mystery shopper

accounting clerk

Market Force

BEWARE!  Market Force does not care about you or the quality of work you try to provide.  Their mission is to use people as much as they can, and they use PASSIVE-AGGRESSIVE TACTICS as their daily work communication.  You will never know who you are communicating with, as names are never provided; nor will they provide a telephone number.   The number listed on their website only allows you to leave a voicemail.  However, they can call you and ask you to be their pet to run around to complete jobs for them.  The managers do not send you a "fired" email when they are done using you.  Instead, they lock you out of your account with no explanation.  
DO THE MATH! YOU ARE WORKING FOR FREE! Pay close attention to job assignment (which are very lengthy) and how much the pay rate is, which is sometimes $0.00.  However, they will "reimburse" you for monies spent.  At the same time, they will find every reason to "invalidate" your job; therefore, you get no reimbursement, no payment, and they got a free mystery shop completed.  Don't forget the time you spent commuting to the store location, gas spent, time spent at the store (completing the mystery shop and documenting everything in detail), and then time spent completing their lengthy survey in detail, and ink wasted on printing out their job assignments and surveys.  At the end of the day, you actually worked for free and wasted money required by the job assignment, with the intention for reimbursement....and you ended up paying them, because you spent money at their client's store.  
DESPERATE PAY! The only times the pay rate or negotiation for a job assignment seems reasonable; is when Market Force is desperate at the last minute to complete a job assignment for their clients.  That's when they will call you and offer a reasonable rate, because they work on commission offered by their clients.  Such as the client pays Market Force a specific amount of money for a mystery shopper, and Market Force tries to keep as much of that money for themselves and offer pennies or nothing to the mystery shopper.  Therefore, showing the greed for Market Force.  However, when nobody wants to work for free, Market Force will only offer something reasonable to mystery shoppers to get the job done, so they don't lose their clients.  
NOTHING GOOD ABOUT MARKET FORCE!  This company does not care about you.  They are selfish and greedy.  Obviously, Market Force uses "Independent Contractors" to get away with their unethical, immoral, and unprofessional behaviors and treat their "Independent Contractors" like garbage and toss them out when they are done using them.  

It's said that management is the cause of 85% of "voluntary" employee resignations. That is definitely the case at Marketforce.

Simply put, Marketforce managers are not the brightest bulbs in the box. They are stressed out, usually less-than-competent managers because they agree to take the low pay offered by the company. Who do they take their stress out on? You guessed it. The folks they supervise. You. 

Don't be persuaded that Marketforce is a great company because it's the biggest mystery shopping company. If you've seen the forms and information that go to their clients, you will know that the information collected by mystery shoppers is hardly valid or reliable. A shopper can check off any boxes for their report and it's accepted. Who suffers? The clients--the companies--that hire Marketforce. 

There are roughly 200 mystery shopper companies in the U.S. alone. Marketforce may be the biggest, but it's so poorly managed that it's a crapshoot whether you will be kept or not. Work too many shops and you are terminated. 

If you're thinking, "That makes no sense. Why would a company terminate their longest-running independent contractors and pick up a bunch of new ones?" Simple. Marketforce keeps cutting the pay they give shoppers, and the ones with experience won't work for peanuts. Who will? Newbies. 

Sign up with the other 199 mystery shopping companies. Marketforce may look like a good deal because their reports are so freakin easy to fill out. Maybe make a few hundred for a few months, then get out.  It will bite you in the end.

I have been shopping for Market Force for over 20 years. (When I started the company had a different name, but the mission remains the same.) This is not a job to rely on for full-time pay, but is a great sideline if you need lots of flexibility and the option to pick and choose what assignments you take.  You will be an independent contractor so keep track of your expenses for tax purposes as you will receive a 1099 for anything you make in shop fees over $600. To be successful you must be able to pay close attention to detail and not make mistakes on reports. At first the shop fees are fairly low, but once you become established as a reliable shopper the schedulers will contact you for end-of-cycle or short-term shops and will negotiate higher shop fees with you for those shops. There are a variety of types of shops as Market Force is one of the largest mystery shop companies. Your communication with the company is pretty much limited to the schedulers, but there is a help desk and you can email them if you have an issue. 

