Failure to pay on assignments - AVOID

I have worked as a Mystery Shopper for about 8 years now. I have worked for a number of UK companies as well as a couple of global ones. Gapbuster have always paid very poor for their assignments and regard the payment for a meal as McDonalds, KFC or Pizza Hut as reward enough for your time and effort. I have completed many assignments for them over the years and try to wait until they are paying premiums before accepting them.
They often telephone me asking me to undertake assignments and the caller is always muffled / mumbling and hard to understand. I was asked to visit a Shell station and they were paying a premium on it of £15 in addition to the £11 standard fee. As this assignment was 10 miles from where I live I was very reluctant to do it, but the additional payment would cover my petrol and part of the assignment was filling up with £10 fuel anyway for which I was getting paid. So I agreed to undertake the assignment.
The Shell station address was on my briefing notes and I entered it into my GPS. When I arrived there the road name was spelt slightly wrong on my notes but typos often happen, but the main problem was the assignment wanted me to assess a southbound service station when there was only a northbound one. I drove around and asked in the northbound services and was told the southbound ones were still under construction!!!
I took photos of the site and tried to contact Gapbuster. Unfortunately there is no was to contact them even though it states on your paperwork if your have problems to contact them immediately. So I email them, no reply, I email 4 depts, no reply. I then have to go home as its nearly 11pm and I've been out there for over 2 hours!
I get no reply for nearly a week then get a phone call asking me to do another assignment. I bring up the issues I've had and get told I will be paid £4 for a closed site. I went mad over this. I brought up that they sent me to a closed site and had promised to pay a £15 premium and I was now out of pocket by over £10. The guy spoke to his manager and agreed to pay me my costs of £10 (£4 closed site fee and £6 extra). When I was finally paid, guess what... no £6!
Tried to get in touch, as usual no reply. 2 months after I should have been paid I had a phone call to say no one agreed to pay me extra, I've already had my £4 fee and that was it! They even said I picked the assignment myself and no one called me.
If you want a few free KFC's then fine use them but if you actually want to work for a reputable company that has respect for the work you do for them and you want to be able to have some support then avoid gapbuster at all costs.
I don't want others to be left out of pocket as I have been. If we all had money to throw away we wouldn't be doing mystery shopping in the first place!
Although this has been a long winded post, I hope someone finds it useful.

Avoid. company staff is rude and dont pay.

AVOID !

I am working for 5 mistery shopping companies in the UK and clearly this is the worst company.

When you had a bad experience with an assignment and you put through a bad report they simply reject your assignment and do not pay. Hence they dont send a bad report to their client, only good ones which is unfair to the client.
Today one of my assignments which cost me 18pounds had been rejected and I just saw today on the website and they didnot even bother to notify me in email or give me a reason. I am fuming!!!
This is the 3rd time an assignment had been rejected in 3months and when staff calls me and i complain to them they give me bullshit reason and sometimes do not even see my assignments so i suppose their system is a chaos and not organized.

another example: i accepted an assignment then i had to cancel due to personal reason. in 10minutes i received a call from them and they asked me to do exactly the same assignment!!! wtf?! the staff had no idea that i just cancelled that one. they do not see on their system. just makes me wonder what kind of company is this??

Another thing is staff is incredibly rude. The other day i received a call and was asked to accept a screwfix assignment and i said i dont do those I was asked "Why? Not even one?" in such a rude manner i wanted to pull the person over the phone and punch his face.

NOT A FAIR COMPANY. AVOID AT ALL COST.

Not worth the effort

I am not able to recommend this company at all. Very limited selection of jobs and
some rather convoluted tests to undertake. The pay is not good and does not always
fully cover the costs of items that are mandatory purchases. However the main
problem is the totally unhelpful staff at Gapbuster, they seem to be on a mission
to wiggle out of paying for the most tenuous reasons. Not trustworthy in my opinion.

Once you get past the trick questions....

Gap Buster is a pretty good company to work for. But it's the lengthy reading (Orientation) you have to do (which is not too bad really) then the questionnaires which , again are not too bad, but they do hold several "trick" questions that just make you feel completely STUPID!! Because this then means you fail for those specific assignments. Feeling annoyed I then set up other IDs in order to prove myself not stupid and actually manage to complete the questionnaires successfully. This made me feel better about myself. But now Gap Buster have deleted ALL of my accounts (including the one I'd had open for the last 2 years and had done many assignments from) and will not answer any messages that I send to them.
I feel cheated and abandoned by them!!
Otherwise, if you just set up one account, accept that you are stupid in not answering their daft questions, then Gap Buster is great!

