As a mystery shopper, you will receive positive and negative citations from time to time as you complete mystery shopping assignments. Positive citations are not usually issued for simply doing your job, but rather for going above and beyond the call of duty or perhaps helping out a provider with a last-minute assignment. These are a great thing to have on your record and can open you up for consideration in the plum assignments that most mystery shoppers don’t have access to.
Negative assignments, on the other hand, are essentially a slap on the wrist or a warning. You may get a negative citation for canceling an assignment at the last minute, for not showing up at an assignment without canceling, or any other mystery shopping no-no’s.
What Does It Mean? In most cases, a negative citation is simply a slap on the wrist. While it’s not serious, it does mean that you need to be on your best behavior for awhile. Negative citations will typically disappear from your record with time. The amount of time depends on the seriousness of the issue as well as the provider. However, while the citation remains on your record with that provider, you need to avoid doing anything that will cause another negative citation. If you receive too many negative citations within a period of time, or if you receive just one very serious citation, you may not be permitted to work with that provider again.
Watch the Score. For mystery shopping providers who utilize a “shopper rating” or a scoring system, you can typically expect your score to drop like a rock when you get a negative citation. This can affect your ability to get future assignments with that provider, and may only give you access to the lower-paying or less prestigious assignments. This is essentially your time to hunker down and take your lumps. Take a few of the “bad” assignments, do a great job on them, and work your score back up.
Talk It Out. Whether you had a shopper rating drop from a 10 to a 2, or you have been permanently removed as an eligible mystery shopper for that provider, if you feel you’ve been unjustly treated with your negative citation, you may want to open up a dialog with your provider to state your case. Some mystery shoppers have had success at getting the most serious aspect of their negative citation removed, being reinstated as a mystery shopper with the provider or with most or all of their shopper score restored. However, if you were honestly at fault with the issue at hand, you may do nothing more than irritate and annoy your provider. As with other aspects of life, choose your battles wisely with your mystery shopping providers.
The bottom line is that most negative citations will not largely affect your ability to earn an income as a mystery shopper or permanently hurt your record with that particular provider, and most negative citations are not a cause for concern but rather a warning.
Hello:
Premier shoppers is a good business to other people, but, to me, they are sloppy. I joined their business and was emailed back by them to see if I knew anyone who could do a mans job-driving a high end car for their survey. I talked my husband into it. I signed him up.The next email I got said he was to get $15.00 for this survey. Remarkable!
When they advertised for it, the price was $150.00 for each survey. When I emailed them, they said no company would pay that much. Well I copied their pay for survey and it is for the $150.00 each survey. Now I hear she has blackballed me because of this. I asked her for fax (found on an email) and emails, neither worked and I used the address she sent her mail from and she never answered the fax # and the email bounced back to me saying this is non-exitant. Would you be kind enough to send an email number so I can send the prove this complaint to you? The pay rate is on this page I copied. This is to prove to you that this is the truth.
I appreciate your taking the time to read this and correct my name from this problem. Thank you very much for your time.
With best regards,
Diane Heslin
I am not sure I fully understand what you hope to achieve. It is my understanding that this newsletter is not directly affiliated with any shopping company. I think you would have to deal with the company directly. The Premier Shoppers website provides the following contact information:
Email: info@premiershoppers.com
Mail: 4521 PGA Blvd #330, Palm Beach Gardens, FL 33418
Phone: 888-777-1667
Fax: 888-770-8049
You could always gather your documentation (if you kept copies of everything) and consult an attorney, but that may be more trouble than it is worth.
Glad to see something written about this.
Any suggestions for those companies that do not have a way of contact? For example, they do not offer a phone number or a fax number. All emails are returned because the address does not accept emails.
Any suggestions for shoppers who get screwed because of a scheduler? For example, one scheduler called me up, begged me to shop two people at a location. They were both at the same location. I did the shops, cleverly, so that neither realized that they were being shopped. (One was for townhouses and one was houses.) I submitted my reports on time. They were rated as excellent. Then someone from management sends me a scathing email stating I was being blacklisted for violating their rules — you can NOT shop two people at the same location. End of story. I tried to point out that the scheduler called me, begged me, to do the assignments. There was no way to reach the schedule (phone or email). The scheduler should have been punished for violating the rules, not me. There was no way for me to have known this rule ahead of time.
