You have officially redeemed yourself, lol

Mantis - what happens to Indies? Do we get to be those really funky ridges on the edges of the coins?

As far as religion.. I go by this phrase that was said to me in the early 80's by a Priest:

"You follow what you feel is right. In the end, the only person who has to answer for your beliefs is you."

(and yes, a Priest really did say that to me)



Mantis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Your Democrats and your Republicans are flip sides
> of the same filthy coin.
>
> Let's talk religion next. =)

Oh Mantis, let's not and say we did!

Ha ha.. LMBO!


I don't like arguing - I would rather debate the issues. Unfortunately, I have not had the privilege of debating, because no one wants to LISTEN to each side and even admit, "hey, you may be right."

I don't think people should be afraid of saying what they believe in - however, it seems that this is the case anytime, all the time.



LisaSTL Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You have officially redeemed yourself, lol

I knew the moment I wrote about the ties between ex-Bain Capital executives and the founders of Market Force, I'd be in for it.

But it's true.Several ex-Bain employees moved to Louisville, CO, got some sweet, sweet tax subsidies from the local municipalities and formed Market Force.

What galls me is that they turned out to be "job creators" - but NOT in
Colorado.

I often get calls to do shops and yes from Marketforce as well, sometimes I take them if they offer a bonus sometimes I decline or sometimes I just dont answer the call, whatever. BUT the other day I got a call from one of those 'outsourced" folks and she started in with the shop info and "becasue I was such a good shopper" etc etc etc - I told her no I did not want to take a FG shop so please do not schedule me, she asked why and I said becasue I did not want to eat FG this week and then she again proceeded to ask me why I would not take it!!! needless to say after I blasted her I do not think she will be calling me again -

Hey! Maybe Maritz is training the MF outsourced gang! That sounds just like the spiel I always get from Maritz when they call wanting to unload their dog shops .... you know, the ones we all have looked at sitting on the job board while we self-assign the ones we want.....and so the phone calls start with the begging, pleading and guilting.......

FJackson Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have a different problem with MarketForce. I and
> my wife both were recently dropped by Marketforce
> as shoppers without any reason given to us. We
> were not doning a lot of shopping for them but did
> have a good rating with them. I feel that maybe it
> is an age problem. I think we got to old for the
> company, Not that we tried to get any jobs that
> had age limits on them. Has anyone else found this
> to be a problem?


I also got dropped from Marketforce, I was doing about 20 shops a month, when I got an e-mail saying I was not allowed to get any new shops and they could not tell me the reason. I am also a mature person. I was giving some bad reviews, but they were deserved, bad service or bad food or both. So I do no know if that was the reason or my age. I just felt so bad because I always try my best for everyone.

I do work for the purple portal (Merchandising) because I was able to negotiate a good rate for a permanent assignment. I usually let their calls go to voicemail -- it seems like calls from the Phillipines have an area code that lists as +45 on my cell phone. If you take calls from them toward the end of the week or month, you can get some pretty good bonuses -- the more desperate they are, the better the rate.

The bad side is you do have to put up with some stuff. Occasionally they pay me incorrectly - this is quickly remedied by an email. Also last week I was assigned a job without my consent - again, a quick call took care of it. And yes, their phone people can be pretty aggressive - you just have to be able to say "no" without feeling bad about it.

The plus side - they pay promptly and regularly.

elizabeth206 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I also got dropped from Marketforce, I was doing
> about 20 shops a month, when I got an e-mail
> saying I was not allowed to get any new shops and
> they could not tell me the reason. I am also a
> mature person. I was giving some bad reviews, but
> they were deserved, bad service or bad food or
> both. So I do no know if that was the reason or my
> age. I just felt so bad because I always try my
> best for everyone.

I would not feel bad, elizabeth. I don't think it was the bad reviews you gave or your age. As a long-time shopper of MF with lots of friends who have been dropped, I firmly believe everyone will eventually be dropped. They have simple reports that a new shopper can easily manage, and they seem to prefer a new pair of eyes (not necessarily a young pair of eyes, just new) on their shops. I think they prefer hobby shoppers who take a few shops here and there as opposed to professional shoppers who are experienced and purposeful in their work. I'm sure I'm living on borrowed time with them and fully expect to be dropped at some point. Everyone else seems to be. The more brand-new shoppers they get registered, the more longterm shoppers they can drop.

I just let all calls from the 925 area code go to voicemail, and check them at my leisure. Since I don't know anyone from the Bay area, it is almost always someone from the Purple portal offering an absurdly low amount of money to travel.

Thank you! I really just did not understand the reason behind the drop. I just have to say, their loss (:

Thank you for your kind words. I have just never been dropped. Have to learn to take the good with the bad.

Just ignore the calls from (925) 293-xxxx (San Ramon, CA). This is the only number with foreigners calling us from MF.

