@French Farmer wrote:

When the old MSC that handled the Exxon/Mobil and Shell gas stations amongst others, the monthly E/M shops could be re-self assigned (per rotation rules) out to 3 weeks of the rotation's next month. If I remember correctly, the Shell shops had self assign shops out to weeks in the future.
Now, with the new MSC, I've noticed that not only do they only allow the E/M rotational shops to be self assigned to just 2 weeks, they are also putting on the Job Board, E/M and Shell shops only assignable to the first week of the month.
Then, as the first week of the new month passes, they begin bonusing and extending the dates allowed to perform those shops.
For the wise or seasoned shopper, the benefits of enhancing their routes are apparent.

At 9pm EDT on October 15th, gotta love that I can't assign a quarterly EM (where period ends on 12/31), for 10/20. (monthlies, fine, if you only want to go through 10/19 right now. But this is about the quarterlies).
Yes, I know schedulers will say "contact me". And that's not the point, schedulers. I'm also 99.999% sure EM is not requiring this limited date range presently.

I only self assign. Especially in the first month of a quarter.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/16/2021 12:59AM by KA047.

@ceasesmith wrote:

Let me see....I did four gas station shops last month; one for $93, one for $65, one for $125, and one for $150.

I enhanced my profitability by using them as "anchor" shops for routes....

...The $125 was essentially a "loss leader". I was unable to find other shops to make it a profitable day...

I'm not sure which surprises me more. The idea that you sometimes do shops priced that high or the idea that you sometimes work at a loss.

For me, my most profitable mystery shopping days have been days that I earned $500 in a day by doing ten $50 gas station shops, which is a realistic number of shops to do in a day if they are not too far a part. Had I done them when they were first listed at $12.50 that $500 would have been $125 instead, which is a major difference in pay.

Now if my calculations indicated I wouldn't make very much money, or that I would actually take a loss, I couldn't imagine going ahead with that plan as the whole point of doing the work would be to make a profit. If I couldn't make a profit doing the work, I'd just stay home. Even when working from averages, low $12.50 per shop pay or "loss leader" days would seem like too much of a drag on my better paying days to be worthwhile, as I would want my average pay to be going up over time, and not down.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2021 04:13AM by Curious99.

Understood. It is totally my own fault. I grabbed that shop as an anchor shop, but was totally unable to find another shop to go with it. Total drive time was 6 hours, and I spent almost $70 on gas, so while I made a little, it was far, far below minimum wage. Or, in my mind, a waste of my time.

But once I've accepted a shop from a scheduler, I'm not gonna cancel just because I can't find a shop to go with it.

This doesn't happen often. There's almost always a post office shop, a fast food, other gas stations, a myriad of choices. Not this time!

I do wish I could handle ten shops in a day. I cannot. When I was younger, maybe I could. I do recall in the good ole days driving 400 miles, spending the night, completing 11 gas stations on the way home, and making $1200-$1500 on that route. And it would take me ALL the following day to file reports! But I was much younger then.

@ceasesmith wrote:

Understood. It is totally my own fault. I grabbed that shop as an anchor shop, but was totally unable to find another shop to go with it. Total drive time was 6 hours, and I spent almost $70 on gas, so while I made a little, it was far, far below minimum wage. Or, in my mind, a waste of my time.

But once I've accepted a shop from a scheduler, I'm not gonna cancel just because I can't find a shop to go with it.

This doesn't happen often. There's almost always a post office shop, a fast food, other gas stations, a myriad of choices. Not this time!

I do wish I could handle ten shops in a day. I cannot. When I was younger, maybe I could. I do recall in the good ole days driving 400 miles, spending the night, completing 11 gas stations on the way home, and making $1200-$1500 on that route. And it would take me ALL the following day to file reports! But I was much younger then.

Well, I don't like to work for low pay, but if it makes you feel any better, I nearly lost $1,000 in work to my competition after having done it. I had done 20 stations at $50 each over the course of two days, and did not have the energy to immediately submit them afterwards. I passed out from exhaustion in my hotel room at the end of the day, and when I woke up the following day, my shops were gone because I forgot about what time they expired, and went back on the board. The competition then picked many of them up. Made me sick to my stomach. So as much as it pains me to admit it, you wouldn't have been the only one that has worked at a loss.

I do understand that once you've made a commitment with a scheduler, you are expected to follow through with it though. It is an interesting strategy you have to use the highest paying mystery shops to help justify doing the lower paying ones. If it weren't for the gap between the highest paying mystery shops, and the lower paying ones being so great, it might be a strategy that I would consider, but I feel like it would drag my averages down too much to focus on anything but the highest paying work.

@Cme4prt wrote:

Can you give me some ideas on route planning software to look into please?

Map Quest's route planner is one possible option. It doesn't cost anything, and allows you to plan routes of up to 25 stops. More advanced tools exist, but they are not free, and not what I would consider beginner friendly.

[www.mapquest.com]

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2021 12:58PM by Curious99.

@Cme4prt wrote:

Thank you so much for sharing this. These are the kind of ideas that I’m looking to expand upon....

Expanding upon the previously mentioned ideas...

Working Whenever The Pay Is Highest

If you are open to working for Uber, Lfty, etc. you could just work for them when they have pay "surges". That is whenever there is a heightened demand for drivers, and a low supply.

