Bare International Mystery Shopping

I will not typically review a company, specifically a mystery shopping company, because I think that mystery shoppers should remain anonymous.  Which is why I find Facebook Pages of mystery shopping companies amusing, because that’s about as un-anonymous as you can get.  However, since I had such a terrible experience with this company, I must get it off my chest.  I did two shops for this company the same day.  One shop, I received a 10/10 rating, the other a 1/10.  They rejected my shop and said I refused to respond to any requests of further information.  I am not new to mystery shopping.  I have been doing this for seven years and perform over one hundred shops a year with several different companies.  I have never had the following happen to me and hopefully it will never happen again.  The shop I performed was a 45 minute drive and only one of the four venues they wanted me to evaluate was open.  So maybe that made me irritable about the whole thing anyway.  I submitted the shop on time and emailed the scheduler to let her know that everything was closed.  I checked the job board the next day (instructions said to check within 24 hours) and there were no messages. I went about my business and waited for an email if there was a question.  I find that mystery shopping companies do not usually work as fast as they like their shoppers to and often get back to you a week or so after the assignment is finished with questions.  I never received any email and eventually forgot about the assignment.  Now before you accuse me of losing the email in a spam filter, let me tell you I check my spam filter several times a day, whenever I see that there is a message in it.  I also have a special filter for my mystery shopping emails with a big red “Mystery Shop” box that pops up on it to flag them for me.  I NEVER received an email from them until they sent me an email saying I received a grade of 1 on the shop and it was to be excluded, I would not be paid, and that I would receive a citation for never updating my report.  I was furious.  I found the phone number to my account manager and called.  She was very nonchalant about the situation when I was obviously very upset.  When I realized she was not going to do anything, I asked to speak to someone who could do something and she sent me to another person’s voicemail.  I left my message and waited to receive an answer.  The next day, I received a phone call from the account manager asking if she reopened the shop, would I add the additional information that was requested.  Of course I would.  I would have completed it earlier if you had managed to let me know me you needed more information.  I raised the issue of not receiving the emails with her again, and she said, “This happens all the time.  People never respond to our emails until they get the shop excluded email.”  So I told her that it sounded like there was something wrong with their email system and maybe someone should be looking into it.  And she flat out said, “No ma’am, it’s not a problem with our system.  The emails are being sent.  People just don’t respond to them.”  Excuse me, but she just called me a liar.  Wow.  So I told her that if I could not trust the company to send emails, then I would not be working with them in the future.  She said, “That’s fine, you don’t have to.”  No sympathy, no “I’m sorry to hear that,” just a condescending tone.

So, I added the additional information and resubmitted the shop.  I got an email an hour later from the person I left a voicemail for saying that she had spoken with the account manager and that the shop had been reopened from me.  She also said that supposedly three emails had been sent to me regarding this missing information (again, that I NEVER received).  The first message was dated five days after I had originally submitted my shop.  These messages appear on the shop log, but five days is WAY out of the 24 hour time frame of my responsibility of having to check the shop log.  Since I work with so many companies, I rely on those emails or phone calls if there is a problem with my shop.  I cannot check every company’s page every day to see if an editor bothered to read my report yet.

This is an extremely large company and I know they will not miss me and I’m sure my post will have no effect whatsoever, but I hope to help out another dedicated mystery shopper in the future.  You can be sure that if I am not paid for my shops in the timeframe that is listed on the site, I will file a complaint against Bare International with the Better Business Bureau.  When I did some looking around today, I saw many complaints about them not paying on time.  I can only hope that a company that would like to get good information from a mystery shopping company would read this and pass on Bare International.  There are many other wonderful dedicated companies that provide an excellent service to both their clients and treat their evaluators with respect.  Perhaps my blood pressure can return to normal now.  Thank you for your time.  I know this was a long read.