Mystery shopping thread xiii ** please don't mention client names on here **

Mrs.T20

Thank you for the welcome

Re: Jobs- I think I was given jobs that no-one else wanted. I applied for loads to start off with and didn't get any :rotfl:

TractorGirl327

Mrs.T20 wrote: »

Thank you for the welcome

Re: Jobs- I think I was given jobs that no-one else wanted. I applied for loads to start off with and didn't get any :rotfl:

I've applied for over 300 ESA jobs since August and not got a single one.

Mrs.T20

pinkprincess39 wrote: »

Has anyone completed any of the phone jobs for ESA? How did you find them. There seems to be an awful lot of POS and merchandise to look out for! I have 5 to do tomorrow!

I have done 3 of these. They are very straight forward, especially if you get a proper outlet. It's the phone shop within a store that I had difficulty with. I have submitted all my paperwork and no doubt I will hear if they were not up to scratch- how soon do you hear back?

MaxAben

Thank you all for your extensive replies! I think these types of forums are so great, to get a really good insight and for me to learn more about positive and negative feelings towards companies. Something that I learnt is that the companies that get big quickly often seem to loose some of their personal touch and i think that's sad after all we are all measuring the service of brands and yet very often the mystery shopping companies stop caring about their own service towards mystery shoppers. I have experienced first hand why this sometimes happens, sometime is just gets so busy and allocators loose the time to answer all questions. I however feel that by putting in that extra effort and time with shoppers, helping them and listening, that lots of time is saved at the end.

I believe in a equal chance between experienced and new shoppers, often we need to use new shoppers instead of experienced shoppers due to the turn around times that a shopper can visit the same location but I also feel that you need to reward your loyal and experienced shoppers, maybe not with extra fee ( just not the money to do that often) but to make sure you keep them in mind when you have new projects and give them the heads up.

I hope that I will be able to stick to by ideas and I also hope that you lot will keep me in check if I don't ;-)

Thanks again for the insight!

cte1111

TractorGirl327 wrote: »

I've applied for over 300 ESA jobs since August and not got a single one.

I was going back over my pay slips from ESA and I've done about 80 since I started working for them in June. Without this thread I never would have known about them, so thanks to all for the work in keeping it up to date.

But sorry for hogging all the ESA jobs! Although I didn't get any of the phone jobs last week. Good job as DS was poorly the day I was planning on doing them so would have been a rush to finish them off tomorrow.

I did the most embarassing job last week. The job was to check service at a reception desk, which I thought sounded straightforward enough when I applied for it. But when I read the brief more carefully the night before, I was bit nervous, as I had to go there, say I was seeing someone, get signed in, then pretend to take a phone call and leave, keeping the pass.

And it actually went even worse than I thought, as the person I was meant to be seeing was on her lunchbreak (presumably she was briefed to know I was an MS). But before I knew it her colleague had come to collect me. :eek: He was very apologetic that she wasn't there, saying that she hadn't mentioned that she was expecting a visitor. It was quite tricky to extricate myself, eventually managed to say I would come back later when she was back. Very embarassing, not doing one of those in a hurry. :rotfl:

Becles

MaxAben wrote: »

Something that I learnt is that the companies that get big quickly often seem to loose some of their personal touch

That's what frustrates me most. For example Gap only have a generic email address, and the length of time for a reply can be days. If you pick up and job and have query with the notes or something goes wrong while on a job, you can't contact them and ask for help. With automated systems, the job can go overdue and be automatically deallocated before you get a response, which isn't fair on the shopper.

I'd rather work for companies who have a human person on the end of a phoneline so you can ring up and ask for help when you need it. It's good to build up a relationship with people you are working with. Some companies are quite chatty with me and it makes me feel like I belong in the company, rather than being "just another shopper." Therefore I'm more inclined to help them out when they need it, especially if a shopper lets them down and they need a job doing urgently. One company sent me a card when my Gran died and I had to cancel some work. A small gesture but it meant a lot to me.

An allocator rang me a couple of weeks ago as they are changing the work allocation system and she wanted feedback from a shoppers perspective. That moved the company up in my estimation as they obviously care about their shoppers and want to make allocation easier for both company and shopper.

I know some companies have a secret rating systems for shoppers based on doing the job right and on time, prompt reporting, well written reports with few queries and so on. The best shoppers get rewarded with the first pick of new jobs. I think that is a fair way of doing things as it rewards people who put in the effort and weeds out the people who can't be bothered to do the job properly.

proshopper

MaxAben wrote: »

I believe in a equal chance between experienced and new shoppers, often we need to use new shoppers instead of experienced shoppers due to the turn around times that a shopper can visit the same location but I also feel that you need to reward your loyal and experienced shoppers, maybe not with extra fee ( just not the money to do that often) but to make sure you keep them in mind when you have new projects and give them the heads up.

The need for rotation of shoppers is fully understood. However, in discussions with one MS company, I have been told that they prefer not to use people who are regular MSers, saying that frequent MSers are not "representative" of genuine customers. Although I do not think this reason can be substantiated, it is difficult to argue the point. This is a company who clearly has a large proportion of dropped jobs and reshops. The situation seems to have the overall effect of lowering fees, presumably because the MS company administration overheads are increased. I feel that MS companies need to balance their needs for workforce diversity against the incentives offered: as a MSer with a track record for reliability, I do rather resent the fact that my fee income is affected by other workers' unreliability.

I feel that MS companies are right in scoring their workers for reliability and quality of work. This gives the company the opportunity to use proven shoppers for more complex assignments and one-off projects. I welcome these opportunities, and see these as a "reward" for my reliability and experience.

tbw

Can anybody tell me how long ESA usually take to decide if they will accept you as a 'shopper'? I'm probably being a bit too impatient !

Mrs.T20

tbw wrote: »

Can anybody tell me how long ESA usually take to decide if they will accept you as a 'shopper'? I'm probably being a bit too impatient !

It took about 5 days before I was approved

multipleincs

tbw wrote: »

Can anybody tell me how long ESA usually take to decide if they will accept you as a 'shopper'? I'm probably being a bit too impatient !

I believe it was same day for me.