If you are open to working for food delivery companies such as Door Dash, Grub Hub, Uber Eats, etc, you could just just work for them during peak paying hours. The peak paying hours for those type of companies tends to be right around lunch time, and dinner time.

If you want to do gas station mystery shops, you could just do them when you need gas, or it is at the end of the quarter, and the pay on them is at it's highest.

If you were to do all three of those things, you could probably make better pay on average than if you were to stick to just one type of work, and do it all the time.

State Inspector Work

Another idea many mystery gas station mystery shoppers may not be aware of is that of possibly becoming a state gas station inspector, especially as this year draws to a close. That is because unlike us, they are given a whole entire year to do as many stations as they want to do, and I believe their yearly cycle is about to draw to a close. Thereby possibly making it a good time to apply for that job for anyone interested in it.

What the state inspectors do is visit gas stations, typically once a year, to collect fuel samples from all of a station's pumps. They do this by driving around in a special truck designed to collect, and organize many different fuel samples. And the purpose of doing this would be to make sure there is nothing wrong with the gas. To make sure the pumps are pumping the correct amounts of gas, to make sure the gas is not bad as can sometimes happen with ethanol blended fuels, and to make sure that if people are paying for 98 octane gas, then they are actually getting 98 octane gas. They also do some other little things here and there too, like checking for leaks in the pipes, and credit card skimmers, but nothing that would appear to be too hard for the average person to do with just a little bit of training. If you ever look at gas pumps and see the a sticker that says something to the effect of "Weights & Measures", these are the people that put that sticker there to let the public know they have checked it.

It's not a bad gig if you're able to get it. I see the state inspectors out every now in then when I do my mystery shops, and the one I talked to, I believe he said he gets paid something like $50 per station, can sign up to do as many stations as he wants, and can do them over the course of a whole year, has zero competition, because each state inspector has "protected territories". Meaning someone that doesn't know any better can't sneak in there, and get the job done for $15 when he was planning on doing it for $50. And because of that, he can just take his time, doing the work whenever it is convenient for him. He said that while he chooses to stay local, someone could choose to travel doing this type of work, and do as many stations as they liked if they wanted to.

I found that to be interesting when it would seem so many of us would like to have higher paying work from the MSCs, but our competition often forces us to either accept lower pay, or risk missing out on work in hopes of being able to get higher pay. With this state inspection type of work, you don't have to worry about that because you get to enjoy "protected territory". And you don't have to wait until towards the end of a project cycle to possibly get that $50 either. It's money you can get from day 1 with zero competition. So I thought that was rather attractive. What I didn't like though was he said it typically takes him like an hour or so to do his inspections, where in contrast, with our mystery shops, it usually takes us a lot less time if we know what we are doing. But still I think it's an interesting gig for anyone that likes to do gas station mystery shop work.

Here is a link to a video about this type of work for anyone that might be interested in it:
[www.youtube.com]

"I do understand that once you've made a commitment with a scheduler, you are expected to follow through with it though. It is an interesting strategy you have to use the highest paying mystery shops to help justify doing the lower paying ones. If it weren't for the gap between the highest paying mystery shops, and the lower paying ones being so great, it might be a strategy that I would consider, but I feel like it would drag my averages down too much to focus on anything but the highest paying work."

Do not misunderstand. Those "lower paying" shops are ALWAYS heavily bonused. If they are on the job board for $4-10, I'll ask for (and usually receive) $40-$60 for them. I do NOT take jobs at base pay, ever -- unless the base pay is enough. I recently accepted an offer via e-mail for a shop in one of the towns closest to me, a mere 60 miles away. The base offer was $100, which meant I did not have to search for/find other shops for the day (although I did luck into a fast food in the same town for $40 plus reimbursement, which was on the job board at $10. ) Two hour's driving, one hour on site, less than one hour reporting. Win-win.



At my age, there are additional items to factor in. I just really can't accept $25 shops; my exhaustion limits me drastically.

I will and do accept $25 merchandising "gigs", when it's possible to route and the company also covers gas and hotels. In fact, a couple weeks ago, I did 25 at $25 each, plus hotels and about $350 for mileage. But it did take me 4 days. I also picked up a reset at $190 that fit right into the route, and only took 4.5 hours to complete (cosmetic reset. Ugh. Never again! ).

@ceasesmith wrote:

…. Do not misunderstand. Those "lower paying" shops are ALWAYS heavily bonused. If they are on the job board for $4-10, I'll ask for (and usually receive) $40-$60 for them… I do NOT take jobs at base pay, ever -- unless the base pay is enough...

Well, that’s good. I did misunderstand earlier. I thought you were saying you intentionally do work at a loss at first. I didn’t realize you were obligated to schedulers to do a portion of the work, and trying to build out a profitable route from that point. I also didn’t realize the lower pay shops were moderate to high paying shops either. My mistake.

In that case, it would make sense to “average down” from the highest paying shop to the lower paying shops in a route because, in that case, they would be close to the optimal price at which to do most shops. Ideally to make a profit, but in your particular case, to at least offset loses because the route hadn’t been fully worked out before committing to schedulers to get those highest paying shops. So I get it now. My bad.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2021 06:45PM by Curious99.

No "bad" involved. Just more clarity on my part!



99.9% of the time, it works for me. Very rarely I accept my "anchor shop", then cannot build a route to and from it. In fact, this recent one is the only one I remember!

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/17/2021 07:50PM by ceasesmith.