Complaint Review: GFK Mystery Shopping - New York New York

I have worked as an Independent Contractor for GFK Mystery Shopping for several years, on and off, since 2008. Recently, I accepted an assignment from GFK to evaluate Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant in St Augustine, FL, whereby I posed as a customer while secretly evaluating the staff at this establishment.

I conducted this assignment, at night, on November 3, 2014, returned home, then worked on the required report, consisting of a number of questions. I completed this report, shortly after midnight, submitted it to GFK's website, then "saved" a copy of the report, as an adobe file, to my computer. 19 hrs after submitting my report, I received an email message from whoever evaluated my report at GFK, stating that it was incomplete. Supposedly, I had given a "No" answer when further information I supplied to this report, required a "Yes" response as well as a detail explanation to that "Yes" response. I was instructed to go back to GFK's website and complete the report.

Normal policy states that if an independent contractor submits an Incomplete Report, their performance rating automatically goes down and the chance of being paid is at risk.

When I logged back into GFK's website and saw my report, I knew immediately that someone had changed my answer from "Yes" to "No" on one of the questions and that my lengthy, detailed response that I had submitted, in response to my initial "Yes" answer, was gone. I opened up my "Saved" adobe file with the completed report I had submitted to GFK, and sure enough, my computer "saved" my report just as I had written it, complete with the answer "Yes" to the section I was being questioned about, as well as my detailed evaluation to that "Yes" response. I sent out an email to the GFK Staff person, Christy Ensley, who initially asked me to do this assignment, detailing my upset over the realization that someone in GFK deliberately tampered with my report. I attached a screen shot of the email I received from GFK evaluation department (no name given and no available means to reply to that email). I also attached a screen shot of my completed report, on my adobe file, showing that I had, in fact, completed the report. I then decided to even attach the adobe file as well so she could check "Properties" on that file and see that it was submitted, in complete form, 19 hours before getting email message from GFK stating that I had answered that particular question differently. I also submitted a screen shot of their website, showing how the question I answered as "Yes", had been changed over to "No" and how my detail explanation of "Yes" was missing as well. I finished off my message to Christy, stating that I would be contacting BBB and anyone else I could think of, to report on this breach of integrity and trust.

It is my belief that this company planned to use my report, just as I had written it, then because they have the capabilities to change any reports, I believe they did just that, so that they wouldn't have to pay me, using the excuse of submitting an "Incomplete Report" which it never was, in the first place. Also, because of this outright lie, my performance rating goes down and I've alway prided myself on my work, so this is a "slap in the face" and I'm very angry that someone had the nerve to do this to me.

I don't know if I'll be paid or not because I don't put anything past this company, given that they lack integrity and honesty. I did let Christy know that I would no longer accept any assignments from this company because I don't work for a company that employs people with questionable integrity. I also told her that at the very least, I expected an apology and that something should be done to the person responsible for tampering with my report.

I don't want to hear the explanation that GFK's "system" made this error as I read how another person who worked for GFK, went through a similar situation, wrote to "Rip Off Report" and later, received this answer (that their system was at fault). Does anyone really believe that GFK would take responsibility? Really? What company would ever admit they tried to defraud their own contractors? Proof means nothing when companies can easily "talk their way" out of situations that they created under dubious actions of their own. But I figure that at this point, I have nothing to lose in reporting the "bad faith" actions of GFK and just maybe, something good may actually come from this. Time will tell....