Carolyn McV found this review useful

Free food and petrol - and a little money on top!

I will write this review in both English and Danish.

I have been a mystery shopper for about two years, and I have never had any trouble. One time the payment didn't go in properly, but it went in with the following month's payment. Customer service often calls and asks for help on a urgent shop, and those are often very well-paid.

Jeg har været mystery shopper hos Gapbuster i cirka to år, og jeg har aldrig haft nogen problemer. En enkel gang blev betalingen ikke overført, men pengene kom så sammen med den efterfølgende måneds betaling. Kundeservice (Samuel) ringer ofte med en hasteopgave, og som regel er disse opgaver med en klækkelig bonusbetaling. Gratis mad og benzin og ofte lidt ekstra oveni - det er da til at forstå! :-)

Good company to work for

I have worked for Gapbuster for 3 years. I have always found them to be polite and considerate. They have always paid the agreed rate on time.
I cannot see that the Macdonald's timing points are complicated, I have never had any problems with them.
I do agree that it would be useful to be able to to telephone a representitive if there is an urgent problem with an asessment but I have always received prompt replies to e mails.

Fin mulighed for at tjene lidt ekstra penge

Jeg forstår ikke dem der brokker sig så meget over Gapbuster. Jeg har altid fået det udbetalt som jeg har tjent. At lønnen ofte ikke er så høj er rigtigt, men man kender jo lønnen inden man vælger jobs så hvis det er for lavt, kan man jo bare lade være med at tage jobbet.

Eneste minus er at lønnen generalt ligger i den lave ende, men det er meget ofte at de ringer og tilbyder ekstra betaling så det alligevel er værd at tage de forskellige jobs.

Don't attempt McDonald's training for mystery shopper at all.

The McDonald's training manuel is pretty tedious - 17 pages in total. The drive thru restaurants had different setting like COD, a member of staff standing outside etc etc is not easy to visualise unless the shopper had actually visited the shop and see the set up. As a result, it is confusing to do the 2nd timing for these restaurants.

The training manuel should have a VISUAL TOUR to show the critical points to the mystery shoppers when to do their timings.

It is time consuming to go through training manuel and when you don't get it right, it makes me very angry. Moreover, the fee is pretty low, just £4 for each visit! Gapbuster / McDonald's is expecting toooooo much! Not at all impressed. Don't even attempt the training, choose other jobs instead.

Carolyn McV found this review useful

Rip Off Non Payers

I did their training module for McDonalds. It stated what was an acceptable timing device. It did not state if any were not acceptable. Prior to undertaking my mystery shop I printed off my questionnaire which asked what sort of stopwatch I used. It described an analogue timer in great detail amongst others so I took my brand new chronometer stopwatch with 1/10 of second timing. When I filled in the survey and ticked the box to say I had used this deviice they emailed me to say that I should have used a digital timer and that they would not me paying. The whole set of questions and instructions is worded to deceive. Avoid at all costs.

Carolyn McV found this review useful

Overholder ikke aftaler

Har været medlem af gapbuster i snart 2 år og har generelt oplevet uorden i deres forretningsgange, de 2 mest vitale er dog at:
- aftaler indgået overholdes ikke
- udbetalinger ofte ikke svarer overens med det der burde udbetales

Kan ikke anbefale dem!

Don't live up to their blurb

They say that the treat their “shopping eXperience Evaluators
‘ (EX's) with RESPECT. They also indicate that "Our friendly staff ensure communication between GAPbuster Worldwide and our shopping eXperience evaluators is exceptional". Love the warm fuzzies don't they.

They do not effectively communicate. They do not respond to emails and if you have the gall tell them in person they are failing they just hang up. So if you work for them, don't raise concern, don't try to help them improve thier service, because they wont listen and the wont RESPECT.

THE REALLY DON'T GIVE A RATS

Carolyn McV found this review useful

Beware of Gapbuster

Honestly we do mystery shopping for over 6 companies here in Australia. We were with gapbuster and its was a terrible disrespectful experience. The company should be investigated. You do not always receive payments, you are hounded by their staff who won't take no for an answer, you cannot call the company and your emails rarely answered. The company is a disgrace and do not pay enough for each assignment (thats if you are paid..)and when you have a problem they ignore your pleas for assistance to resolve it.

DO NOT USE GAPBUSTER AS A SHOPPER. There are really good companies who respect their shoppers and pay well. We work for them and love mystery shopping.

Carolyn McV found this review useful