The Mystery Dining Company (now HGEM) beware

SRD062489

My recent experience with this company is awful. They made up questions that were not on the brief to get out of paying reimbursements, completely unprofessional and rude. I even pasted the exact question, which they dismissed.

Rate them on Google reviews if you have had a bad experience, since they are currently a very high and misleading 4 star.

kay0601

I used to do dining for them but stopped after getting food poisoning and them directly telling me I wasn't to tell the establishment involved and that they weren't reimbursing me because the report was too negative. They were swiftly told my experience meant I had very little positive to say about it so my report reflected that and that was the last time I did a shop for them.

Doc_N

SRD062489 wrote: »

My recent experience with this company is awful. They made up questions that were not on the brief to get out of paying reimbursements, completely unprofessional and rude. I even pasted the exact question, which they dismissed.

Rate them on Google reviews if you have had a bad experience, since they are currently a very high and misleading 4 star.

Sorry to hear that. They used to be very good - they looked after their diners and treated them with respect. They were justifiably picky about who they took on too. Sadly, that all changed around the time they switched from mystery dining to mystery cheap snacking, with a name change from Mystery Dining Company to HGEM to reflect that.

Now they recruit vast numbers of people, and they've got so many on the books it doesn't matter a jot how many get hacked off and leave. Everybody's easily replaceable, and a few words out of place on their internal forum are likely to get you into a lot of trouble. The post will be deleted, but that may not be the end of it. HGEM do not like people who dare to disagree, and if you ever disagree with one of their precious staff - God help you! Some of them seem to struggle with written English, but that doesn't stop them from adopting a high and mighty position dealing with reports submitted. The older ones were just fine, but some of the newer ones just seem to regard diners as dirt.

Just remember - HGEM are always right, even when they're plainly wrong.

Positive reports tend to create fewer problems, and negative reports are far more likely to give rise to TTCs and loss of status. And unless you're Platinum you've got precious little chance of getting anything other than a pub or a fast food place, with the reimbursement certainly not covering the time put into the report. I wonder how many of their clients realise how many reports just gloss over the bad bits simply to avoid the hassle they create.

I'll take a look at the Google reviews. I see they're also on Trustpilot:

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.hgem.com

Doc_N

kay0601 wrote: »

I used to do dining for them but stopped after getting food poisoning and them directly telling me I wasn't to tell the establishment involved and that they weren't reimbursing me because the report was too negative. They were swiftly told my experience meant I had very little positive to say about it so my report reflected that and that was the last time I did a shop for them.

Interesting - I read that after my last post but it confirms my own views about the way they treat negative reports.

The companies that pay them must be expecting totally objective reports, warts and all. That doesn't seem to be what they're getting, though, and if those companies are just getting sanitised reports it's not helping anybody - apart from HGEM, in that it makes life easier for the staff and the reports cheaper to process.

CEAJ

Really surprised by this thread. I've been a diner with them for three years now and have eaten at chains with large reimbursements, high end restaurants with even larger reimbursements and 4 star hotels with reimbursements I'd never be able to afford if I wasn't getting it back within three weeks. The last 4 star hotel I stayed at had a reimbursement of £480 for an hour and a half report. Over the last few years I've eaten out and stayed at hotels to the tune of £9000 all for free. There is a tier system in operation whereby you work your way up following a series of well written reports and upon reaching the top tier you have first dibs on the best dines. From the forum chain above, I sense sour grapes/disinterest due to forum members not putting in the effort to reach the more luxurious dines. It really wasn't difficult and being a member of several mystery dining and shopping companies, HGEM are head and shoulders above the rest in my opinion. Utterly baffled by the above!

LadyDee

CEAJ wrote: »

Really surprised by this thread. I've been a diner with them for three years now and have eaten at chains with large reimbursements, high end restaurants with even larger reimbursements and 4 star hotels with reimbursements I'd never be able to afford if I wasn't getting it back within three weeks. The last 4 star hotel I stayed at had a reimbursement of £480 for an hour and a half report. Over the last few years I've eaten out and stayed at hotels to the tune of £9000 all for free. There is a tier system in operation whereby you work your way up following a series of well written reports and upon reaching the top tier you have first dibs on the best dines. From the forum chain above, I sense sour grapes/disinterest due to forum members not putting in the effort to reach the more luxurious dines. It really wasn't difficult and being a member of several mystery dining and shopping companies, HGEM are head and shoulders above the rest in my opinion. Utterly baffled by the above!

Call my cynical ...............:D

Doc_N

CEAJ wrote: »

Really surprised by this thread. I've been a diner with them for three years now and have eaten at chains with large reimbursements, high end restaurants with even larger reimbursements and 4 star hotels with reimbursements I'd never be able to afford if I wasn't getting it back within three weeks. The last 4 star hotel I stayed at had a reimbursement of £480 for an hour and a half report. Over the last few years I've eaten out and stayed at hotels to the tune of £9000 all for free. There is a tier system in operation whereby you work your way up following a series of well written reports and upon reaching the top tier you have first dibs on the best dines. From the forum chain above, I sense sour grapes/disinterest due to forum members not putting in the effort to reach the more luxurious dines. It really wasn't difficult and being a member of several mystery dining and shopping companies, HGEM are head and shoulders above the rest in my opinion. Utterly baffled by the above!

