Hi Sabrina,

That's not one of the functionalities that were implemented in the Badge system - the basic idea was to make as many shops as possible available to all shoppers, regardless of their Reputation badge rank, or any other badge rank. That way, every shopper in the system that meets the basic requirements of the shop can see it, request it, and get a chance to do it. The schedulers should then be the ones leaning on the badge system to estimate how suitable a shopper is, and to decide whose requests to accept.

That said, there are a few tangible benefits to having higher levels of some specialty badges:

• MSPs can set up their shops in such a way that they allow shoppers with a specific badge level to bypass their self-assign limit when it comes to those shops. So, for example, on some Price Audit shops, shoppers with the Price Audit badge at level 2 or higher, can self-assign an unlimited number of those shops. Some shoppers take great advantage of this, self-assigning dozens of shops at a time.
• When it comes to deciding whose requests to accept, schedulers look at the badges of all shoppers that requested the shop, and the shoppers with a higher level specialty badge for that shop category are usually the ones given advantage over others.
• Before making the shops public to all shoppers, schedulers sometimes reach out to shoppers who are experienced in that area (which they can determine from their badge level for that category), and offer the shops to them proactively.

I hope this helps!

Welcome Tamara! Linda's and Sabrina's advice is the best one by far :) Here's some more: https://www.secretshopforum.com/thread/1/2/94/pro-tips-for-those-who-want-to-be-the-best-shoppers#post528

Hi Crystal,

You have the option to do this on the iSecretShop desktop website - you can set the search distance filter (in the upper-left corner of the Available Shops page, above the map) to 50 or 100 miles, and click the search button (a small magnifying glass symbol in that same row) - that will show you the available shops in the wider area around you.

I hope this helps!

Hi Tiffany,

Here is how the system works, roughly speaking:

-Once you log into iSecretShop, go to the "Available Shops" page, and browse the shops that are posted.

-When you see the one you are interested in, you click "View Details" and it will open a pop-up window with all the information on the shop.

-Then, you can either self-assign that shop, or click "Request shop" to submit a request for a specific date. The schedulers are frequently reviewing these requests, so it should be approved soon.

*If you are prompted to sign the iSecretShop Terms of Use or the Mystery Shopping Provider's contract first, you can do so on the "Provider Contracts and Policies" page.

-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 can click "Complete Shop" on any of them to see the full shop information, the shop instructions, the questions, and/or 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 also 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.

I hope this helps!

That's pretty good advice Tara!

For higher levels, there's an interesting method that you can use - it takes a bit of math, but it's not that difficult:

When you reach a new Reputation badge level, go to your Badges page, click the Globetrotter badge, and you'll see the total number of shops you've completed (alternatively, you can download your Payments and see the total number of completed shops there). Mark that number down somewhere.

Then, when you reach 10% of that level, check your total number of completed shops again, to see how many shops it took to get to 10%.

Multiply that by 10, and you'll get an approximate total number of shops you need to do on that level to get to the next one.

Hi Angela, welcome aboard! We're glad to have you with us!

Hi Christina,

Michael is right - you should first contact the scheduler and see if the call can be recovered, and/or if they would restore your lost points.

The iSecretShop system tracks pretty much everything in the activity logs, from the time you logged in that day, every time you make any updates to the shop report (including uploading any files, starting and completing recorded phone calls, etc), to when you submitted the report. If the activity logs show that a recorded phone call was started, but files are missing, the folks in the IT department then go in and make attempts to recover the file(s) on the back end.

Lindsay, from my experience so far, I've never seen any MSPs suspend a shopper's access to their shops just for being an inactive shopper - their reasons mostly include stuff like "too many cancellations", or "poor work quality" or when a shopper gets very unprofessional and argumentative.

If some MSPs have suspended your access to their shops for whatever reason, you can always reach out to them, ask them to let you know what the exact reason was, and see if you can work with them on resolving it and getting a second chance.

Hi Jazmyn, the system won't accept PayPal.me links - you should only enter your actual email address which you use to login to PayPal.

Hi everyone,

As mentioned above by Mr. Andrew - the issue you described happens when a Mystery Shopping Provider sets incorrect scheduling rules on a project.

Whenever you experience such a problem, please open a support ticket and provide the details (shop ID, the dates you were trying to request, the error message, etc) since iSecretShop team cannot get the MSPs to correct their errors if they do not know about them.

Thanks!