Failed Mystery Shopper!

[nicholaxo]

hi, im wondering if anyone at all can give my any advice as i’m in the unknown!
i was told ariund 2 week ago that id failed a mystery shopper parcel - I don’t recall this parcel, but from what i have been shown/told i have posted it and from the mystery shopper feedback i have just added a DOB, again, i can’t recall this, i normally age verify and follow all the correct delivery procedures, so i don’t know what’s happened here.
I haven’t had my interview at work yet, but i’m wondering if anyone has dealt with this before and what the outcome was? i am getting barely any information and the stress is sending me crazy. I have been told it could take weeks/months to find out what will happen next, my manager and union have said they’ve not came across this before so cannot advise me. i’m not able to deliver parcels at the moment or do collections or anything with a PDA.
any advice is appreciated

[hazzeem025]

Who told you that you'd not done it properly? Your manager?

[world class male]

hi, im wondering if anyone at all can give my any advice as i’m in the unknown!
i was told ariund 2 week ago that id failed a mystery shopper parcel - I don’t recall this parcel, but from what i have been shown/told i have posted it and from the mystery shopper feedback i have just added a DOB, again, i can’t recall this, i normally age verify and follow all the correct delivery procedures, so i don’t know what’s happened here.
I haven’t had my interview at work yet, but i’m wondering if anyone has dealt with this before and what the outcome was? i am getting barely any information and the stress is sending me crazy. I have been told it could take weeks/months to find out what will happen next, my manager and union have said they’ve not came across this before so cannot advise me. i’m not able to deliver parcels at the moment or do collections or anything with a PDA.
any advice is appreciated

you shouldn't be able to recall any mystery shoppers item, that defeats the object,
we had a briefing not too long ago that if you happen to stumble across a mystery shoppers ID then you must inform a manager at once who it is.
I wouldn't worry too much, obviously something they've said wasn't quite right in the delivery,
they'll just tell you to follow the correct procedure on age varifations in future, challenge 25

[nicholaxo]

hi, so feedback had came from head office to my manager that i’d failed a mystery shopper by not age verifying and just scanning and posting, it’s frustrating as i can’t remember it, i’m none stop thinking wondering what i was doing!! but i’m getting no where with what the possible outcome will be, ive now heard apparently they just sack you, but the wait time is looking at weeks/months to get through the process

[nicholaxo]

Who told you that you'd not done it properly? Your manager?

hi, yes, so he received a email from high up making him aware of it and he pulled me in the office to make me aware of it, the email included information from the mystery shopper, such as address, what the item was, the feedback from them saying i’d just posted the item and hadn’t knocked for age verification

[theargyspy]

Who told you that you'd not done it properly? Your manager?

hi, yes, so he received a email from high up making him aware of it and he pulled me in the office to make me aware of it, the email included information from the mystery shopper, such as address, what the item was, the feedback from them saying i’d just posted the item and hadn’t knocked for age verification

This all sounds a bit iffy to me, If you had done this and Head Office had sent your manager an email with information as you state, address, item etc. Surely the address would have been redacted as not doing so the 'Mystery Shopper' has effectively outed themselves, or Head office has, so your manager, and you now know who the Mystery Shopper is and their address, If Head Office are prepared to throw the mystery Shopper under the bus (because the Mystery Shopper isn't a Mystery any more) and it's your login on your signed out PDA and there is a year of birth inputted onto the PDA then your in trouble if you hadn't knocked and asked for year of birth, but as you can't remember the item at all it would be interesting if the year of birth that was inputted by you was in fact the actual year of birth of the Mystery Shopper, and the PDA shows your location at the house in question, then the Mystery Shopper needs sacking. In which case my defence would be that you can't remember doing it, who's to say another family member didn't answer the door, over the age of 25 and give their date of birth. As for what the 'Punishment' might be? from what you posted your in the union so hopefully you have a good rep but this is new stuff! If your correct that you "i normally age verify and follow all the correct delivery procedures" I would stick to your guns and say you can't remember. Good Luck and keep us posted

[tramssirhc]

You either did it or you didn't. There's no ambiguity. This doesn't need to drag on and on. If you did it you get punished. If you didn't you carry on as normal. Ask the employer to either deal with it and punish you or to tell you there's no case to answer. It's not a beyond reasonable doubt situation. It's reasonable belief. Simply, if you were logged onto to your device, you scanned it, your gps'd at the location then it happened. If it not it didn't.

