Hi everyone! I am a newer MS. Recently I took an assignment with a company named Mystery Shopper Services. We posed as a couple interested in a time share. Our first assignment was at Angel Stadium. The next assignment I specifically inquired about, because I didn’t want to encounter the same timeshare salesperson. I was assured by the scheduler (who checked with the MSP) the staff would be different. Long story short, it was the same person at the new location so I couldn’t do the assignment. I chose to do the ethical thing and not approach and therefore reveal myself. I wasted my entire evening and gas money (50 miles RT in LA traffic

April

Oh what Can I say!? In any case I am not sure if the scheduler will know 100% who will be manning the tables at a specific event. Plus you should allow for any last minute substitution due to whatever.

When I go to conferences, I try my best to sit with some of these great people, who may also be independent contractors themselves, calling themselves schedulers and ask all the questions I have for them. They do have tales to tell and they are all eye opening stuff.

Plus, if you have an experienced scheduler then you get the best treatment ever. The new schedulers still need some work, and you may be on the receiving end of confusing information.

Don’t get me started on Editors. I have seen the best and the worst, from someone who has been an editor for a while and possibly MSing for a longer while, and I have seen some editors who stated “your answers are wrong.” Like I had my eyes and ears, and my presence at the location, and you were not, and you still used the word “wrong”!!!

Now I would have settled for “your answers were confusing, or difficult to understand, or anything but the word wrong” What Can I do with such an editor? What can any of us do with such an editor?

You need to understand something every important: You are paid for a “job” to do. It is a set fee agreed upon before you even leave. You calculate your income based on some criteria, time to travel round trip, time for the report, out of pocket expenses reimbursed or not, and then you add something for your pocket. If an editor makes you do the work twice, then that fee you agreed upon does not seem much, even sometimes it might be not worth going to the assignment location.

Until the MSPs take us seriously, and think of us as part of the team, we will suffer and they will suffer. You are doing this why? To help out and to make money at it.

So, if you have it in writing, I suggest that you call and email the scheduler/MSP, and tell them you did not do the assignment because you had bad information but you will still need to be paid. You should be paid. You had no source of information other than the scheduler/MSP, they made you go on an assignment that you could not complete due to that bad information. You should ask for payment and describe what the circumstances were.

Let us know what you decide to do.

Hi again, as up update to this, I was contacted by Mystery Shopper Services who had re-evaluated the situation. I was told that I would be compensated partially, to compensate for the time that I spent that evening. I felt like it was a fair resolution to an unexpected issue.