I searched up the Georgia Dept of Corporations and the Marketforce Information LLC, a Foreign Limited Liability Company, has been involuntarily administratively dissolved as of 10/28/2022. The founding CEO is Karl Maier. Are they an overseas company? They no longer exist according to the Georgia secretary of state.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/01/2023 02:16AM by Tonytj.

A foreign entity is one which exists under the laws of State A but has registered a name in State B either to protect the name in State B from being taken by another entity or because the State A entity also has an office in State B. Foreign entity registrations are done away with every day. In this case it is likely that the entity which registered the name as a foreign entity in GA did not file renewal forms or fees with GA. The fact that the foreign entity registration no longer exists means little.

I believe that Market Force LLC and Market Force Information LLC are Delaware entities. Many entities, which have no offices in Delaware, are organized under Delaware laws owing to the state's judicial system, laws favoring companies over owners, and business privacy.

Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2023 04:25AM by Rousseau.

From Marketforce’s website:

Global Headquarters

6625 The Corners Parkway
3rd Floor
Peachtree Corners, GA 30092
Toll Free: 1.800.669.9939
Phone: 770.441.5366
Fax: 770.441.5355
Winnipeg

201 – 610 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, MB
R3B 3K6
Toll Free: 1.877.301.5469
Fax: 1.877.946.5262
United Kingdom

Scorpio House
Rockingham Drive
Linford Wood Business Park
Sunrise Parkway
Milton Keynes, MK14 6LY
PHONE: +44 1908 328000
Registered Office:

1 Seeback Place
Knowlhill
Milton Keynes
Buckinghamshire
MK5 8FR

This is a shadowy company. Why don’t they have a business license to operate in California? Where is their real headquarters? Louisville, Colorado? Peachtree, Georgia? London, England? Who is the CEO, VP? Who is the owner? I cannot find any info on them. Complaints.com, trustpilot, and Glassdoor show dozens of negative reviews about how dysfunctional, frugal, and toxic the company is, written by their staff. I did find info from Linkedin for what it’s worth:

Ray Walsh
CEO Market Force Information
Market Force InformationOklahoma State University
London Area, United Kingdom
2K followers 500+ connections
Experience
Jun 2014 - Present9 years 2 months
London, England, United Kingdom
Market Force Information® (Market Force) provides location-level measurement solutions to protect your brand's reputation, delight customers, and make more money. Founded in 2005, we continue to grow our global presence with offices in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France and Spain. We are proud to serve over 350 clients ranging from the Fortune 10 brands to emerging brands with high growth potential. Our clients' success is our own, and with that comes a deep commitment to helping our clients optimise growth for every location.

Market Force operates at scale across the globe. Each month, we:

-Complete over 100,000 physical visits to retail sites
-Collect, process, and analyse millions of employee and customer experience surveys
-Manage over 100,000 inbound calls, web comments and social medial interactions in our contact centre
-Host over 1 million user logins on our KnowledgeForce® reporting platform

Our multi-location solutions provide a robust framework for measuring and improving operational excellence, customer experience, and your financial KPI's.

Measurement channels: mystery shopping, customer experience surveys, contact centre calls, social media, employee engagement surveys
KnowledgeForce® technology platform and Eyes:OnTM mobile app
Predictive Analytics to determine what matters most and the ROI for investing in improvements
Market Research services (e.g. customer segmentation, Attitude Trial and Usage studies, custom research projects)
Strategic Advisory Services to design and implement effective measurement systems and improve performance.
Application of advanced Machine Learning technologies to deliver efficiencies and unique insights.

Successfully lead the process to exit the founding investors via combined MBO and Private Equity partnership with Main Street Capital.



Scott Griffith
Chief Marketing and Sales Officer at Market Force Information
Market Force InformationUniversity of Manitoba
San Diego, California, United States
1K followers 500+ connections
Experience
Market Force Information
4 years 6 months
Chief Marketing and Sales Officer
Dec 2020 - Present2 years 8 months
San Diego, California, United States
Executive responsibility for sales and marketing functions.
SVP Global Innovation
Feb 2019 - Dec 20201 year 11 months
San Diego, California
Market Force Information
VP - Executive Strategist
Market Force Information
Mar 2011 - Feb 20187 years
San Diego, California
Development and management of key strategic customer relationships, including collaboration with internal and external stakeholders re customer/business intelligence solution design and delivery, mentoring and developing internal consultants, and value proposition design and delivery.



Ed Cordell
Chief Financial Officer at Market Force Information
Market Force InformationThe University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
Atlanta Metropolitan Area
1K followers 500+ connections
Experience
Market Force Information
Chief Financial Officer
Jun 2021 - Present2 years 2 months
Peachtree Corners, Georgia, United States

I'm not sure what you're looking for on them, they do have multiple locations, their leadership team, etc posted on their website. They have been around a very long time, at least 15 years, I can say.

@Tonytj....What do you want from your fellow shoppers? Some of us do the assignments and get paid REGULARLY. You do not have to work for them if you do not want to. How did they wrong you or what is your grievance with them?