Interesting - but utterly baffling to me!

As you'll know, the HGEM forums are full of complaints about the lack of decent dining opportunities, particularly after the apparent loss of so many former clients. I won't name names here, but you'll know who they were.

There are certainly plenty of opportunities for sandwich-type places with a reimbursement of £5-£10, but who wants to spend a couple of hours of their time for that? And, frankly, that's the vast bulk of what's available most of the time now. Your hotel visits and high end restaurants are as rare as hens' teeth these days, as you must surely know if you know anything at all about HGEM today (as distinct from the way it used to be a few years back before it went downmarket and went for pubs and sandwich chains).

And yes, I'm on the top (Platinum) tier - but getting first dibs on sandwich chains isn't much of a prize, is it? There really isn't much beyond that unless you're prepared to travel to central London, you're very lucky, and you're quick enough on the draw to be able to pick something up before anyone else gets hold of it. The opportunities you're referring to are very, very rare indeed, and the chances of getting one - even as a Platinum diner - are remote. There are just too many people chasing them.

No sour grapes, no disinterest, not a question of 'not putting in the effort' - there's simply no real chance of getting anything half decent any more, and who wants to waste a couple of hours for little more than a fiver?

One of the reasons for creating this thread was the heavy censorship that takes place on the internal forum. Negative threads (quite a few, as you must know) tend to get closed down by 'Admin' and criticism of the people who check the reports isn't at all welcome - even though it's frequently erratic and illogical. They have the power to downgrade diners, and there's an understandable reluctance to criticise anyone with that level of control. They all used to be helpful, but there's now a sort of superiority and condescension amongst some of them - and all the more so if you dare to disagree.

I notice that you joined MSE yesterday just to make this one single post - you're not by any chance connected with HGEM are you? I see that this thread has become quite visible in search engines.

CEAJ

Regarding sandwich type jobs, yes there are plenty available but there's no requirement to do them if you don't want to - I personally choose not to. Just as there's no formal requirement for you to actually be a mystery diner - the tone of the posts is that you're actually being forced to do it! Just informing you of my experiences with them - I don't live in London and I still average one four star hotel stay a month and regularly see top chain restaurants in addition to the sandwich shops - if that's down to luck, then boy am I lucky! There seems to be an expectation that the available visits should be awash with dines every hour every day as if it's some sort of entitlement for being a volunteer for the company - just bizarre. As for the censorship on the site's forums, I wouldn't know as don't use them.

In relation to your last point, I have received the MSE newsletter for the last seven years and cannot praise it enough, but yesterday was my first post on these forums having seen the thread come up on Google when I was looking for complaints around Service Measure (who I joined last month and are still yet to pay me for three dines....). I felt I had to post as I was genuinely shocked at how negative this whole thread was about a company I've had genuinely no issue with. 9 grand of free food and hotel stays in 3 years with easy reports is something worth sticking up for and nope I don't work for them, but you can carry on thinking I am if it makes you sleep at night.

Doc_N

CEAJ wrote: »

Regarding sandwich type jobs, yes there are plenty available but there's no requirement to do them if you don't want to - I personally choose not to. Just as there's no formal requirement for you to actually be a mystery diner - the tone of the posts is that you're actually being forced to do it! Just informing you of my experiences with them - I don't live in London and I still average one four star hotel stay a month and regularly see top chain restaurants in addition to the sandwich shops - if that's down to luck, then boy am I lucky! There seems to be an expectation that the available visits should be awash with dines every hour every day as if it's some sort of entitlement for being a volunteer for the company - just bizarre. As for the censorship on the site's forums, I wouldn't know as don't use them.

In relation to your last point, I have received the MSE newsletter for the last seven years and cannot praise it enough, but yesterday was my first post on these forums having seen the thread come up on Google when I was looking for complaints around Service Measure (who I joined last month and are still yet to pay me for three dines....). I felt I had to post as I was genuinely shocked at how negative this whole thread was about a company I've had genuinely no issue with. 9 grand of free food and hotel stays in 3 years with easy reports is something worth sticking up for and nope I don't work for them, but you can carry on thinking I am if it makes you sleep at night.

Nobody's suggested at any point, I think, that anybody's being forced to do anything. That's clearly not the case. The thrust of the thread is just to warn people about the way that HGEM operates. Some people may be happy with it, others may not, but it's impossible to discuss within the HGEM forum because criticisms are removed as soon as they're spotted.

I'm genuinely amazed at what you say about the hotels and restaurants you've covered - simply because nobody else seems to be having this sort of 'luck', and because of the frequent comments about their unavailability. I check pretty frequently too, and I've never seen them either.

I have to accept what you say about being unconnected with HGEM, but I'm sure you'll understand why some people might think that. You do seem to be something of a lone voice - or just incredibly lucky.

victorian_lady

I have to agree that it's scarcely worth the trouble of logging on to the site any more.
I used to enjoy staying at a Malmaison and making a weekend of it, but a Morrison's cafe or Subway just don't cut it - even if you're in the area, the time taken to complete the report far outweighs the "free" snack.
I doubt I'll be doing any more mystery dines.