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If you are not familiar with Mystery Shopping well here it is in a nutshell. Basically, people like you and me sign up with a 3rd Party vendor who has contracted with a business to pay their contractee’s a fee to go into the business and evaluate, what ever it is the business owner(s) want evaluated and then submit reports and/or photos and/or audio/video files taken by concealed body equipment. There’s Tons of companies that use these services, Grocery Stores, Restaurants, Gas Stations, Tanning Saloons, Hair loss Clubs, Beauty Saloons, Car Wash Establishments, Car Dealers, etc.

Weather or not I am a Mystery Shop, I’ll keep a Mystery. In short, I have a “friend” that has a story to tell. It all started in January of this year.

My friend’s family were having some finical struggles and my friend wanted to earn extra income without doing the bartender, waiter/waitress gig (I’m keeping the gender neutral to protect their identity. My friend is over 50 although appearances make him in the mid 40’s therefore, he can “get away” with “acting” as a Mystery Shopper.

My Friend is good at rules and he made a few rules about Mystery Shopping.

1. Always be concealed, have a good story that’s close to your real life so you can answer questions if you have to. Only have one or two aspects concealed. For example, if you are in Washington D.C. and need to shop a Museum with a friend and are 50 + years old and the only person available is a 20 year old Neighbor who babysits for you, they become your Niece and you SHOP.

2. Always submit your paperwork on time, in fact the sooner the better. You see if you like the extra income so does a ton of other people. Therefore, you are in competition with them to be number one! Then the companies will start calling you and offering bonuses that are not offered on their online sites.

2.1 To win the competition, follow the rules and outlines that they give you. Perform them as written and take the photographs they may require correctly as well as any scanned receipts, within an hour of your “shop”. A Shop is defined as your target, the business you are to observe.

3. Always be professional. That’s it.

Sometimes being the best has it’s drawbacks, especially if you are in need of money and need some cash. If you are a Mystery Shopper and you are in that situation be very careful because it can be dangerous to your health. Take my friend for example.

My friend lost about 100 lbs 3+ years ago. They have been very proud about keeping it off. Now last January (as mentioned earlier, they started Mystery Shopping). Because my friend is very thorough the Mystery Shopping Companies love it! They started calling and offering great assignments and my friend just picked and choose what was the best paying one. Then came the fast food Restaurants…

If you are a Mystery Shopper, my friend says you could literally eat three meals a day, every day of the week and not only get your meal reimbursed but paid on top of it. Not just for Fast food establishment but high in as well. Please note: the high end restaurants are few and you may get one now and then. Fast Food Chains are consistent.

My friend, who lost 100 pounds and kept it off for over 3 years, recently gained over 20 in about a 3-4 week period because of their Mystery Shopping. Now we’re not blaming or flaming Mystery Shopping or Shoppers, we’re just stating a real story…

So my friend gets a call from a company that they do a lot of shops with and they are desperate to fill a Shop in a certain time frame like by tomorrow. My friend had an availability and took the assignment. It paid well, he got fed and he’ll get reimbursement on top. Because of my friends reputation for excellence, the service kept calling him. He was doing 4-6 of these fast food joints a week for about 4 weeks now and we’re talking both Breakfast and Dinner.

My friends doctor is worried about his diet, he’s on High Blood Pressure Meds and Cholesterol lowering meds and Xanax for the stress!

Fortunalty, he only has a few more shops to go before he gets the money he needs to unlighted the financaial stress. However, my friend, very quickly needs to start a diet/exercise program again!

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Do not use the installers this company recommends…

They operate with Real-estate agents and offer a great deal on carpet and installation. Unfortunately the installers aren’t actually a part of the company, and they are unprofessional.

They showed up, the foreman was rude and didn’t want to talk to us about what they are doing. After they left we felt bumps in the carpet and thought it was bad padding. We complained and Robert said he would send his crew back… SO, “Robert’s crew” showed up and the dozen places we indicated that had bumps, the crew just pounded with hammers! Again, the foreman was curt and rude.

A few days later we saw a patch that looked shredded in the carpet. We thought our cat had dug into it so we repaired it, however, we found a bunch of MULCH under our carpet!

