Hi Dawn,

Each shop you do increases two things - the first is your shopper score, reflected in your "progress towards next level" of your Reputation badge. The second is the progress towards next level of the specialty badge which that specific shop awards - in case of those shops, I believe it might be the Fast Food badge, although it could be setup to award a different one - you would have to check with the MSP that posts those shops.

Keep in mind that for each level of each badge, more and more shops are needed. For example, you'd get a level 1 Fast food badge for completing one shop of the Fast Food category, but you'd need to complete about a dozen more to get a level 2 Fast Food badge, and a few dozen for level 3.

I hope this answers your question :)

Hmm, that's a tough one.

The reason you're getting those pop-ups is because most MSPs (or their clients) don't want all of their shops completed in the same day/few days.

It is very reasonable to assume that most shoppers would want to grab and complete the available shops within a few days of the shops getting posted. This causes problems to the client down the line, because they get a ton of evaluations done in a short time period, but then have very few of them done after that, so they can't get a realistic picture of their business' performance at all times.

To solve this, the iSecretShop system allows MSPs to set a "separation" rule - to limit the number of shops that can be done within a certain time frame - for example, that only 1 shop can be done every 3 days. This prevents shoppers from requesting/self-assigning shops within 3 days of another assigned shop.

There are currently only 2 ways to ensure you have the best chances of working around this:

1. Contact the MSP directly - their schedulers have the ability to manually override the separation rules, and assign any shop for any date. They tend to stick to their rules, but if you are a reliable shopper and/or have done those particular shops successfully in the past, your chances are higher. Also, near the end of the month, if they still have shops they're trying hard to schedule, the separation rules are often bypassed.

* IMPORTANT - when contacting the schedulers, use the primary MSP contact info (like info@examplemsp.com, scheduling@examplemsp.com, etc) - if you only contact a single scheduler, they might not be working at that time, and your emails could get unanswered until it's too late. If they don't reply within a day, try calling them :)

2. Be the first one to get the shops - watch out for emails about available shops, figure out when exactly some monthly or weekly shops are getting posted (it's very often on the same day of the month/week) and keep an eye on the Available Shops page - then request/self-assign as soon as you see them.

Personally, I'd also contact the MSP and ask them when can I expect certain shops to be posted. Explain the situation, let them know you'd really like to do those shops and be the first one to get them, and they might let you know the exact time and date when they are usually posted, or even let you know a few days in advance.

The direct, "hard" alternative to solving this would be to have the iSS developers redesign the calendar which you see when selecting a date when applying for shops (to have the unavailable dates marked red or something similar) - I'm not sure if this is doable at the moment or how much work it would require, but I can check with the iSS management - if it's possible and if it would save shoppers time, I'm sure they'd gladly do something about it :)

Thanks for the feedback!

Hi Samantha,

You can try emailing the MSPs and checking if any of them has an opening for those positions. Alternatively, there are job boards and freelancing platforms like Upwork or others, where there may be job postings for those positions.

Hi Amanda,

Have you tried emailing and/or calling them MSP that posted the shop?

Hi Candace,

It depends on which shops you are requesting - some shops are in very high demand, so they are often given to more experienced shoppers.

You can try contacting the schedulers once you have requested a shop, to ask if they would assign the shop to you.

Good luck!

Hi Willis,

Each MSP has their own payment method and policy, but most MSPs make payments via PayPal. You would have to contact each MSP you did shops about the specifics of payment for their shops.

Cheers!

Hm - it could be that it awards a different badge (like "Restaurant - Family & Casual Dining", or "Service"), or it could be that those shops were not setup to award any specialty badges at all (which very rarely happens, but it did happen occasionally).

In any case, you should check with the MSP - let them know about it, ask which specialty badge it awards so you'd know what to keep track of :)

Thanks!

Hello,

Once you have a shop assigned to you, you can always view it on the "Assigned Shops" page - there you can see all shops you have assigned, and when you click "Complete Shop" on any of them you will 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.

I hope this answers your question.

Thank you for sharing that guys!

I agree with Norm, and I'd like to add to what Norm said:

When posting shops, the MSPs can set them in one of 3 different ways in regards to scheduling:

1. They can set them to allow self-assigning - meaning that shoppers can self-assign those shops on their own, if they haven't reached their self-assign limit. They they have, then they have to request the shops. Here we can have the situation which Norm originally mentioned - if you have reached your self-assign limit, and you request a shop which is setup to allow self-assigning, some other shopper who has not reached their self-assign limit yet can just self-assign that shop.
2. They can set them to only allow requests - meaning that no shoppers can ever self-assign them, so they all have to request the shop first. This is usually the case with Web & Telephone shops, or other shops in high demand. It gives the schedulers greater control over who the shops go to - they wait for a bunch of requests to come in, and then approve those requests submitted by the most reliable/experienced shoppers, and those requests for the earliest dates - this gives schedulers the highest probability of getting their shops done as soon as possible, as reliably as possible.
3. They can set them to "assignment by scheduler only" - this is very rare, and when it happens, the shops are not even visible to any shoppers on the Available Shops page, and therefore those shops can't even be requested. Instead, the schedulers contact shoppers they want to offer the shops to, and once they agree upon a date, they assign the shops manually.

I hope this helps!