Active on their job board now is the 2nd round of a project for a well-known merchandising company. The fee nor the time estimate has been adjusted to reflect the actual project.
This is despite the fact, as others have mentioned, the time required at each location is available via the app and can be calculated to determine a reasonable time average per location.

Here's my feedback from the 1st round a few weeks ago:

During the first round in late May, I accepted 24 locations and completed every location with "10 out of 10".
The project was described as: "Each visit should take no more than 15-20 minutes to complete at each store."

The base pay was $15 with a few at $17 after they sat for a few days on the board, then later on $22 and $25 for remote locations.

~~The first location took 2 hours (120 minutes).~~
The display rack did not follow the planogram at all, card types and envelopes were intermingled, and the seasonal cards were shoved into wherever they would fit instead of being placed on the separate smaller cardboard "seasonal cards" display. More details below.

~~On average, each location took 90 minutes.~~
The cards significantly did not follow the planogram 80% of the time. Please also know a friend assisted me on most of the remaining 23 assignments since the first one took 2 hours.

Please consider this example: For an 88-pocket rack, if each pocket took just 1 minute to:
- verify against planogram, then
- pull out contents to either organize each 3-piece pocket (cards/envelopes/cardboard backer) back into that same pocket OR, if not in the correct pocket to begin with, set pieces aside to subsequently place them into correct pocket, then
- notate as need-to-order if item is low-stock and then
- go back and scan inventory list on the app to mark box for ordering (which is not a quick task even with the slightly more efficiently sorted alphabetical list)

~~that would calculate to 88 Minutes per location.~~

In other words, nearly 1.5 HOURS per location and that's not including time needed:
for exterior photo,
announcing arrival and showing LOA,
before-photos of each of the 4 sides,
photos of seasonal display (which is often in another area of the store),
waiting for backstock, and
after-photos of each of the 4 sides of the rotating display

_____________________________________________________
I sent this feedback to the scheduler and their response was:
Thank you for reaching out. I sincerely apologize for the longer-than-expected completion times. This is a new project for us and we based our initial estimate on similar projects we have run previously. We underestimated the completion times and we are very sorry for this!
As mentioned before, this is a new project for us – so any and all feedback is greatly appreciated! Please do not hesitate to reach out to Daniel, Mark Griffin (my project manager), or myself anytime you have any concerns. We are actively working on improving this project and your feedback is very important to us!
_____________________________________________________

Despite what was learned and documented via the app and shopper feedback, for the 2nd round, the fee nor the time estimate has been adjusted upward to be more realistic.

Since you haven't mentioned the client, is it ok to ask which well-known merchandising company this is?

Why not post this on the Merchandising board?

Sorry to hear of your troubles. This sounds like an exploitation of IC labor and Sunk Cost Fallacy. After the first 2hr assignment you continued and completed 23 more of these merch gigs. WTF?! This is absolutely HORRIFYING!

After completing the first one and maybe confirming the time required with the second one, I think I would have contacted the company and explained the situation. This is horrible. With the price of gas, you were working well under minimum wage.

@ceasesmith wrote:

Since you haven't mentioned the client, is it ok to ask which well-known merchandising company this is?

The company is Customer Impact.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2022 03:19AM by JSM2019.

@MrEd wrote:

Why not post this on the Merchandising board?

Another job of a similar type, but performed in Target stores, was very recently discussed on this Mystery Shopping Discussion board.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2022 03:22AM by JSM2019.

Thank you. I have done jobs for them, and learned very early on to negotiate my price beforehand.

Thanks so much for the heads up!

@ceasesmith wrote:

...learned very early on to negotiate my price beforehand.

I've attempted to negotiate a higher rate on recent projects, but the reply is always similar to this one sent by the greeting card scheduler...
Unfortunately, we cannot offer bonuses at this moment. But if you see a pay increase in the future – don't hesitate to reach out! I’d be happy to work out a route with you



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/03/2022 04:06AM by JSM2019.

Hi all - just now seeing this thread. It is our company that is working on this program.

The full context that should have been more clearly explained by my team and for that I apologize.

We were told by the client that due to the inactivity in the previous merchandising company servicing them, to expect the first visit to the the most difficult and time consuming as a lot of clean-up would be necessary, but visits beyond that should not take nearly as long once things get cleaned up and more consistency is made with the visits again to the stores.

If this turns out to not be the case we are happy to review the pay scales and adjust as needed, but we won't know until we can see the 2nd round come in to verify if average in-store times did indeed drop. The goal from the client, to us, to you is to create a great ongoing program that everyone can enjoy and with ongoing visits ultimately leads to an easier service call.

If anyone wants to discuss anything further please don't hesitate to email me at dprice@customerimpactinfo.com

Daniel Price
Chief Operating Officer
Customer Impact, LLC
dprice@customerimpactinfo.com

Mr. Price says clearly that they KNEW it was going to take longer and they CHOSE not to pay you for it. Which means to me that CI clearly does not value their contractors, because there will always be more suckers that they can fool into working for less than they wre worth.

This is how all mystery shopping companies make money, but it's usually far more diffucult getting them to admit it.

Oh, yes.

I received that message more than once when I asked.

If you live in an area where there are other shoppers, you may never see those "pay increases".

No shoppers near me, or merchandisers, so I eventually see the increases (sometimes). I've had several profitable routes as a result.

I find the schedulers responsive and helpful, and a joy to work with.

@JSM2019 wrote:

@ceasesmith wrote:

...learned very early on to negotiate my price beforehand.

I've attempted to negotiate a higher rate on recent projects, but the reply is always similar to this one sent by the greeting card scheduler...
Unfortunately, we cannot offer bonuses at this moment. But if you see a pay increase in the future – don't hesitate to reach out! I’d be happy to work out a route with you

NEVER accept more than one assignment from a client of which you have zero experience. Just this week, I considered violating that rule, but first posted on the forum requesting opinions and quickly changed my plans.

MSCs are for profit organizations whose existence is predicated upon increasing shareholder equity. Their distance and times can easily be incorrectly guesstimated.

@shopperbob wrote:

NEVER accept more than one assignment from a client of which you have zero experience

I've successfully completed more than 200 assignments for said client.
I completed all 24 of the greeting card assignments because I accepted them and I don't renege on my commitments.