This is not a good company to work for. While it is nice to get free meals, their system is set up so that you benefit more if you give less than truthful information. If you give negative ratings, they will scrutinze the reports because the companies they work for do not like negative ratings. So it is in your best interest to lie, as someone has said, in order to stay out of trouble and continue to get free meals. Seems to go against the point of mystery shopping, if their company punishes you for giving negative (and honest) ratings. I would not recommend them. It is more trouble than it's worth. Go with another company who is more professional and does not punish you by scrutinizing every little thing when you give negative ratings. Their paperwork is often full of typos and inconsistencies as well (which they do not change even when told about)...yet they expect you to be perfect and ding you if you have even one typo.

I enjoyed working for this company for almost 9 years.  As a Recruiter, Scheduler, and Help Desk Associate, in a Customer Service type job. I was in contact daily, with field workers, to find them job assignments doing, merchandising, auditing, and in theater evaluations. I would also  help them route these job assignments, in the most effective and efficient way possible. 

Market Force has  now sold off two of the New York office divisions, in order to downsize.  There are only a few theater workers left in the office.  It is sad.

This was a great, fully operational, organized, and fun, company, working with great people. I was asked to return to the office this past July, August, and part of September, of this year, to clean up some specialty theater files, but now they have also laid off part-time, temporary seasonal, help.

I work for many different companies and have not had an issue with any of them. I accepted two jobs from Market force. I did a good job and made sure I took good notes. A spent about three hours doing the shops and completing the paper work. They are refusing to pay me. I had a typo on ONE of my reports so they invalidated BOTH shops. When I questioned them, they said both shops are invalid because I entered the wrong time on one of my reports.

 The industry typically notifies you if there is a mistake on a report and you are given opportunity to correct your mistake. They refuse to do this. I have made numerous attempts at getting ahold of a supervisor to discuss this, but no one will return my calls. I will NEVER do another shop for them. They are thieves. They haven't flown the shops I did, which tells me that they went ahead and used the work that I did.

I've been working for mystery shopping companies for over 15 years, and Market Force is the absolute WORST. They are dishonest, they don't care about their shoppers, and they underpay by leaps & bounds. They will invalidate your shop and refuse payment without even trying to get clarification from you. They only pay once a month, whenever they feel like it. I did a half dozen "approved" shops for them before they incorrectly invalidated one of my shops with no explanation or request for further info or clarification. That's when I quit because I don't work for free. They don't care about the people doing the real work in the field. I should've heeded the bad reviews/warnings that I read about them. Don't waste your time. They are only one of many mystery shopping companies out there.

Market Force primarily dealt with theater audits of trailers before a feature, and assembly of the standees that are usually found in the lobby and hallways of the theaters. The issue I had, was I either had to waste an excessive amount of time, or an excessive amount of gas.  For the audits, there was usually a few hours in between each showing of a feature.  I would either have to sit in my car or the theater lobby waiting for the start of each showing, or I would have to continuously drive back and forth to the theater for each showing.  The work was not steady.  There could often be months in between projects.  The standee assembly was fairly straight forward, but they often short changed the estimated time of assembly, so I was usually there longer than I had intended to be.

Because most all of the work is contracted work it was never dull or the same. One day I could be checking in on a grocery store or discount store and the next interviewing people about a movie they just saw. The management was great about when I had to take leave because my son had a near fatal car crash. I learned a great deal about time management and how to put pictures into words. Reports had to be precise and paint a picture for those reading it. I also learned that some jobs were not as thrilling as others. The hardest part of my job there was that I had to limit my word usage. However, it was nice not to have the same activity day in and day out.

I strongly recommend new mystery shoppers to AVOID this platform . Do you believe 3 out of last 4 shops ended up a big zero to me . They post junk shops with huge reimbursement to lure the shoppers, believe me they take zero responsibility towards accuracy of the information and they find lame excuses to void the shop and pay nothing . Helpdesk is never in favour of shoppers, choses to ignore the hard work , time and effort out by the shoppers. They doesn’t even acknowledge If you happen to send a feedback on the quality shops and platform itself. I spent around 70 CAD/ 8 hours on last 4 shops and I earned 5 CAD in return, that’s market force for you. They may remove from the platform for posting this that’s ok with me !

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Mystery shopper 1 salary reported	$60.00 per hour
Accounting clerk 1 salary reported	$57.50 per hour

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