The Mystery Shopping Thread - X

AndyInYorks

I think they will pay, regardless of the coffee. Just make it absolutely clear in the report what happened.

They are generally reasonable. I got paid for a petshop recently even though I had no receipt. The till was down so she couldn't print me one. I submitted a photo of my purchases instead, and sent RE a message saying what had happened. Full payment no problem.

Hollypear

AndyInYorks wrote: »

Andy you make a lot of good points there. As the poster is new to MS'ing I hope your points help particularly the one about only answer what you are asked.

I did though think it a little ironic for someone with 2 months experince to dive in with an unhelpful comment.

I remember my early days and all the panic attacks when I made mistakes. Like forgetting left and right or forgetting to get a receipt at all. I always found honesty was the best policy. Or that horrible feeling filling in a report with a question and I am staring at the pc thinking...OMG I forgot to ask that question.

I think RE are shortsighted taking on so many new people at once. The quality of the reports must be questionable and vary a lot so their proofreaders must be tearing their hair out.

Hollypear

ukmonkey wrote: »

You're not completely wrong there...!

Anyway, I really am off now (I can smell me from here!...sorry, poor joke!)

Go grab an RE pharmacy job then and get deoderant with your huge reimbursement. We can't have you ponging out the forum. It is difficult to type on a keyboard with a clothes peg on one's nose.:rotfl:

Drea2904

I did though think it a little ironic for someone with 2 months experince to dive in with an unhelpful comment.

I remember my early days and all the panic attacks when I made mistakes. Like forgetting left and right or forgetting to get a receipt at all. I always found honesty was the best policy. Or that horrible feeling filling in a report with a question and I am staring at the pc thinking...OMG I forgot to ask that question.

I think RE are shortsighted taking on so many new people at once. The quality of the reports must be questionable and vary a lot so their proofreaders must be tearing their hair out.

Im so with you on that HP, ive seen myself driving back to shops at night to see what was left and right!!! I hope that comment I made to the RE hater (one of em!) aint what you refering to. I totally think 450,000 shoppers, there must be quite a few should I say...muppets (no one on here of course!) but its everyone else that feels the brunt of reduced fee's and lots of proof-reading questions!!

josie

ukmonkey wrote: »

Tell me about it. I dropped on really well to get the 7 ABAi shops, but I've built up a really really good relationship with them, particularly over the last month or two.

I've had a count of my GAP jobs, now that I've rescheduled all but two of them to suit me (he'd just added them to my account at random dates) - total is 14. FOURTEEN JOBS as a bride for two burgers! Mind you, they are "dine-in" burgers, and I've never done dine-in's before, only drive-thru.

Also, I love it how you all assume I'm a bloke...what next? I'm my sixties, smoking a pipe, balding and into model trains?! :rotfl:

I think someone started calling you monkeyboy and it kind of stuck, so we assumed you were a bloke. Altho there were some odd comments a couple of months ago when you talked about doing a bra shop!

Then again, talking about brides, might lead people to make assumptions as well! I know you have to do deals with Gap to get some jobs, but I think I'd draw the line at marriage - think DH would probably object too!!:rotfl:

Hollypear

Drea2904 wrote: »

Im so with you on that HP, ive seen myself driving back to shops at night to see what was left and right!!! I hope that comment I made to the RE hater (one of em!) aint what you refering to. I totally think 450,000 shoppers, there must be quite a few should I say...muppets (no one on here of course!) but its everyone else that feels the brunt of reduced fee's and lots of proof-reading questions!!

Course it wasn't you Drea. It was someone who said they had only been MS'ing for 2 months.

Nowadays I dont forget left and right but for anyone who ever does. Google the address. So if the shop was 86 High Street. Google 84 and 88 High Street.

Out of all the MS companies even when I was less experienced than now I don't ever remember getting any queries. Only RE. I did a wine shop which was tiny with grills all the way round. I said in the report I could not say what colour of shoes she was wearing and they queried that!!!! Another poster answered a report question:- Was the member of staff wearing a name badge and the comment box lit up in red so she had to put Yes the member of staff was wearing a name badge. So bloody unneccessary.

Alan1968_2

Hollypear wrote: »

Out of all the MS companies even when I was less experienced than now I don't ever remember getting any queries. Only RE. I did a wine shop which was tiny with grills all the way round. I said in the report I could not say what colour of shoes she was wearing and they queried that!!!! Another poster answered a report question:- Was the member of staff wearing a name badge and the comment box lit up in red so she had to put Yes the member of staff was wearing a name badge. So bloody unneccessary.

I'm getting totally fed up with having to mark a box and then type exactly the same thing in a comment box to get it to change from red to green, especially when the answer is as straight forward as the example yo give but typing 'Yes the member of staff was wearing a name badge' doesn't contain enough letters so you then have to keep waffling to get the box to turn green. I currently have a Word document ready for each of the shops I regularly do so I can copy and paste over the answers to more than 75% of answers.

Matt567

Can anyone tell me what the GAP stamp jobs are like?

Becles

ISWMLE wrote: »

(a) I mentioned that I had half a lager after the shopping trip ended, and didn't buy anything else in the shop. So what? All they had to do was remove the comment.

You're right in saying it's easy to remove, but I bet it's really irritating when you're proof reading reports and you have to sit cutting out irrelevant material which adds to the time taken to check the report.

(b) I mentioned that I expected the pharmacy I visited to be like Boots The Chemist.

Did the question ask for you to compare the pharmacy to Boots? If not, then it's irrelevant which goes back to point (a).

I fail to see how these answers can detract from the value of the report on everything else I mentioned that would be of chief value to the client - about customer service, the promotions visible in the shop etc.

The client isn't looking for your opinion on things, they just want to know what happened on the visit. Have you come across subjective and objective reports before? Briefly a subjective comment is your personal opinion of something, and an objective comment is just stating the facts. When you're mystery shopping the whole report needs to be objective, unless the question specifically asks for your opinion on matters.

Your comment comparing the chemist to Boots was subjective as that is your personal opinion on the matter. To write it objectively you could have said: The shop was very small, with no aisles and just a few display shelves on the wall so customers cannot browse.

or another example:

Subjective: The meal was awful and I really couldn't eat it as it looked revolting.

Objective: The steak was overcooked, the chips were cold and the salad was limp and curling at the edges.

Hope this is helpful

Hollypear

Your comment comparing the chemist to Boots was subjective as that is your personal opinion on the matter. To write it objectively you could have said: The shop was very small, with no aisles and just a few display shelves on the wall so customers cannot browse.

or another example:

Subjective: The meal was awful and I really couldn't eat it as it looked revolting.

Objective: The steak was overcooked, the chips were cold and the salad was limp and curling at the edges.

Hope this is helpful [/QUOTE]

Good examples there Becles. Another one from another company gives a good example of rather say the staff were obviously bored is The staff appeared to be bored.

For the poster who had the problem I would recommend Tern. They are tough to work for but they demand spot on reports and each one is evaluated with comments on why your report was good or why it was bad. I have done the odd one where I got slated by their reviewer but learned a lot by the criticism. So I recently got a 10 saying my report was not only invaluable to their client but was so professional it was a pleasure to read.

And Tern are sticklers that you stick to the brief..

Also never comment on anything the staff cannot do anything about. That is the staff cannot make the shop bigger but they can give good service to the customers.