The Mystery Dining Company (now HGEM) beware

andyone100

There are still some good dines, but there are too many diners, so hopefully this post should help scare any more away.

cnorman7

This firm pays nothing usually, unless they're desperate and close to the deadline, they just reimburse according to their stated maximum expenditure. As adults, we know when we accept an assignment what the conditions are. However, I have become disgusted at their changing of my shopper reports to the point where they do not reflect my shopper experience. Reports for their client Greene King seem to be especially prone to this.

I recently visited a pub local to me and held dear in the hearts of many in the pub's community. I have known the pub for 25 years, but partner has known it for 45 years. On this recent visit the beer and food were poor, the pub empty. My report reflected this. But after my report was approved I saw they had changed my overall score from 4 out of 10 to 6, and removed many of my critical comments. I complained to them and was told that they had 100s of reports each day and amended them to better reflect the shoppers' content. After complaining again I was told I needed to add more description to my critical comments. I was furious and reminded them of the level of description I had included in my report, some of which was now deleted.

I then realised that I had noticed an anomaly with another Greene King pub I'd visited in January. Again they had put my score up, yet the food was very poor and overpriced. At the time I thought I must had made an error.

I have now cancelled all future shops with this firm. I stupidly thought I was having some input into improving quality and customer service. The pub I have mentioned here has Greene King Beer Pub status which means it can have many real ales that are not Greene King's. It has also recently changed hands from a manager that did keep the beer well. We have never before seen this pub empty. Instead of my report raising issues to be addressed by Greene King area managers and the pub manager, we face the likelihood of the pub being closed if it continues this way.

I'm pretty disgusted and feel a fool to think I considered I was helping to improve standards. HGEM are clearly in the pockets of their clients and the shoppers are being deluded. Just to add, that after this visit and eating low quality, ill-prepared food I had a severe stomach upset for 24 hours that was one stop short of gastroenteritis, which I experienced 40 years ago. With the doctoring of my report this pub could cause more people to be ill, nevermind waste their money.

Doc_N

Sorry to hear that, cnorman7 - it does crop up on the internal HGEM forums from time to time that reports have been marked up by the person checking and agreeing the report put in by the diner.

I've had the same thing happen to me too - basically they seem to prefer to send glowing reports through to their clients, which defeats the whole point of the exercise, which is to provide accurate feedback, warts and all.

I suppose it's the 'don't shoot the messenger' syndrome. Maybe they're afraid that bad reports will cost them clients. And let's face it, HGEM exists for one purpose, and one purpose only - to make money for its shareholders.

If clients start suspecting, though, that objective reports are being 'manipulated' to make them look better than they really should be, those clients are probably going to think twice about using HGEM.

hollydays

I actually think you are too close to this business to give an impartial report cnorman7.
Do they actually ask for your opinion on whether the pubs menu is value for money?

I am signed up with them but nothing has come up yet that paid anything that was worth my while, and that coincided with wanting to visit that place.

I couldn't see any way I would become annoyed if they " dissed" my report.
It really wouldn't matter to me, I don't need to have that much control over it.
However, if they said I was completing my reports incorrectly, that's a different matter

ropa

2 years later and I can confirm all of the above.
A lot of effort for not much reward....in general assignments are at High Street chain eateries with approx £7-10 towards your bill on average, and usually no shopper fee or travel paid.
If you think you are going to be having fine dining experiences at top end restaurants then think again!
Reports can be time consuming to fill in, and they can leave you out of pocket and not pay you for the assignment if you make the slightest mistake, or do not follow the brief to the letter......even if you have done numerous assignments and earned them lots of money for your hard work in the past.
Try if you are really keen to see if mystery dining is for you, but there are much better and more lucrative mystery shopping / dining companies out there to work for.

Mr_Singleton

takman wrote: »

If they went in and told them what they were doing the establishment would treat them like a king/queen.

Hmmmmm..... I have a cunning plan!

Doc_N

ropa wrote: »

2 years later and I can confirm all of the above.
A lot of effort for not much reward....in general assignments are at High Street chain eateries with approx £7-10 towards your bill on average, and usually no shopper fee or travel paid.
If you think you are going to be having fine dining experiences at top end restaurants then think again!
Reports can be time consuming to fill in, and they can leave you out of pocket and not pay you for the assignment if you make the slightest mistake, or do not follow the brief to the letter......even if you have done numerous assignments and earned them lots of money for your hard work in the past.
Try if you are really keen to see if mystery dining is for you, but there are much better and more lucrative mystery shopping / dining companies out there to work for.

I'd back pretty much all of that up. This was called 'Mystery Dining' once for a reason - it involved dining. Now it's mainly mystery snacking for trifling reimbursement, time consuming reports, and the constant risk of being relegated to the lower echelons for making a trivial error in a report.

The people who quality control the reports very often have no more than a basic command of English - but take great delight in picking holes in reports made by people with a considerably better understanding of the language than they have. Whether they're paid according to how many faults they can find I don't know, but it certainly seems that way. Diners were once treated with respect - now they have so many of them hunting for work that they're expendable. They can always get more, and the more they get the lower the reimbursement they can get away with.

A few years back it was great. Now it's just a waste of time.

cbing4

Well, I've been signed up to HGEM for a couple of years, and had nothing at all come up in my area, but just recently jobs have been available. I've had a very nice pub meal, and twice I've been paid £20 for just having a beer. The reports have been fairly easy and taken me about 20-30 minutes a time. Sad to hear that other people have had problems with them, but as far as I'm concerned I'll keep doing it as long as I get benefit from it.