The Shop Logs

Hi,

My name is Bobbi, and I have done Mystery Shopping for about three years and Merchandising for about one year. I enjoy it very much. I am also a Notary Public.

I live in the Northern San Diego area, so if you have shops here, give me a try!!

Thank you

Bobbi
blondebobbi@yahoo.com

That dinner shop was difficult.
At first the hostess seated us at a table in the center of the dining area, hardly room for me to get the camera outta my atomic purse and take covert snap shots. Within ten seconds of us getting our drink she had to move us to a booth - at that point I thought I was in luck!
I managed to get the pics required though & was feeling pretty good about myself. I captured the entrees despite an unusual level of employees in such a small space….then the bridal party entered and the staff upped the stakes by removing 2x10yards of tables from in front of the very booth I was sitting at…hmmm…..dance floor?
I mananged to get the needed shots in the restroom and when I returned to my booth, now easy to find center stage, I tried to take a couple more ’safety shots’ and the camera started giving me some cryptic error code. Whatever, I had enough, I’d deal with it when I took the entry way shots on the way out to the vehichle. Yea….when I did that it asked me a series of questions I did not understand, resulting in the clearing of the pics, yep, they were all gone. I turned to my phone camera and have some from there, but….only two entry way pics from the end of the trip on the actual camera. I sent two emails already & then submitted what I had - we’ll see.

I signed up for another company and in the spirit of my over indulgent self I asked for a dinner shop.
Well, I got it! But the dinner will get cold as I need to submit 12 pics.
12.
Yeah, discreet….
I hope the guest can enjoy her dinner.

AKA - secretshopper.com
This company is driving me crazy with their feedback, or more precisely, their lack of feedback.
The last five casual dining shops have all resulted in the same feedback:
“Grade 3 Good Audit - thank you.”
What’s really a joke is that I have tried especially hard on the last two to see about bumping the grade up to at least a 4. On their ficticious scale of 1-5 I am destined to be forever a 3. It is even more silly that when I have feedback I need to acknowledge that I have read the feedback, but it is always: “Grade 3 Good Audit - thank you.” Enthralling, I had no idea, I am average, I submitted a good audit, detailed, huh? NO chance for me to ever improve to what these average-crazy editors want, because they never tell me. (Shh, must not tell the shoppper, we’ll just do more work editting than necessary.)
Even Mystique’s elusive ten can be accomplished, but this my friend, this is the Holy Grail of the Mystery Shops - a FIVE from Sights on Service.

They all poured in at once - my dogs will be so happy that they get to go to the bank - - - BISQUITS!

I was paid yesterday for some super easy shops I did.
(I think I was paid extra for the pain in my posterior that ths entering of the data developed into though)
I took a job in my small hometown and the small town where I work. I was asked to find tha main fast food store and the two closest competitors within specific criteria. My hometown had all three places, but the place I work only had one other place, for a total of two FF places.
The way I read the posting I would get $6 for one town and $6 for the other town.
Imagine my surprise when I was paid $36 via PayPal….almost worth the nightmare of trying to contact anyone with a pulse at the company about inputting data. Almost worth the hassle of my scheduler apparantly being on an acid trip when emailing me cryptic email messages. Almost worth my keeping the data for an extra week, because no one would tell me exactly how to enter it (I was afraid I’d be labelled a flake).

Oh this is too embarrassing - I can’t type it.

Well, I’ll start with the less painful one: Last Saturday (7/2) I realized I had a family thing this past Saturday (7/9)
so I had to cancel a couple of pretzel shops. Too bad, because yum! Well, I logged into their Prophet system and “Decline this visit” was selected a full week ahead of time. I had no current assignments. I received a reminder email 7/7 ‘reminding’ me. I replied and indicated I had to cancel and asked for confirmation of that cancellation.
He said, “This is a self assigning system. Simply log in and decline the visit.”
I said, “Thank you, I already did so, but wanted to confirm with someone.”
TODAY I read an email “You accepted and scheduled an Auntie Anne’s mystery shopper visit that is past due.”
I forwarded all my corresspondence, but am still a little worried, my pretzel connection!

