So after all the posts, did anyone apply? If you did, what was your experience?

I applied and did the interview with a lovely guy. He then sent me a list of resorts that were available and asked me to pick up a date where I could go, promising of course to pay for flights and other expenses. There was no mention of the shop fee or reimbursement limit. I asked twice if I could see the guidelines and a sample survey before committing to any date. The person never sent anything, but offered to hop on a call to share his screen to show me the survey. He ended up telling me he could not send me the guidelines or a sample survey by email. I said I was not interested and moved on. If you're willing to pay for my flight and expenses but can't send me guidelines, there's something wrong.

Very strange. I also met with someone who seemed legit and said I’m considered on their short list. However, I agree- I would need to know all the guidelines and samples before taking any shops.

trap

Charl, sounds like they're going to have a "package" for you to transport for them. Maybe I've watched too many Locked Up Abroad episodes, but many had the same theme.

I looked over their website and found it too generic to be trustworthy. No actual names of anyone involved in hospitality, or actual clients listed...so it felt too suspect to contact them. There are also some reddit posts about them contacting people a year ago and not coming through, or it being a fiasco and them walking away.

Their LinkedIn also claims they are based in Spain, but the employee names...let's just say they don't seem to be Spanish. Another search shows an office in Singapore. All very suspicious. They are not big enough to be hosting an actual office in the locations they report to be in.

So my understanding is that it's either a scam or a fiasco. 10 foot pole either way. Have yet to see any evidence of someone who actually completed an assignment for them and posted about it anywhere. Legit MS companies are not in LinkedIn casting a net for MSers in my experience. They would probably take the usual route and go through local schedulers if they were legit.

I have lived several decades espousing I would rather try and fail, than to wonder WHAT IF, this is definitely an exception. With Steve's background, if he has determined this is a "no go," it is definitely a NO GO!

The legitimacy of the address registered with MSPA Americans convinced me to do it.

I interviewed, and a flight to Pyongyang was booked for me with a connecting flight in Saint Petersburg. I checked into the Yanggakdo International Hotel. I will let you know when I am permitted to leave. The 56k internet is a little slow.

@JimmyP wrote:

The legitimacy of the address registered with MSPA Americans convinced me to do it.

I interviewed, and a flight to Pyongyang was booked for me with a connecting flight in Saint Petersburg. I checked into the Yanggakdo International Hotel. I will let you know when I am permitted to leave. The 56k internet is a little slow.

Clever!

@shopperbob wrote:

With Steve's background, if he has determined this is a "no go," it is definitely a NO GO!

I would not shop for 90% of the existing and well known MSCs out there, so I might not be the the best compass for someone looking to break in...but this has all the earmarks of a disaster.

That said, it's not a company just recently invented just to take your $$. The WHOIS registration shows the domain has been around since 2016, and created through GoDaddy, so I think there is most likely someone somewhere trying to make this business model work. They have also been trolling for a long time on other platforms for shoppers, but apparently without success, so you have to ask yourself, "Why?" People desperately want to shop resorts.

Also, one part of the website lists addresses in 3 countries, but another mentions an additional office in Bangkok that doesn't appear to exist. The privacy policy page on their site also literally gives you a 404 Page Not Found error as well, so the website, while active for 8 years, is not fully functional or current.

An this is literally pasted from the website:

"XYX checks into a luxury hotel for a couple of nights, eats and drinks at the restaurants and bars, orders in-room dining, get some serious spa therapy and asks the hotel team to find a certain book. Then, at checkout, XYZ tells the hotel manager exactly what the hotel did well and didn’t do well, and presents the hotel manager with a bill.

Our Experience Specialist always gets a sincere thank-you for his / her efforts."


I suspect the business model is to get you to check in to the property, do the shop and somehow present a bill to the manager on departure that they will then pay. But there's no guarantee that the hotel has agreed to this. And there's nobody in the US you can hold responsible if that is the case. There is not a single person you can find on the internet who clams to have successfully worked for them, either.

As someone who has done these types of exit interviews, I can tell you it's not that simple. The hotel will have dates they want you to go. You need to know the manager will actually be there when you check out and I have usually had to set up a specific time to meet with the manager prior to the shop. And while in some of those cases, the hotel manager has zeroed out my hotel bill, the fee and travel was always paid through the MSC.

I was terrified the first time I shopped a hotel. Everyone I knew, including my own mother, was telling me it was a scam, and that I was going to lose a bunch of money, but I got on a plane, flew to New York and did the shop anyway. It turned out to be real. But that was for a company based in NYC. I had spoken with them on the phone, received very specific standards by email to test. Worked out a travel budget with them and read about other shoppers on Volition having success with the MSC. I had also done a few restaurant shops for them to prove myself, and gotten paid for those, but I was still skeptical, so I went to the address for Coyle in NYC, realized it was a PO drop box and called them freaking out. It turns out they didn't have an office in the city. Just a PO Box. Like many successful MSCs, their employees work from home.

It took me many years of working for them before I ever met a client face-to-face. I met everyone who worked for Coyle face-to-face many times before that. They knew me and trusted me at that point. What kind of business model sends an unknown person in to meet the client? And what is to keep you from just taking the client for your own if your expertise is what's being sold, and the company sending you in has zero representation in the US?

Seems like anyone wanting this job could just put together their own standards, set up a much better website, and just go into business for themselves.