There is a growing movement to boycott $5 shops. After all, to travel to the shop site, perform the shop, travel back home, and then complete the paperwork, you are talking about an hour and a half of your time, more or less. This equates to just a couple of dollars an hour for your time and effort. Is your time with more than that? Shoppers are fed up with the insult of being offered this amount of money, and are pulling together to demand more money on these shops. Given the cost of gas these days, that $5 may not even cover your own personal travel expenses to do the shop, much less pay you anything for your valuable time and effort.
How Does It Work? When a provider is unable to fill a shop in the required period of time, they are typically forced to increase the pay for that shop just to get the job done. Now whether you are holding out for the pay to be raised to $10, $15, or more is your discretion, but most shoppers have gotten to the point that they are no longer willing to lose money shopping.
Will It Work? Absolutely! The key to making it work, though, is for all mystery shoppers to band together. If there is a small band of shoppers still accepting the $5 shops, the schedulers will not get the message that these $5 shops are not acceptable any longer. To send a loud and clear message to providers and schedulers, shoppers need to pull together in a strong, united front and simply not accept the $5 shops until the pay is raised. And don’t worry, it will be raised! The providers need the shops completed, and they certainly have an extra $5-10 in their profit margin.
If there are just a handful of shoppers nationwide who do accept these $5 shops…. Well, first of all, I can’t imagine anyone would be willing to work for that insanely small amount of money. That fee doesn’t even meet the federal minimum wage! But in the event a shopper is located very close to the shop or has another shop very close to that shop and wants to combine them to make the most of a shopping outing, don’t worry even a shopper or two refuses to join the boycott movement. Providers will begin to see that even if people are accepting the $5 shops, they will be accepted at a much slower and sporadic pace, which will give providers time to pause and re-think their pay structure.
How Will This Turn Out? It will only take a scheduler to have difficulty with a handful of $5 shops for them to analyze their fee schedule and see the light. So as you stop accepting the $5 shops and hold out for the higher paying shops, you will gradually stop seeing the $5 shops over the course of the next few months.
While it may seem detrimental to your own paycheck to pass up on shops, if you sacrifice the $5 shops for the next few months, eventually you will see the benefit of higher paying shops. This means that you will soon be able to earn more money for the same amount of work. What’s more, you will be able to earn what your time is actually worth rather than working for peanuts.
I noticed in comments by SC that shopper was upset because of a NOPAY where a name was not captured. It may seem exacting but when the shop company tells you upfront what you must have to get paid then no one should be shocked or upset when payment is not made. I encounter lots of people without name tags or tags obscured and it is easy to get the name. If you dont want to just casually ask then use the “I though I went to school with you, or hey arent you Tony Bobs brother, or hey whats your name dont you go to blah blah community college?
brad
I love the $4 Exxon shops. Yes, I just said that and I mean it. When I have a bunch of shops on a route, I line my route with them. The pictures are easy, the form takes ten minutes, tops. The shop, at the very most, takes ten minutes. I get a free snack. So that’s $4 for twenty minutes work. Plus a $1 reimbursement of gas, and we all need gas and a free snack. And I don’t take them unless I pass the Exxon on the way to a good shop. I very rarely leave my house for just one shop and I don’t see why anyone would. Make a schedule and a route and stop complaining about the time it takes to get there and back. Of course you won’t make much money if you keep running back and forth.
When these companies try to avoid paying you, BOYCOTT them. DO NOT work for them.
There is one company that has cheated me twice before and tried to do it again. I had to order a pizza and take a picture at a 90 degree angle. Because it was taken at 88 degrees (with the side of the garlic container slightly showing some white), it was their excuse not to accept my report and not pay me. This was the only thing they could find wrong with my report and pictures. (I had to eat a cold pizza after all the picture taking.) And yes, when I signed up for the assignment, the company said they would re-imburse $12 for the pizza, plus give me a $5 shopper fee. Stupid me thought I could get a pepperoni pizza for $12. Well, no more! I terminated my agreement with them.
if there are people who are willing to do the $5 shops, feel free but don’t think you will get anywhere in this business. There company’s make alot of money off us. I think it is a slap in the face for them to be so greedy.
But because there are those who will do the low paying job, the pay will not ever raise.