They've been around for a LONGGGGG time.....years ago they were known as Shop-N-Chek before they became Market Force. I concur with highbigdaddy....if something about them troubles you, don't shop for them! Period! But they are legit.

Hi everyone, I am new to this and don’t know much and do not have a grievance with any company. I was just doing some basic research and found that all the companies were open and transparent except for one: Marketforce Information, which I will most likely be engaged with in my first job. Now I have come full circle and have found that they are “guided” by their equity partners, financier companies that injected cash into them. I have found that they are still a Colorado company. Here’s a blurb about how they started:


Market Force Information Secures $19.3 Million

Mar 01, 2006
Category
Places
This week has already been active for new startups in Colorado. On Monday, the news broke that my friends Don Springer and Tim Wolters had closed on a $2.6 million financing led by Appian Ventures for their new company, Collective Intellect. Tim has blogged some about the fundraising process from an entrepreneur’s perspective – good stuff.

Yesterday, my friends Paul Berberian and Karl Maier announced that they’d raised $19.3 million for their new company, Market Force Information. This equity piece was $11.3 million and was led by Centennial Ventures with participation from Boulder Ventures and Vista Ventures; the debt piece was $8 million from Hercules Technology Growth Capital. Market Force also announced that they have acquired their first company, Atlanta-based Shop’n Chek, one of the largest mystery shopping companies in the country.

Paul was one of the first entrepreneurs I go to know when I moved to Colorado. We met at the first YEO Colorado meeting in 1996 at the Boulderado and he helped me start up the YEO Colorado chapter. I funded – with Centennial – Paul’s second company Raindance, which he co-founded with Jim Lejeal and Todd Vernon. Raindance went public in 2000 and was recently acquired by West Corp.

I met Karl Maier through my very close friend and attorney Mike Platt at Cooley Godward a couple of years ago. Mike and Karl are best friends and Karl has worked closed with Centennial on a number of their companies, including Vector, VIA Net.Works, and Cordillera. Karl is well known throughout this area as an extremely strong operating exec.

I watched Paul and Karl as they got to know each other over the past year and developed the idea of transforming the established (and technology unaware) “mystery shopping business.” They learned this business extremely well, determined that there was a huge opportunity to apply technology to it, and decided to acquire a number of mystery shopping companies, consolidating what is currently a very fragmented industry, applying contemporary technology, and building the dominant company providing “store-level, customer experience information for retailers, restaurants, consumer packaged goods companies and the financial and hospitality communities.”

Cool vision. They’ve taken the first big step by closing both the financing and their first acquisition. Market Force is now a 130 person company with real operations and a market leader. It’s a nice new company on the Boulder scene, funded by a strong syndicate of Colorado investors. Congrats to all.

I completed my first shop for Speed Markweb in 2005, They was absorbed into Shop 'n' Chek a few years, I think 2007, later. Another few years, probably two, and we have Market Force. In Nov. of 2010, my ability to select new work disappeared. In both my professional and social life, when I am given a SHOO BOB, I SHOO. Concerning this MSC, I do not recall ever hearing of any dishonesty. There were, over the years, some posts of unhappiness with their manner of termination, but that was their prerogative.

Market Force was the only company that beat @shopperbob to the termination arrangement. :-)

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/31/2023 04:01PM by hbbigdaddy.

Could you please provide a list of "all the companies ... except for one", the one apparently meaning MarketForce? Did you do a similar investigation of all 200 or so mystery shopping companies? If so, why? Market Force has been known for decades to have been funded by venture capitalists. So what? If you don't want to work for them, don't. You are an independent contractor. Why are you trying to convince shoppers who have had good relationships with Market Force for decades to abandon them? Maybe you want to grab all the work for yourself?

@Tonytj wrote:

I was just doing some basic research and found that all the companies were open and transparent except for one:

I am kind of surprised too that you are doing so much research about a company that has a solid pay record for its shoppers. If you were interested in applying for a job on the management level with them it would make sense. The only things I do know are that many companies have experts guiding them as to what they need to disclose or not and they often are registered in a different locale than where their work mainly is as it is more beneficial to them to do so. Also if they are held as a private company rather than a public company (can you buy company stock through the stock market?) there is a whole different standard from the government about what they must disclose to the public.

Feel free to move on.

OP, I appreciate you are doing due diligence on the companies - I don't think you're trying to dissuade others from shopping with them, but just doing your homework. Many people have been scammed by so-called mystery shopping jobs. It's smart to do your homework, imo. A good resource might be the MSPA mystery shop providers association might help you see what companies are legit.

However, many legit MS companies decline to join MSPA.

OP, Despite your cut-and-past efforts, I am at a loss as to understand why you think that they are "shadowy" or less than transparent. Some of Market Force's competitors are so but not them. Complete a few jobs for them - don't put all your eggs in any one basket - and see how it goes.

Maybe OP WANTS all the eggs in their basket so is trying to deter other shoppers?

Shopped with them since 1993 as Shop n Chek with the exception of a payroll snafu a year or so ago they have never missed a payroll. Good enough for me.

