Market Force Certified Field Associate East Greenbush, New York

The real testimonial is Marketforce is a sleazy company. a company that doesn't got it together but is rude at handling it. After performing a number of audits, I was blocked off their website. Upon requesting reinstatement,  the replies from some jerks were negative. although out of fairness I did nothing wrong. and now no one replies. sleazy company . bad employee relations. show zero praise for work completed that sums the way Marketforce handles it. shouldn't be in business. I wasn't surprised, as I contacted  them with problems, my questions and concerns were not helped. seemed like a bunch of incompetents but mean to anyone for their own problems as that.

I am an independent contractor completing assignments for Market Force and have been associated with them for approximately six months now.  To date, I have been paid for every shop completed through the last pay cycle.  I have completed roughly 333 assignments and have earned over $3,000 in this short period of time.

Yes, some shops are a little more difficult than others, however I have discovered that after completion of one or two, they are a breeze.  As stated by an employee of Market Force, the field form and instructions can be quite lengthy, but you don't have to print each page.  And once you understand what you are doing, you only need to print the field form, generally 2 pages.

As far as assignments requiring travel/gas, if you cannot complete the assignment for the rate offered, let them know and stand your ground.  I have traveled over 120 one way and have been compensated $100 to complete this assignment.  My vehicle is a gas hog but at this rate, it works out okay.  You never have to accept an assignment that you will lose money on.  

And, if you are sensible, you will schedule shops or assignments that are located in close proximity to each other and be able to earn a few dollars without spending it all on fuel or supplies.  Granted, it is not a get rich quick deal, however I have found much enjoyment and pleasure in many of the assignments I have.  I have been requested as the permanent rep for several of the locations I merchandise, and have fun while completing them.  The girls at one of my stores played a little joke on me that was funny and made me feel welcomed.

So, I for one, will support Market Force and they are my main source for work.

I have been a mystery shopper for Market Force for 8 months.  During this period I have completed 433 shops/audits.  Of the 433 assignments I completed I have been paid for every single one.  There have been three or four times that I have made mistakes on some shops, yet the company paid me anyway.  For the last 6 months I do nothing but complete shops that Market Force have not been able to assign to others and a deadline is approaching.  The company is fantastic and very fair.  They always take into consideration how far I must drive to do a job for them.  The longest I have driven one way has been 136 miles to shop two McDonald's(different meal periods) and I was paid $150.00 for the two shops.  Very fair indeed.

To Defend a company that gets rich off the sweat of hard working American's is unthinkable.  When they pay you sweat shop wages for going out to stores to work for small amounts of money when they get paid large sums for this work,  Driveline, and other companies pay mileage, and hourly wages for this same sort of work.  Market Force seems to feel they can have you do a large number of stores and yet pay you for only a few at a time to keep you on the string.  I did 140 stores total for them and I am still owed for some of the stores I did yet they keep asking that I go out and do more stores and yeah, the ones defending them are actually employees of the company not other victims.  We have to wait until Market Force feels we deserve our money but expect us to keep going to their stores to make more money for them.

I am from Massachusetts.  I have been doing assignments since October 2010.  I have gotten paid for every job that I have done.  I work part-time, and make about $75.00-$100.00 per week.  I have never had a problem getting paid.  Some assignments do take a little longer than others to get reimbursed (like the theatre assignments,) but it is not an excessive time frame.  They do not expect you to travel far.  When they call to ask if you want an assignment it is because it is currently due or past due.  They increase the pay as an incentive.  If it is too far then you tell them that.

If you live in an area with a lot of Walmarts and Family Dollar stores then you can make a nice part-time income.  The office that books my assignment is in East Greenbush, NY.

I have recommended this company to many people.

There is also two portals to get assignments from.  The purple portal (which is what I use) is for merchandising jobs.  The blue portal is for mystery shopping.  I have never used the blue portal.
I think that each booking office is different.  I highly recommend the East Greenbush, NY office.

Good luck. 

I am sure Market Force is getting far more then they are willing to pay the ones who actually do the work while they sit in their office and rake in the dollars from our hard work.  I am no longer going to be working for them because I can't afford to keep making them rich and losing money.  It's a scam.

I am employed as a Scheduler by Market Force in the East Greenbush, NY office. As a company employee I wish to respond to this.

As far as your payment complaint. Market Force processes payment on assignments twice a month around the 1st and the 15th. Payment processing does take 4-6 weeks. Some assignments process quicker than others. You only worked with us for two months when you entered your report here so the majority, if not all, of your assignments were still in the processing period. You stated you received payment on 19 out of 42. As I just mentioned, some assignments take longer to process. We have clients that want to look at the reports themselves before payment is approved. This takes time. Once the client approves payment we do pay you. The processing time allows us to do quality control. Our QA department looks over the reports and also calls stores to make sure they are satisfied with our merchandisers. We also weed out CFAs who did a poor job or falsified their reports.

We are very aware of the cost of paper, ink, and gas. However, when a client contracts with us to do work for them the cost of it is agreed upon in the contract. We can not increase what we are charging them for our services because gas prices are rising. CFAs are Independant Contracters, although there are some who do not understand this and are convinced that they are company employees. As an idependant contracter you are in effect running a business. Gas, ink, and paper are all tax deductable business expenses. We have CFAs calling in all the time asking us to increase their assignment rates for this reason. Sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. However, I feel it is unfair to expect us to cover your business expenses, which I'm sure are claimed anyway come tax time. By the way, that's called double-dipping. Also, as far as the amount of paper you are printing out, an assignment that has 30 or so pages is mostly instructions. You can read those in the pdf file on your computer. You do not have to print them all out! You'll save a lot of ink and paper if you only print what you need to take with you, that's usually just the letter of authorization and your field forms.

Yes, most of our assignments pay $8-$10, sometimes $12, on the first hour of the assignment and then $2 for each 15 minutes after that, there are some that pay more. Other assignments pay flat rates, most flat rate assignments are expected to take an hour or less to complete. Most assignments are also capped, in other words they are given a time limit. This is negotiable on some assignments, not on others. If a location for an assignment is found to be a disaster, it hasn't been maintained properly or no one has serviced it in months you can call into the help desk while you are at your assignment and request additional time in order to straighten things out and complete your assignment properly. If you don't call, the capped time remains in effect. If you call after the assignment is done and you're back home you will most likely be turned down because we now can't confirm with store management that it actually took as long as you claim. The caps are in place because there have been problems in the past with people claiming time they never worked.

As far as assignments out of your home area...yes, sometimes we deal with rural areas and need to get people to travel to get assignments done for our clients. We do often offer bonuses for this or work out a rate with an individual CFA. We do have limits with how much we can pay out. We are a business and need to make a profit to stay in business. Our rates are fair. Most of our assignments are basic and don't usually require extensive training, if any. Most assignments we have are about as difficult as flipping burgers at McDonald's. Seriously, I get people calling in wanting to be paid $20 to do a very basic merchandising assignment at stores 10 miles or less from their homes when store employees make $8-$10 per hour for the same type of work.

Now as far as how far away the assignments are it says very specifically on our website that distance is as the crow flies. We are not trying to make out that the assignments are closer than they really are. We simply can not give exact distance on our system. When I was a new employee I asked by supervisor why we only gave distance from CFAs homes to the assignments as the crow flies. I was told that a system that gives actual distance it not only very costly but would use up our system resources and cause the system to crash.

We are not a rip off. We are a legitimate business that is actually growing in this difficult economy. We have assignments all over the country, even some in Canada. We are a business and we pay like a business.