The other example I have is a schedule called up and begged me to do some hard to fill shops for her. No bonus. I told her I had been sick and could NOT do them. I refused to confirm them in my log. *Yes, she assigned them to me even though I told her I could not do them.* I called her once and sent several emails saying I could NOT do them! They involved travel as well as time and were assignments I did not/would not normally do. Long story short, she did not get them done for the month and I was blocked from the website. The other schedule in the company stopped communicating with me as well. I was punished for the scheduler not meeting her deadline. This was a company that I had an excellent reputation with for many years!
All feedback, and suggestions, would be appreciated.
And I realize, these are two negative experiences I have had. And I do make mistakes along the way, but I own up to them. I am very good about communicating with the scheduler, if there is a way.
PS – For the first example, the addresses the scheduler gave me were two different addresses. They happened to be next door to each other.
I have a comedic situation. I have three employees in my regular business. They are all shoppers for the same msc. They all use my ip address as they use my computer at our office. It is a legitimate issue but one of my best msc advised me that I am using multiple names as our ip addresses are the same and they deactivated me and all the others.
Now, they are all different ages, have separate ss numbers and use the office address not my home which is next door.
They will not hear any excuses or rational explanations. I have, in theory, broken some rule. I cannot fathom what the rule is but I do know that a great shopper is now scr—–
Well I have something going on too, I had started shopping for ISC and things had been going pretty well because they happen to pay you pretty quickly. I am also doing regular banks for another provider mind you,well I got days and schedules mixed up oh! and the computer went dead,can’t leave that part out, called and canceled one from the ISC and she blew on me ,went absolutely postal! So what I did was cancel her out because no matter who or what your profession is you must be courteous and that’s my story and I am sticking too it
Though I have not had any hair raising experiences as the ones already mentioned, I would not shop for a company who had no contact details or if they exist but prove to not work. Even finding that out, I guess can only be discovered the hard way. I like to keep a record, (not only on-line), of the contact names and phone numbers, my ID number for each company, passwords, etc., so if my PC crashes I can still communicate or access my paperwork, etc. on another computer.
I wonder if, when drawing a scheduler’s attention to their own fault, that it ‘might’ be effective to do it with humor, professionalism, and acceptance that it was simply human error. Acknowledging that it must have been an oversight with the request that the record be adjusted, may invoque less of a ‘self defence’ response. If one’s efforts meet with lack of communication, there is little to do but let it go. Life’s injustices can be stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks; they build character.
May 14, 2009
I’m fairly new to Mystery Shopping; (10 jobs under my belt. I’ve done: evaluations, inventories of 2 major stores (900 items), promotions, food eval, and 6 apt. eval. 9 franchise eval. I did the inventories of 900 the week my Aunt died (never did one before), it was a rush job. My scheduler was estatic, and congratulated me. I filled in for someone on the promo – several people stood my scheduler up. She was grateful. (This was also durning the 900 inventory). And I did an eval for a fast food the day before the promo, again a rush job. Then the apt. shop came up, again a rush job. I had 3 days to do 4 apts shops and an eval on all four. Needless to say, I had not done this before. And told my scheduler this. I also told her the apts. were at least 25 miles from my home, but I would help her out if she would help me with the reports. She agreed. When I did the reports, she got upset, sent them back 4 times, said I mispelled, sentence structure was wrong, but she fixed it, I also mixed up apts., didn’t complete summary on two. I had printed out copies of two of the evals, sent them to her but she INSISTED that I still had the wrong addresses.
THEN she asked me if I would do another apt. eval. as no one would do it and it needed to be done today!!!! I said okay. I did it turned it in, and she was satisfied with this one. Then she said since I had so much trouble, AND she had to help me write and correct most of the report, she can’t pay me for three of my jobs. And she was going to send it out to someone else. And I can’t reapply until next year. Then she said “Thank You for working for (company name),” I hope we can work together again… Can I do anything ????
this sounds like a real “RIP-OFF” Is it?
I just want to say I’m an Exec Paralegal with 20 years experience. I have written briefs for the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. I have taught Continuing Legal Ed. and I have written several manuels on procedure. I had 43 legal people under me, and was in charge of 11 offices. I’m not a dummy and I certainly can spell and I know sentence structure. Is there any way (for a better word) appeal?? This is $60 I’m talking about. Thanks for reading all of this.