[yellowbelly]

Age verification are always tracked aren't they, so should always require a photo.

I would have thought your manager would have been able to pull up the image even without the tracking number. Our managers have, in the past, pulled up PDA delivery data for a single item even without a tracking number if they know the who, approximate time and location.

Mind you with the amount of Shein s**te packages that come through without 'Age verification' on the tracking label but do come up with
age verification when scanned there's something wrong with either their labelling or the PDA data.

[Mr Rush]

Mind you with the amount of Shein s**te packages that come through without 'Age verification' on the tracking label but do come up with
age verification when scanned there's something wrong with either their labelling or the PDA data.

Supposedly there's a glitch (I'm shocked) that fails to bring up the Age Verification process for some AV items. We've been told to follow the AV procedure if the item is labelled as such even if the PDA does not prompt for it. I guess that means EPOD card for a signature and confirmation of their DOB.

[yellowbelly]

Mind you with the amount of Shein s**te packages that come through without 'Age verification' on the tracking label but do come up with
age verification when scanned there's something wrong with either their labelling or the PDA data.

Supposedly there's a glitch (I'm shocked) that fails to bring up the Age Verification process for some AV items. We've been told to follow the AV procedure if the item is labelled as such even if the PDA does not prompt for it. I guess that means EPOD card for a signature and confirmation of their DOB.

So there's possibly a glitch both ways then? Some AV labelled items don't come up with the AV process on the PDA and conversely items that are not labelled AV items do!! Only in RM......

[sorefeet17]

A few weeks ago at our office none of the age verification parcels were coming up as such, they were just showing as normal tracked, this went on for a week or more.
There's no way to alter the what the scanner tells you, and if you miss the age ver on the parcel, then you wouldn't even know it was one, possible this could off happened to you? the secret customer wouldn't know about the system glitch and being RM the head office bod wouldn't know either.

[TopperGas]

Assuming "item was just posted" means it was put through a letterbox rather left in a porch etc thwn that seems odd in itself for an AV item, as they are usually alcohol or large packages, unless the mystery shopper ordered just one small bladed item?

Perhaps the manager is just trying to put the frighteners on the OP?

[yellowbelly]

Furthermore don't all AV items require a signature too? So the implication from the allegation is that an 'incorrect' signature was entered as well as birth year. There would (or should) be a doorstep photo too.

If I'd had a brain fart and decided to shove an age verification through a door for whatever reason I'd definitely remember entering an unknown birth year and squiggling a signature, whilst thinking 'I hope I don't get fizzed for this' or if I'd just shoved it through accidentally without checking the PDA prompts going 'B**lox' and be knocking on the door.

The local manager should investigate this more - this could have been one of the glitches in the system where AV items didn't come up with the correct PDA prompts.

[Mr Rush]

Something I've always wondered is how the PDA knows what items require a signature (or which internationals need a photo).

It can't be querying a remote database because that would eat endless cellular bandwidth and would add blatantly obvious latency, and also with the original Intermec PDAs you couldn't see out the day on one battery if you left it connected the whole time and yet it functioned the same. So it must be encoded into the 1D barcode. The problem must then lie in software failing to extract the AV flags. I'm sure, though, RM definitely didn't get it coded for pennies in the third world.

[funkflex55]

A failed mystery shopper in our office would lead to suspension and probably a disciplinary hearing. The manager actually hates all the posties and this would be a perfect excuse to try and get rid of one.