Evidently, these guys dragged the carpet though our mulch in the front yard and now between our carpet and padding is a bunch of mulch! When “Roberts Crew” Pounded the lumps in they pushed the mulch in through the carpet tearing it and loosening the fibers. Now we are walking on a carpet and every time we walk over the mulch it loosens the carpet even more. Thus, making it deteriorate more and more! We complained and Robert sent out his “foremen” again who was aggressively verbal to my wife and point blank stated that they had “NO” responsibility to repairing our carpet because we had attempted to fix the one spot in the carpet.

Updated 1/17/14: Robert insisted that the installers come back and look under the carpet for damage. More mulch was found but no further damage to the underside. He also told Gonzalo to fix the patch we did (which he did twice now but it’s obvious the man does not know what he is doing). So moral of this story? If you want a great deal on carpet, get it from Robert at Carpet Close-outs, but just DO NOT let them use their installers. See if you can find someone else. Using Gonzalo and his crew is like playing Russian Roulette. If there are no problems, you’ll have nice economy priced carpet. But if you get that bullet, you won’t be happy!

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Do you know why wireless companies want your social security number when you sign up for their service? So if/when you leave them before your two year contract is up, they can report you to the credit bureaus. Believe it or not, but not paying any of their outrageous fee can drop your credit from excellent to fair. Why are they given such power? I certainly don’t know or understand the answer to that one, but I do know they let that power go to their heads.

A little over two years ago, my wife looked at the data usage that we used on our plans. Deciding that we didn’t use enough to warrant the ridiculously high cost of unlimited, I dropped it to a more reasonable plan, which gave us plenty of extra data just in case. The very next billing cycle, our “usage” doubled and it continued to go up until we went over our allowed usage and AT&T charged us for it. Realizing they were ripping us off, I called and complained. If they didn’t adjust the amounts, we would cancel. They warned us that we would have to pay a cancellation fee, which we said we didn’t owe due to their dishonesty and two months lack of service which I shall explain in a minute. Apparently, there was a lot of this going on back then: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/01/att-lawsuit-overcharging_n_816848.html

Additionally, my Blackberry stopped working and it was under warranty. AT&T made me return my phone to one of their “service” centers who claimed they could neither repair it or fix it but had to send it back to the company for a replacement. No “Loner” was provided and despite weekly calling to their customer service department it took a entire month for me to receive a “new” replacement phone. However, the “new” phone was merely a used model that was refurbished and wouldn’t even boot up. Once again, I had to repeat the procedure, go to service center, have it sent back to the company and wait. By this time (2 months without a phone) … We called and complained about the delay and the down time and the lost and disruption of our business it caused. We were not offered an apology, only a promise that they wouldn’t charge us for the time we were with out a phone. However, they couldn’t even have any idea of when my new phone would be replaced.

We changed to T-mobile and cancelled AT&T and thought that would be the end of it. We were wrong. We were contacted by one collection agent after another. The last one even offered to close out the case if we would pay half. As it turns out, we probably should have taken the deal, since that was the last offer and now the dispute has hit my credit report. This is the only hit I’ve ever gotten and I’m 53 years old! It is truly unbelievable how far AT&T will go in their greed for undeserved money. We will never go back to AT&T for any of their services. They have burnt that bridge forever. So take this as a warning! Unless you’re willing to be treated badly by this company, avoid signing any contract with them.

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The End of the World

Once again someone published a date, years ago that predicted the world would end on a particular day. That day was to be TODAY, December, 21st, 2012 i.e. 12/21/12. Of course the world hasn’t ended and we are still here, many of us preparing for Christmas, a celebration of life. The End of the World has fascinated cultures ever since the dawn of time. I’m sure the early cavemen thought thunder and lightning storms was the world burning up right in front of their eyes. Even religions all have a say in how they think the world is going to end. I’m blogging on this because in the past month and mostly in the past few days, there has been a lot of energy produced by us discussing “Today’s End”. The Social Media has been inundated with posts, jokes and serious discussions on the topic. There have even been News reports discussing the topic as well as TV Specials. Therefore, I thought I’d toss my two cents into the ring.
Perhaps it is the End of the World, just not literally. This topic dawned on me as I lay here in bed sick as a dog. I made a post in the Social Media that although the world hasn’t ended, as sick as I am, I feel like it’s the end of the world. As I read other posts, watch other news reports and TV specials I see families struggling with sickness, death, lingering death, divorce, abductions, natural disasters’, job lost, bankruptcies, and the like. Many of these events are not going to happen today; however, we are positive and have explicit knowledge that they are going to happen in the New Year. Therefore, during our current celebration of life, it doesn’t actually feel like a celebration, more like a sugar band aide over a gushing wound. For those of us who are experience that kind of “lifestyle” at this time, the prediction of world doesn’t signifying Santa riding in his sleigh with 8 (or 9) Reindeer but reigns true, the feeling of the end of the world. My heart goes out to everyone suffering. My parents always taught me to pray to God to put an end to others suffering, even our own. However, suffering is going to continue and if prayer works, it’s not really always how we, the selfish humans we are, wanted it to be.
Therefore, as you all post and joke about the end of the world not actually happening today, just remember that for some people, it actually did and is happening. If you know of anyone in which a little extra loving could be shared with, especially during our Holiday season, why not let them know you care. Neither you nor I can take all of our suffering and pain away, but perhaps we can make the world a little bit better if we take a moment and stop thinking about what we want Santa can bring us to make us happy this year, but what we can do to help make others a bit happier and life a little easier.
Merry Christmas.