Ugh... answered the 925 are code call today. I know that the bonus go up this time of the month, so took my chances, big mistake. Asked if I could do a shop Monday or Tuesday, but since it was a fair distance away I wasn't available. They asked when I was available and mentioned that I would not be able to get there until Thursday. They then say, "I'll put you down." I say I need to know information such as what I need to do and how much I will get paid. Of course, not interested in driving 75 miles for $8. So then they say while I will give you this shop closer to you. Still not going for $8. They sound so disappointed.

Two comments about MarketForce. One - Rather than complain about their pay, tell them you want more! I am doing two shops tomorrow at $20 each. Two - I don't think that the mystery shopping division of MarketForce is the one calling. I got a call from some foreign country and listened to the job offer. I asked how much it paid and said that wasn't enough. He went up to $18 and I said I would do it. I had trouble understanding him and told him so. He must have said M'am about 50 times. He said he was shipping me the supplies for the job but I never got a thing. So much for outsourcing work. When I called MarketForce about it, I was told it had to be the purple portal. I don't do merchandising and have entered that numerous times, but I still get all the merchandising job offers. I'm going to cancel that part of MarketForce. Calls from the MS portion of the company are made from the US office.

Both Maritz and MF-Phillipines have been added to direct-to-voicemail on my phone system.

Ahh, the silence~ At least Maritz will leave a Voicemail.

Okay, you are both wrong on the Philippine issue. If they are born and/or living in the USA, they are Filipinos. If living in the Philippines, it is Philippino. both of my children are born in the Philippines and we are heavily involved with the Filippino Community.

You will love this one. I got a phone call a couple of days ago for a job in ILL. I told her that I can not do it as I am in Ohioon vacation which is 400+ miles from my home in MO. The job was due this week. She then tried to offer me several more jobs in the ST. Louis area. Each time I had to repeat that I was 400 miles away. After the 5th or 6th time she finally got the message and offered me jobs for August.

The same thing happened to me while driving down the highway trying to listen to the GPS directions to another shop. I almost missed my turn due to this idiot asking me the qualifying questions for the shop. I told her I have been working for MF for a long time. Do you really feel it necessary to ask me these questions while I am in heavy traffic on the highway? I wanted to say call me back when you learn to speak English but I bite my tongue and was not rude.

A little research led to the following at [www.pilipino-express.com]

This uncertainty in spelling is due to the intertwined history of three languages – Spanish, English and Filipino. The country we call the Philippines today is a collection of about 7,100 islands in Southeast Asia that was once a colony of the Spanish Empire. When the Spaniards arrived in the early 1500s, there was no single nation united under one name but, rather, many autonomous chiefdoms, each with it’s own name and leader. The Spaniards called various parts of the archipelago by various names, but eventually they settled on one name for all the islands; Las Islas Filipinas. This name was given to honour their Prince Philip who eventually became King Philip II.

Of course, Philip is just the English version of the Spanish name Felipe, so Filipinas was usually spelled with an F. I say usually because spelling was not yet standardized during the early part of the Spanish colonial period in the Philippines. Practically every possible variation of spelling can be found for the word Filipinas in books of the 1500s and 1600s – Filippinas, Philipinas, Philippinas and even Piliphinas.

The Spanish word for a person from Las Islas Filipinas was naturally Filipino, with an F. Originally this referred to a Spaniard born in the Philippines, not to an indigenous inhabitant of the islands. The people we know as Filipinos today, the Spaniards once called Indios, which is the same stupid misnomer given to the original inhabitants of North America – Indians.

English never had a suitable equivalent for Filipino – a “Philippine,” “Philippian” or “Philippinian” probably just didn’t sound right, so English adopted the Spanish word Filipino, retaining the letter F and the suffix, “ino."

Mantis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How about letting the calls go to voicemail? You
> aren't obligated to answer the phone. You can
> also block specific phone numbers through your
> cell phone account.


You shouldn't be answering the phone when you are driving anyway!

I got booted from Certified Field Associates before they became part of Market Force. I know there was one job that they said I did not follow the instructions which was true. I did make a mistake. Then I signed up for another job, and when I needed to change the date I was scheduled for, they booted me. From what people are saying on this forum about the purple portal, I would guess I am not missing much.

I do complete many jobs for the blue portal. Market Force has some reimbursement only shops that are the sort of places I have to go to anyway, and so I like doing those.

I feel your pain. I have had these same issues and been deactivated six different times during five years of working in these mountains and little towns and rural areas that no one else will serve. I don't know how they are getting these jobs done now but I so don't care. Free at last, thank God I am free at last.



