The Mystery Dining Company (now HGEM) beware

takman

hollydays wrote: »

Why is the important part not To disclose your identity

Mystery Shopping/Dining involves the person going to the establishment and pretending they are regular customer. They then have to purchase a meal/item and report back on how they were treated.

If they went in and told them what they were doing the establishment would treat them like a king/queen and the report wouldn't be representative of a normal customers visit, so would be pointless.

They even shouldn't disclose who they are on the forum because otherwise the company could look up potential customers and know who to make sure they treat them perfectly.

hollydays

Doc_N wrote: »

So that the restaurant/cafe/pub isn't aware that they're being checked and reported on.

That question was a bit tongue in cheek. I don't imagine you'd have put your real name on a forum

takman

hollydays wrote: »

That question was a bit tongue in cheek. I don't imagine you'd have put your real name on a forum

Yeah most people don't but i have occasionally seen people sign up to forums and there username appears to be their first and last names.

whiteslice

I work with HGEM. Not so much frustration about the availability of dines/low reimbursements (I live in a pretty bountiful area) as about report evaluations that sometimes border on the bizarre. I've learned to keep my head low and mostly don't question why different rules apply at different times (or the lack of logic). The people manning the phones have all been lovely to me though.

Doc_N

whiteslice wrote: »

I work with HGEM. Not so much frustration about the availability of dines/low reimbursements (I live in a pretty bountiful area) as about report evaluations that sometimes border on the bizarre. I've learned to keep my head low and mostly don't question why different rules apply at different times (or the lack of logic). The people manning the phones have all been lovely to me though.

Interesting that you're not suffering from the lack of dines - are you in the London area?

The internal forums are full of moans about the lack of anything much beyond Subway and the like - but stick your head above the parapet and the admin people pretty soon chop it off!

You're so right about keeping your head low. Questioning is seen as unacceptable and pretty soon you're persona non grata. I'm past caring now, though - there's so little worth bothering with across most of the country that it's hardly worthwhile staying with it. £5 or so for a report taking an hour or two (as reported on the forums unless the posts are deleted) is just madness.

Ronaldo_Mconaldo

Bloody hell, people, what is wrong with you? Sounds like a total waste of time and effort for you and what do you get out of it? A half a sandwich? Have some dignity!

Doc_N

Ronaldo_Mconaldo wrote: »

Bloody hell, people, what is wrong with you? Sounds like a total waste of time and effort for you and what do you get out of it? A half a sandwich? Have some dignity!

A point well made. And you're right - the amazing thing is though that HGEM have no difficulty whatever signing up new suckers expecting to get something for nothing.

Only when they're signed up do they realise that outside London it's an almost endless diet of cheap, low reimbursement, time-consuming, low-end places that frankly many of us wouldn't want to be seen dead in!

You can however, stay on the books in the hope that maybe once every few months you might pick up something actually worth the time spent. I reckon I get about one a year and stay with them just for that.

The other incredible thing is the gratitude people display towards HGEM for 'allowing' them their free meals. And the huge distances people are prepared to travel - sometimes a couple of hundred miles!

All very peculiar..............

whiteslice

Yes, London area (answered in the other thread too) I'm afraid. Tbh, if I lived elsewhere I probably would not bother because as you say, a few hours for a sandwich is a poor return.

What baffles me about the internal forums is not the HGEM censorship, but the one coming from users - the number of people who are prepared not only to lay down, but also adopt some sort of a moral high ground along the lines of 'we have to help the HGEM with the low value dines and you shouldn't be a whiner'. I hope it's some mystery mindspace that only HGEM diners inhabit because if this translates to the society as a whole, we are surely doomed. Do people really feel they are worth so little or is this some mistaken hope that being the company men will earn them some mythical 'preferred' status? Either way...

Doc_N

whiteslice wrote: »

Yes, London area (answered in the other thread too) I'm afraid. Tbh, if I lived elsewhere I probably would not bother because as you say, a few hours for a sandwich is a poor return.

What baffles me about the internal forums is not the HGEM censorship, but the one coming from users - the number of people who are prepared not only to lay down, but also adopt some sort of a moral high ground along the lines of 'we have to help the HGEM with the low value dines and you shouldn't be a whiner'. I hope it's some mystery mindspace that only HGEM diners inhabit because if this translates to the society as a whole, we are surely doomed. Do people really feel they are worth so little or is this some mistaken hope that being the company men will earn them some mythical 'preferred' status? Either way...

With you wholeheartedly on that one too! Never been able to understand that attitude, which seems to be based on the premise that HGEM is some sort of benevolent being rather than a hard edged commercial entity.

I strongly suspect that a few of the people making those comments are actually HGEM people though. Just setting the right tone for all the rest.

whiteslice

That's one hell of a conspiracy theory! I haven't even considered agents provocateurs, but it's not implausible. If it is indeed the case, it kind of brings the whole thing to a new layer of ridiculous