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I’ve always been a BIG Christmas Fan. In fact, for me and my family (well, that’s my original family – Birth Family) From September 1st to January 1st was always just one huge celebration! My sisters Birthday on September first always kicked it off. Then on Labor Day we always started the day with the speed boat races on Laural Lake, and then my Cousin Hudsen would hold a huge BBQ that included fishing, and sucking down some oysters. Plus a whole lot of BBQing activies. Of course their then came Columbus Day, My Birthday, Halloween, Veterans day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and a whole lot of other special holidays for all of the other religions, too numerous to mention. It’s not that I’m against them all, I’m just reporting on what my early childhood days with my family celebrated.

Now a lil known fact of mine is that I’m obsessed with Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol! From early on in my Childhood I remember growing up watching several black and white versions of the story. I even have read the original story by Chuck himself! In every version I either felt touch or just, down right, had tears falling down my cheeks becuase of the warmth, sentiment and lovingness that it portrayed. It’s a powerful story. I’m even talking about the Mr. Magoo Version too; however…

Last night my son and I watched the Dr Who version of a Christmas Carol. It was of course, nothing like Chuck’s story and was based more on the concept of a Christmas Carol. It was fun to watch, there was hope, joy and sadness. Even a non Dr Who fan would have enjoyed the episode and followed along the conversion of the “Scrooge” character. Of course the new Dr Who (Who represented most of the ghosts), Matt Smith is very campy and he played it great throughout the episode. He struggled, plotted made plans and in the end. Perhaps not how he was hoping but Scrooge changed allowing the Dr to save the crippled Spaceship.

The night before I watched Dr Who’s A Christmas Carol, I watched the Jim Cary’s version and although it was very true to the original story line, I felt sincerly dissapointed. The entire episode was a joke. Yes, Jim Cary can be very campy, which he was, however, too much so. His voice was so campy that you could never really feel distress, sadness or even any pain as in other versions of the classic, you could certainly feel Dr Who’s pain. Of course, Jim protrayed all of the ghosts and it was obviously over done. In fact my wife was irritated by the ghost of Christmas Present. Watching the show was obviously a waste of time for me and lover of Chuck’s Classic Tale.

Of course, of all of the Christmas Stories out there, this is one of the most immitated stories you see during the holiday season. I really enjoy how some shows try and use the concept but twist it around in a new version to make it refreshing. EVen though you know the “Scrooge” Character is goign to change, the shows pull you in and you feel the struggle. My point is that if you are going to remake the classic and actually remake it based on the Dicken’s story and not make it a new refreshing story, either make it right or just don’t do it at all. I’m not sure what the creators of Jim Carry’s version was thinking other then astonishing us with their cartooning ability. In my opinion, it was a waste of time, it was not refreshing just a stale remake and a campy poorly directed one at that.

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Grilldog’s Books are on Kindle/Amazon now at an Amazingly low price, check it out!  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009N0XNV6

Plus, my yet not published, almost published 2nd book, all of the recipes from the first 50 episodes of my show.  Check that out too and while you are at it purchase a copy for your “Foodie” Arsenal of recipes.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009N1BXTO

Plus if you go to Amazon you can also purchase many of my DVD’s. Each DVD has almost 2 hours of Grilldog’s TV Show, detailing specifically how to create great tasty dishes, quick and easy!

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