MYSTERY SHOPPING THREAD XV - please, no mention of client names or fees on here

ljshopper

You can never get the jobs done in the required time and the time allocated doesnt measure up to the size of the task in store.

Having said that the reports are easy and they do have nicer jobs from time to time.

proshopper

vanny_v wrote: »

hi all
can anyone advise me about ims,i joined their field team a year and a half ago and its only today that they have got intouch with me to advise there are merchandising jobs in my area, its to change pos in a well known bank,for the fee i would be getting it looks like a lot of work to do. is it worth it?

I worked for IMS some years ago, but haven't done anything for them for about two years now. My experiences and opinions mirror those of other posters:

mysteryshoppingninja wrote: »

Personally I think they're absolute hell and because it's an hourly rate it ends up being less than the same amount of time spent MSing.

Snap!

squeaky1055 wrote: »

I never did anymore!

Snap!

Becles wrote: »

I didn't do anymore after that.

Snap!

I was out MSing one day last week and came across an IMS merchandiser doing one of these bank jobs. She had three huge pieces of cardboard and no way would they stick together. It brought back dreadful memories and my heart went out to her. She told me that she had already done one branch locally and that had been hell.

In my experience, IMS have never trusted their field workers. This doesn't seem to have changed. The lady I met last week told me that she now has to text IMS when she arrives at a store, so that they know she is there, and again when she leaves. What the .... is that all about? Surely signing in and out of the store should suffice when a job isn't time-sensitive?

I had so many wrangles with IMS about their lack of support to me in the field. For example, they would send me incomplete/faulty POS and then discredit me/expect me to revisit (for a pittance) once they had got their act together. It seemed that no one had ever dry run the jobs or tried to assemble fixtures/POS before they were put into the field, so their capped timings were almost always an underestimate.

IMS would also find ways to avoid paying me. For example, I would submit a photograph and they would argue that I had not completed the job properly, by saying that it wasn't complete (when they hadn't sent me all the bits, or they had sent broken components) or that it wasn't fully stocked (when the store had no stock), or that it was sited in the wrong place (when it could not be sited in the "correct" place, maybe for health & safety reasons). I must have spent hours on the phone to IMS trying to get jobs sorted (both before and after the event).

In hindsight, I realised that working for IMS was unrewarding in every way imaginable.

The I in IMS supposedly stands for Intelligent. From my experience, IMS seemed to consider this criterion important in their field team, but not in their support team.:rotfl:

ukmonkey

Does anyone know if GFK have lost the phone shops? I've not seen any on there for months... must be about 6 months.

glitterkandy

ukmonkey wrote: »

Does anyone know if GFK have lost the phone shops? I've not seen any on there for months... must be about 6 months.

DO you mean the number chain? I did one about 10 days ago.

jen_br

Ok could be a thick-o moment but why does TNS have sassie and VAS?

sf123

ukmonkey wrote: »

Does anyone know if GFK have lost the phone shops? I've not seen any on there for months... must be about 6 months.

Not seen any for ages... looking at my history on there I last did one in Jan?

sf123

jen_br wrote: »

Ok could be a thick-o moment but why does TNS have sassie and VAS?

They are still in the transition period - assume eventually everything will be on the Sassie system... There's a news flash on the VAS home page which refers to the transitional phase and says they are still loading shopper data.

nehpets81

ukmonkey wrote: »

Does anyone know if GFK have lost the phone shops? I've not seen any on there for months... must be about 6 months.

I have only ever seen one phone client but it is still very much available - last one was about a week ago I think.

Dizzley

jen_br wrote: »

Ok could be a thick-o moment but why does TNS have sassie and VAS?

The emails I have from them say YES, but after weeks I am still not set up on their Sassie system.

linz81

Is anyone having problems with RE website (other than the long list of usual problems!)?

I've received an email saying there's a query on one of my reports but when I go into the website it won't let me open the query message. I've tried for the last 10 minutes on both my PC and my phone and then all of a sudden it's disappeared (no message and no query)!
Oh well I suppose there's now no query with the report! :mad: