse

@Texans wrote:

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.

With some who are thinking about getting a regular 9 to 5 and ditching mystery shopping, this may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

But I think what you’ll see more often than that are the rural shops going unclaimed more often. I’m in Texas and, in case you don’t know, we have 3 major cities that are sort of in a triangle. Houston to the southeast, San Antonio to the southwest and almost at a midpoint well north of them is Dallas about 260 miles from both other cities who are 200 miles apart from one another. If you do a 100 mile radius search of all three, you are going to miss pretty much everything from College Station north to Waxahatchie which is south of Dallas. There are lots of small towns with the red button drive ins in that area. But you’ll also exclude a city like Waco--150,000 people.

So for travelers who are willing to set up a list of central zip-codes whose radius will cover the territory they are shopping, it may end up being a blessing in disguise because not everyone will do that.

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Does anyone know why SASSIE decided to offer this limitation? I can’t see where it benefits the MSCs, the shoppers, or the ultimate benefactors, the corporations that hire the MSCs and through them, the shoppers.

@metro25782 wrote:

Does anyone know why SASSIE decided to offer this limitation? I can’t see where it benefits the MSCs, the shoppers, or the ultimate benefactors, the corporations that hire the MSCs and through them, the shoppers.

metrobuddy, reread the statement that the company released. It was all about server overload; limiting the maximum amount of data returned for each search was their way of decreasing the strain without having to spend money to increase server capacity.

Just like anything else, it all comes down to the almighty dollar.

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

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/13/2024 08:22AM by drdoggie00.

And in fairness, it had nothing to do with IPSOS.

@purpleicee wrote:

And in fairness, it had nothing to do with IPSOS.

True; however, Ipshiz is the only MSC I've found (thus far) that implemented what was apparently an optional feature of limiting returned search results to 50 per screen, meaning we'd have to scroll back to the top and select a drop-down box to move forward to subsequent results screens.

At first, I thought that wasn't a huge deal, but I changed my mind. It's a PITA.

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

I agree it is a pain. But no one knows for sure if they implemented the limit or if they were asked to for this experiment. Since they have the most shops and the most shoppers, it could have been suggested to them because of their web traffic. My point is the whole debacle was not their doing to begin with.

@drdoggie00 wrote:

@metro25782 wrote:

Does anyone know why SASSIE decided to offer this limitation? I can’t see where it benefits the MSCs, the shoppers, or the ultimate benefactors, the corporations that hire the MSCs and through them, the shoppers.
metrobuddy, reread the statement that the company released. It was all about server overload; limiting the maximum amount of data returned for each search was their way of decreasing the strain without having to spend money to increase server capacity.

Just like anything else, it all comes down to the almighty dollar.

I hear you.

My only response would be to wonder (aloud of course) about the traffic that some MSCs get vs others.

If you wanted to do It to IPSOS and their a billion shops and 500 million shoppers, I get it. But the other MSCs are so dead that I heard the police had to go out to ShoppersView and put a chalk outline around the building.

Meter the traffic for the big dogs but leave the puppies alone.

@purpleicee wrote:

I agree it is a pain. But no one knows for sure if they implemented the limit or if they were asked to for this experiment. Since they have the most shops and the most shoppers, it could have been suggested to them because of their web traffic. My point is the whole debacle was not their doing to begin with.

Which of course begs the question...if IPSOS can’t get their shops fulfilled because nobody is searching the zip codes where few people live...why are they sticking with SASSIE?

Aaaaand I'm calling total BS on SASSIE/Live Shopper.

"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"

As of June 16 neither of them have been implemented...

Have synthesizers, will travel...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2024 01:56PM by CoolMusic.

Ah, reason 748 to call BS on them. There you have it!

@CoolMusic wrote:

Aaaaand I'm calling total BS on Ipsos.

Don't you mean Sassie/LiveShopper?

Fixed :-D

Have synthesizers, will travel...

I'm staying with the MSC but changing the number of BS-calling reasons back to 747 in light of the edit. Don't worry, kids, new reasons will surface.

"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"

I'm beginning to think this is a load of "we'd better say something to placate the shoppers" bullcrap.

@ShopperGirly, has there been anything further on Facebook?

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

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Ipsos + SASSIE: A turn for the worse

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