Remember 7/8: “I drove 20 miles round trip for $2.50 reimbursement and a whopping $5.00 fee. ” Yeah….I have to tell you….. they cancelled that shop (or did I?) right as I left to do it. I printed off the report instructions/questions. And I am wondering if I selected Remove Items. THat is the only thing that could have happened unless they simply sensed that I was already in a losing proposition and needed an evil laugh - and even CoRI has better things to do. But I still have the report & have offered it to them. Dang I am ticked off that I felt obligated to do that little orphaned shop & then it ends up cancelled. Holy Poop - it COST me how much to do it?

I love this list of Top Ten Tips for Mystery Shoppers :
“4. Never inform the staff that you are observing them or that you are a mystery shopper. The staff you are evaluating must never suspect you are a mystery shopper. Do not fill out the report in front of them and don’t take obvious notes. Your body language, tone of voice and behavior should be as normal as possible to not arouse suspicion.”
It is not important enough to be top three material, but the reader may be dumb enough to have to spell out the fact that it is a surprise - in fact a mystery - that you are the shopper, hence the name mystery shopper!

Quote from one that was mystery shopped: “Blah work sucked, they made me “Active Seller” again. You see a couple of weeks ago I was “mystery shopped” and I got a really good rating. Therefore they reward (punish) me by making me be that annoying guy who harasses you and tries to get you to buy Blockbuster Rewards. I’ve become what I hate most…”

I have found this to be the most intriguing blog about mystery shopping yet.
What are we doing when we enter a place of business as a mystery shopper? We are reinforcing what the management/owner thinks the employees have to do to make the business more money. We are not helping consumers, necessarily. In fact the only benefit I can devire from it, the measly fees/reimbursements notwithstanding, is innoculation from the ploys that businesses/employees use on me when I enter as ONLY a lowly consumer whose money the business just wants to grab.

I am reminded of that spooky movie The Ring. In the movie (stop reading if you still need to rent it) the only way to not die after viewing the video is to pass it on to some other unsuspecting person. They watch it and now they are on the hook for death unless they can pass it on……I just made Mystery Shopping morbid.

A couple of things happened today that really made me cringe:

I was on an oil change shop and I was so proud because I was only 36 miles short of actually needing this change on my primary vehicle. My last name has a particular spelling and I prefer on shops to allow them to misspell it. This place happened to be in my town (saving on the gas, aren’t I?) and I simply said my name without the spelling mantra. Now rarely do I run into this - - - the mechanic actually asked me if I was related to Susie, well, my husband is her cousin and there was no way to deny it. Trust me; Susie would be crushed. Let’s face it, if they’re asking me…they’re telling her. Well, he launched into how he dated her sister & helped her father put up hay and still sees the Mom. This was after the bulk of the shop is over, so I plan on reporting the shop (minus the family tree) and then following up with a scheduler email.

I had planned to pick upsome more audits that were reassigned & I was left holding some far flung shops. I had to rearrange routes, long story short, one was the leftover. Oh, why do I ever say to myself, “well, since I’m already there I can do this too"? I drove 20 miles round trip for $2.50 reimbursement and a whopping $5.00 fee. Remember that gas I was saving on? Well, I am trying to forget that, so quit bringing it up!
*pause for you to throw tomato*
Yes, I took a low paying gig - I am the problem - keep in mind I was severally punished. Gasoline jumped from $2.36 to $2.49 while I was on this little scenic tour.

Mystique used to be one of the quickest paying MS Co.s around, I still like Spies in Disguise personally.
Lately there have been irregularities in their payments. Throughout this period their SASSIE Shop Log stills reports payment within the 3 days.
I have emailed, I have posted on Volition, on their own board and have not received what I believe to be a satisfacctory response.
Please check out both discussions, or on the Mystique site the lack thereof:
http://www.volition.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=17243
http://www.mystiqueshopper.com/forum/m_2953/mpage_1/key_/anchor/tm.htm#3009