BigEdBSA Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I work for over 30 mystery shopping companies;
> rarely do I get calls from any of them. 95% of the
> time I just work via e-mail. Not so with Purple
> Portal MF! I get sometimes as many as six phone
> calls a day in broken English from the
> Philippines. It is so obvious they are reading
> from a script. It always starts like.....
>
> "Hi this is.... (Fill in any American sounding
> first name) i.e. Bubba, Billy Bob, Sally, Bill,
> David, Betty, etc.) from Market Force! May I speak
> with Ed? Hi Ed, how are you doing? (( Please
> consider for a moment how bizarre it is to be
> getting so many calls from 9,000 miles away from
> people I do not know who always want to know "How
> I am doing!”))
>
> Then they launch in, I have available assignment
> HST439 at location W348 can you do this?
> WHAT??!!!?? Tell me a name or a City, not this
> crap!
>
> As for me, I am getting these calls sometimes
> while on another mystery shop for another company
> or while driving up some mountain highway in the
> Blue Ridge or Great Smokey Mountains. Often this
> involves going up 14% grades or executing 360
> turns on windy mountain road (when I have any cell
> phone coverage at all). It is not like you can
> call any of these Filipino people back if you miss
> their call.
>
> One time I had three different MF Purple people
> calling me at the SAME TIME for different
> assignments.
>
> Yesterday I had one of them calling me for a Blue
> Portal assignment, a simple drive through
> restaurant that I have done hundreds of. This
> person was going to drag this out for 30 minutes,
> reading me all of the qualifying questions, etc.
>
> Then they always end with the same monologue about
> MF's toll free help desk number and their website,
> as if I am not there every day anyway .
>
> The cultural disconnect and wasted time dealing
> with these nutty calls is causing me to seriously
> consider cutting myself off from MarketForce
> totally, both Blue & especially Purple Portal (you
> could say it is even more annoying than that other
> purple beast....Barney the Dinosaur).
>
> They also have a rather deranged supervisor
> (purple portal) at the Scheduling desk who suffers
> mad bouts of delirium and deletes accounts when
> one shop was not done by deadline (The one time
> when this happened to me I had 16 other shops
> successfully completed that same week). It took
> someone over there several hours to rekey in all
> of my permanent assignments, pending jobs, etc.
>
> Is anyone else having these issues? Does anyone
> intelligent at Market Force realize just how out
> of step they are with the rest of this industry?

I've enjoyed this thread. There's linguistics, geography, economics, and a wee political debate. "You want fries with that?" does fit here.

I am new to this forum, but I have done shops for several years. When I first signed up for Certified , the company was okay. Now it is Market force. I have had several bad experiences with them. First one was when, I didn't see a survey I was supposed to do before I did the shops. I honestly did not receive the email on the survey. Not only did I lose the 6 shops in the same city, but they were given to someone else. I was told I couldn't have them back because I didn't do the survey. I told them I didn't get any survey. I was told sorry, someone else has the shops. Funny thing is, I had the same shop in another city and they didn't take it away. I even went to the main person at market force and was told, sorry, can't do anything about it. But if it even comes open, I should apply for them... How do they expect to keep shoppers. But then again , why do they care, they obviously have several new shoppers that will take the abuse. I very seldom do a shop for them, it is under paid and they always want more and more from you which eats up your profits. I do get phone calls and emails from them, but I always send them to voicemail or delete them.

Happy Labor Day weekend from Market Force! I got 11 calls from them in 48 hours, including one at 9:55 pm on Friday night. I let the first 7 go to voicemail and answered the 8th, politely telling the caller I was not available until next week and to please stop calling. An hour later, call #9 came in. I answered the 11th call and went off on the woman. 11 calls in 48 hours.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2012 02:27AM by asdca.

You mean that doesn't make you feel loved and wanted?

Let me just say I do quite a few merchandising jobs for MF but I never take a job at the advertised price. (frankly those prices are laughable)
They never count admin time (learning the assignment and reporting) or admin costs.

The trick with MF is to have a quick look at the overview of the assignments in your area every 2 or 3 days.

When you know what the jobs are (and roughly the work involved) you can then be ready to negotiate a price.

Every person has to decide what their time is worth. If others want to do it for less then they are more than welcome to do the job.

Can we get back on the topic at hand?

Bringing the subject back to the Phillippineanites (kidding!), I've had it with them as well. When I get calls, they actually do reference the client name, however, it takes soooo long for them to get to the point! The greeting, asking how I am, the reason for the call -- DUH!!, the client and finally, (and often only when I ask), the location and fee.

I try to cut them off and obtain the client, location and fee right away. I'm sure I appear curt and possibly rude, but I'm sorry -- I just don't have the time. Some get very confused and have a hard time going off-script, some don't.

nicelytwicely Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> I try to cut them off and obtain the client,
> location and fee right away. I'm sure I appear
> curt and possibly rude, but I'm sorry -- I just
> don't have the time. Some get very confused and
> have a hard time going off-script, some don't.


Yes, me too, and I always seem to be driving when they call. How comes there seems to be so many screening questions when they call? Online, there's only a few. Whatever..I made an extra $45 in bonuses from their PITA phone calls yesterday, so I do usually answer their calls, if only for the bonuses. If I spoke to regular schedulers with the tone of voice I use to them, I don't think I'd be getting many jobs. I feel so rude to them, but they do know how to waste my time. I miss the sweet southern accents. They were always quick and to the point. Loved them.