What is happening here? While I can appreciate Tonytj trying to do his "due diligence" the information being posted here is extremely dated. Karl hasn't been our CEO for several years. The LinkedIn information is accurate, but what is the ultimate question?

Since you are in the know, where are their headquarters?

It’s funny seeing so many Market Force shoppers getting triggered over this.

If they are treating you well, go start a thread about that for a change. So far, I’ve only seen one (the Market Force shout-out thread).

A lot of Market Force threads are about the company’s mistreatment of their shoppers.

Maybe they are Marketforce employees posing. We really don’t know.

Why is this relevant? Do you only shop for companies that you know where their headquarters are? Are you worried about not getting paid? Enough people on here have verified they pay regularly. Their physical location makes no difference to me. Even if they did not pay me and I knew where they were located, what am I going to do? Storm into the building and take hostages until I get paid?

Their HQ information does NOT seem relevant to me to complete shops and get paid.

@Tonytj wrote:

Since you are in the know, where are their headquarters?

You can easily find out on the website. Apparently, that is beyond the scope of your due diligence, so here is the information:
Global Headquarters:
6625 The Corners Parkway, 3rd Floor
Peachtree Corners, GA 30092

As a bonus, here is more information from their website:
"Market Force operates at scale across the globe. Each month, we:
Complete over 100,000 mystery shops
Collect, process, and analyze millions of experience surveys"

@Tonytj wrote:

Since you are in the know, where are their headquarters?

If you bothered to read my previous post, their corporation is dissolved in Georgia as their secretary of state took action against them. Thhey are also not registered in Colorado. Don’t believe their website.

Does Georgia State Law require them to be registered in Georgia as a "Foreign Limited Liability Company" [meaning not an LLC formed in Georgia] since they are a Delaware LLC? Do you know? If they are violating a law, did you report them?

I have looked and they are registered in Delaware, and they have been a Delaware LLC since 4/21/2005. Do I really care? No. As long as they pay me reliably, I am happy.

By the way, did your supposed due diligence on all mystery shopping companies discover that IPSOS is also a "Foreign Limited Liability Company" [they are headquartered in Ohio, but are a Delaware LLC] and that their registration in Georgia was also revoked? Why didn't you advise all of us to stop working for IPSOS as well?

@Tonytj wrote:

If you bothered to read my previous post, their corporation is dissolved in Georgia as their secretary of state took action against them. Thhey are also not registered in Colorado. Don’t believe their website.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2023 08:19PM by myst4au.

Ipsos is a european company and very transparent.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/2023 10:46PM by Tonytj.

Market Force is very much a company with it's headquarters located in and operating out of GA, specifically Peachtree Corners - I personally work out of the office several times a week and if you are collecting a any pay by check from us, it clearly states the GA office location.

I'm still not sure what your point is? From your original post, if you found paperwork stating Karl was CEO in 2022 it is 100% inaccurate. Karl has been gone for at least five years, and probably more.

STATE OF GEORGIA
Secretary of State Corporations Division 313 West Tower
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Atlanta, Georgia 30334-1530
CERTIFICATE OF ADMINISTRATIVE DISSOLUTION/REVOCATION
I, Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State and the Corporation Commissioner of the State of Georgia, hereby certify under the seal of my office that
Market Force Information LLC
a Foreign Limited Liability Company
was mailed a notice in accordance with Title 14 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated and was involuntarily or administratively dissolved or its certificate of authority revoked by the Office of Secretary of State on 10/28/2022 for failure to file its annual registration, failure to maintain a registered agent or registered office in this state, and/or failure to submit payment for a dishonored fee payment or for fees, taxes, or penalties owed.
This certificate is issued pursuant to Title 14 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated and is prima-facie evidence of the existence or nonexistence of the facts stated herein.
WITNESS my hand and official seal in the City of Atlanta and the State of Georgia on 10/28/2022
Control Number : 09016050

okay. and this means what to us shoppers? I have been paid for every shop I have completed for over 10 years.

Your research proves what?

@Tonytj wrote:

STATE OF GEORGIA
Secretary of State Corporations Division 313 West Tower
2 Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. Atlanta, Georgia 30334-1530
CERTIFICATE OF ADMINISTRATIVE DISSOLUTION/REVOCATION
I, Brad Raffensperger, the Secretary of State and the Corporation Commissioner of the State of Georgia, hereby certify under the seal of my office that
Market Force Information LLC
a Foreign Limited Liability Company
was mailed a notice in accordance with Title 14 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated and was involuntarily or administratively dissolved or its certificate of authority revoked by the Office of Secretary of State on 10/28/2022 for failure to file its annual registration, failure to maintain a registered agent or registered office in this state, and/or failure to submit payment for a dishonored fee payment or for fees, taxes, or penalties owed.
This certificate is issued pursuant to Title 14 of the Official Code of Georgia Annotated and is prima-facie evidence of the existence or nonexistence of the facts stated herein.
WITNESS my hand and official seal in the City of Atlanta and the State of Georgia on 10/28/2022
Control Number : 09016050