Hi Doreen, nice to have you with us!
Welcome to the Forum! If you have any questions, or interesting stuff to share - don't hesitate to post :)
Hi Lauri,
Yes, when your requests are declined they drop off the requests page. When they are approved, they show up on the Assigned shops page, and you get an email notifying you that a shop was assigned to you. You also have the option to turn on email notifications for declined requests, although it's set to "Off" by default since requests are quite often declined.
As for the advice on getting those shops, here are a couple of things:
Firstly, keep in mind that for Web/Telephone shops there is always a very large demand (like a dozen or two dozen shoppers request each one within hours of them being posted), so it can take a bit of persistence to get them.
Here's a couple of things you can do to increase your chances of having your requests approved:
-Request shops for the soonest available dates - for example, if a shop is available for any day next week, requests for Monday will be the first ones the schedulers see, and the first ones they approve (as they want their shops done as soon as possible), so requesting for the earliest date increases your chances of getting a shop.
-Check the Available Shops regularly, and read the emails from the schedulers or the iSS system - A LOT of shops gets grabbed within hours of being posted, so it's good to be one of the first shoppers that requests them.
-Once you submit your request, then try emailing the MSP. Let them know you've requested the shops, and that you'd very much like a chance to do them, etc, etc. Can't hurt to try. :)
-Try doing a few "regular" shops first, different kinds. It will grant you experience, and also some specialty badges, which will make you stand out a bit more to schedulers. When they see a request from a shopper that had experience in a few different types of shops, they will be more inclined to approve the requests.
As for the certifications and courses - first of all, congratulations on taking and passing all 3 of those! It should give you a pretty good idea of how everything works, and you've received shopper points as a reward too.
The "silver or gold certification" question on the Extended Profile does not refer to the courses on iSSprep. Instead, it refers to the MSPA certification level. Silver and Gold certifications are available on the MSPA website. They also have a number of other courses which can be interesting to take, but keep in mind that those are a separate thing from courses on iSSprep, they do not give you shopper points, and might not directly relate to shops available on the iSecretShop system.
I hope this answers your questions!
Cheers!
Hi,
I'm not an MS, and I don't work for any - I currently work for the company that created iSecretShop and this Forum, mainly doing a bunch of stuff in iSecretShop. I have done a ton of editing and scheduling too, as well as doing some shops - so I have a pretty wide perspective, and I'm trying to use it to be as helpful to shoppers as I can :)
Cheers!
All editors (and schedulers) have their managers and superiors who review their work - unless they run the Mystery Shopping company and are doing the scheduling/editing themselves.
The most common cause of miscommunication with them is this - shoppers often reply directly to schedulers/editors, or attempt contacting them on their individual corporate mail (for example, JohnDoe@examplecompany.com) from which they were previously contacted. This often works, however, schedulers and editors have various work schedules, vacations, medical leave, etc - they might not be around, and might not see your email in time.
The best way to minimize the chances of this happening is to use the primary company email for your inquiries, either as the main receipient of the email or under "CC" - for example, send your email to info@examplecompany.com (or whatever their main contact email address is), or put that email in the CC when you are sending an email to JohnDoe@examplecompany.com. This will ensure that the mail is sent to their common inbox, which is often monitored by multiple people, increasing the chances of getting a response in a timely manner.
If your question is urget and you don't get a response soon, you can also call the MSP at their main company phone number for shoppers.
This contact info is available anywhere on the payments tab for MSPs whose shops you've done, or in the emails that you receive as confirmation that the shop was assigned to you or approved, etc.
If you can't find that contact info, you can open a support ticket for iSecretShop to ask, and you'll be provided with the correct contact info.
Cheers!
@FortheSMONEY - 360 Intel is Goodwin Hospitality, they just changed their name and seem to be doing some re-branding.
As for the app, the one I'm referring to is the iSecretShop app, full name: "iSecretShop - Mystery Shopping". For the purposes of shops on iSS, it keeps track of everything - which shops you have assigned, for which date, it can record the start and end time of the shops that you are doing, marks your location, gives you available shops near your current location (not just the listed address), you can track the status of shops that you submitted for review, which ones have you successfully completed and when, the status of the payments (if and when they were made), etc.
Of course, if you are doing a ton of shops and/or doing occasional shops with MSPs outside of iSS, you can do what Wendy and MFJohnston are doing, and use Excel spreadsheets to help you get a better overview of all of them (@Wendy & @MFJohnston - that's very organized and cool you guys, nicely done! )
Hello Amanda,
When you submit a request for a shop for a specific date, the schedulers will review the requests, and if they choose to assign the shop to you, your request will be approved. You can keep track of all your requested shops on the Requests tab.
Once you have a shop assigned to you, you can always view it on the "Assigned Shops" page - there you can see all shops assigned to you, and can click "Complete Shop" on any of them to see the full shop information, the shop instructions, the questions, or/and fill out the shop report.
If you have any questions about a particular shop, you can always contact the MSP that posted it, and their schedulers/editors will be happy to help.
When you are done filling out the shop report - you click "Finalize Shop" to submit it - it will be reviewed to editors and either approved, or returned to you for additional information (if so, it will appear back in your "Assigned Shops" page).
After the shop is approved, you can communicate with the MSP regarding your payment for that shop.
I advise going to iSSprep.com and doing courses like "iSS 101" and "iSS 102" - these will not only provide you with additional knowledge, but will also grant you shopper points, boosting your rank rather quickly. You can also click the Forum button on iSecretShop to go to the forum and look up various subjects and connect with the shopper community.
I hope this answers your question!
That's so bad to hear...
From my experience - editors (and MSPs in general) usually try to push shops through if at all possible, even if it happens that one of the guidelines was not met, like in your case...it's only logical - who would want to go through the additional effort of finding a new shopper, scheduling the shop again, editing the report again, and paying the schedulers and editors to do it.
BUT...their clients can be a different story. It's a lottery when it comes to that - some clients are relatively "loose" in their requirements, and care only about the main point of the shop, the objective evaluation of a few things most important to them. However, some of them can be incredibly strict and demanding. They may have very specific procedures, processes and rules in place, a whole bunch of stuff they find crucial to their business, and won't accept reports where even one of those things was not tested/evaluated.
Imagine this - they have 20 excellent waiters/chefs, but they have to let someone go due to financial issues, and there have been reports of some waiters not following the right procedure with the deserts, or the chefs making them poorly. The existence of evaluating that process can make a difference between someone keeping their job or not. Now, this is an overstatement (I hope :) ), things are not often so drastic, but some clients really demand absolutely every little thing from the guidelines to be followed, so the editors aren't allowed to approve otherwise.
All we can do is try to stick to the guidelines the best we can, and hope we don't forget something (especially on a shop for a demanding client).
Best of luck to you Bryan!
My best guess is that it means that the visit should be done after 10 PM on April 2 (and done by 6 AM the following morning, April 3).
However, as MFJohnston said, it is wise to contact the schedulers whenever in doubt about such things.
Good luck! :)
That's excellent advice MFJohnston - I agree completely!
If the status of your shops on the Payments tab is "un-paid", then the payment was not made by the MSP, and there are several usual reasons for this:
1) Shop completed too recently - not scheduled until the next payment cycle.
2) No PayPal email address on file in your Extended Profile
3) Independent Contractor Agreement not signed for this MSP
4) No W9 form (if required) on file with the MSP https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw9.pdf
Make sure to check all of these, and if you're sure it's none of that, contact the MSP (use their primary email or phone, rather than contacting individual schedulers, as MFJohnston said).
If the status is "paid" but you still haven't received your money - contact them immediately. This can happen if for example you enter the wrong PayPal email address on your Extended Profile, so the Payment gets made to the wrong PayPal account, or, if a check/deposit didn't come through yet after being made.
If, on an off chance, an MSP tells you they can't pay you due to their own issues (financial or otherwise), or are ignorring your emails/calls completely - open a support ticket for iSecretShop to inform the management team about it. iSS doesn't make payments and is not an MSP, but the management team would definitely want to be aware if something like that is happening, and to address it with the MSP in question.
I've personally never heard of this happening on iSS, as all MSPs that use iSS as a platform are held to quite high and strict standards, so all shoppers are adequately compensated for their work.
Cheers!