Warning - Jon Brelig on rejecting spree (again)

Discussion in 'Requesters' started by Hi. It's me, Sep 5, 2012.

  1. Hi. It's me

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    Just letting you all know he's back in his one of his moods where he randomly rejects perfectly good work. No one's safe - so don't think you are the special one! :mad:


    Before you say "told you so" feel free to read below on mine & his long term relationship (just on Mturk, thank God. Can't imagine dealing with his moods in "real life). I'm writing the details mostly because I need to vent!


    I'd been on Mturk for months & had cleared about $1,400 before finding out about TurkOpticon. (How I managed without it, I do not know!)
    Brelig's hits aren't really my thing, but I'd estimate that I've done 25-45 of them prior to having TurkOpticon. (Only the short ones - the long ones aren't worth the time). He'd only rejected me once during all these months w/ the message "Receipt is not blurry" I gave him the benefit of the doubt there.

    Upon getting TurkOpticon, I read all the bad reviews. I thought they were a little harsh considering I'd only had 1 reject which maybe, just maybe, could have been my mistake anyway.

    I had not done any of his hits in quite some time, but about 2 wks ago I started doing some when there was nothing else available, but I made sure I kept an extra careful eye on my accuracy. I submitted at least 50. He was putting up some really short receipts, so it was actually worth it. No problems. He approved them all.

    Over the weekend, he was uploading short receipts like crazy. Still proceeding with caution, I did about 25 last week. He has now rejected 4 of them giving reasons like "Did not enter product info" Yes, I did.

    When you read the TurkOpticon reviews, you can see that he's obviously a moody guy who apparently has a history of going through phases where he rejects for no reason.

    After months of working for him, and well over 100 HITs completed, I guess I just happened to work for him on his good days until now.

    Lesson learned - won't work for him again. The 7 & 2 cent hits aren't worth the risk.
    Stay away from him!
     
  2. trueakitalover

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    He is an idiot cause he doesn't realize that all the typing we do cost's us time and money. He is just a basic moron. I have emailed him many times and he doesn't respond or anything like that. He has some serious issues. I got 3 rejections from him on the 3rd. He will be okay for a while and then goes on a spree. He used to pay 0.09 cents a HIT and Cheapened it on all of us. I think it's his time of the month again. Yes men get PMS also.
     
  3. trueakitalover

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    Sent them a copy of their TO reviews and all of us complaining. Guess what got a response from them this AM.
    I sent a reply back to them and lets see if they are serious this time. This is the second time I asked them to join us here we will see.


    I would like to talk to you and anyone else that does HIT work for us and explain why the work is being rejected. I know there are forums that HIT workers meet on, or we can make a group where we can meet and I can tell you why we are not so lenient with mistakes anymore

    Jon makes the HIT's. I and several other people check the HIT quality of the Amazon Turk workers.

    I am more than willing to discuss these issues and any others related to the HIT's our company posts with all that are interested.

    Please contact me with the details of a place we can meet to discuss these issues.

    We need and want good HIT workers and we want to make them as happy as we can. In return we expect a quality job.

    Best regards,

    Celeste
    InfoScout, Inc.
     
  4. trueakitalover

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    Here is the reply I sent to them! I don't have time to be cordial to a requester that has ignored every other communication I made with them last month and beyond.

    I am shocked that you are emailing me. Usually there is no communication between you and the workers, this is not good to have as a requester. We do have legit questions that go unanswered and you leave us to our own avail . Your directions are not very elaborate at all. Like I know one time I had written that days date and you rejected it. I asked you guy's hey if there is no date what do we do? This went totally unanswered. Not good on your part at all. You have to give clear and concise directions. Do you want the oz's included or is it okay to leave that off? Do you want to know if it is a 2L of Coke, do we have to put that. People want to know. Do you want the quanity of the items. The one that got us the best is the fact that we might duplicate the items because the picture of the receipt will have the same items in the second half of the picture and you will reject that. I mean you say transcribe it and then you reject it, then if we do include it you would reject it if we didn't include it. This is what we are talking about with clear and concise directions. If you put a child in Kindergarten and don't show them and explain what they are to do. What kind of school work do you think you would get? Scribble Scrabble and that is what you are getting cause the directions are extremely vague on your part. Until you fix the problems on your end you should not be rejecting for such vague directions at all. This is showing irresponsibility. We wouldn't have a leg to stand on, if we had very clear directions. When we don't have clear and concise directions you get what you get.


    I have sent you a forum before now and you never introduced yourself or anything. What you actually don't realize is that when we do the work it takes time and effort and we don't get paid at all for this type of work. If this was the real world we get paid even for mistakes that may or may not happen.

    A lot of the images we get are blurry, and you say that they aren't.

    The design of your HITS need to be way better than what they are. We need to be able to move the receipt up and down without having to scroll up and down the page to type the items, this is where a lot of your mistakes are coming from. The fact that you are asking people to say hey, remember the items but scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, and then scroll all the way back up to get the rest of the numbers especially if it is UPC numbers.

    The fact on blurry images I mean come on now, if it is years, and years and faded we try our best and we are looking at it and struggling. Then you tell us to enlarge the image. I have my screen maxed out for your HITS and if I have it like that and it's still blurry give me a break. We the workers are not going to sit here and try to strain our eyes to see some numbers that are so blurred that we can barely read them. I know if I am calling it blurry that they are. You must understand we are not going to strain our eyes for 0.07 and maybe get 0.01 of a bonus. This won't pay the eye doctor for the glasses we will need.

    The forum is at http://mturkforum.com/forum.php. With Jon Brelig we started a topic there about him already and how unfair he really is being.
     
  5. trueakitalover

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    This is the email from Jun 26th that went unanswered on his part. This requester doesn't respond that much at all.

    Jon,

    Most of my rejections are coming from receipts like this which do not include a UPC Code at all. I have 3 of them for this today: Can you please fix the error on your end.

    http://isc.pricescout.media.s3.amazonaws.com/receipts/ae596bc51bf64a0fb979c244ad2bd3e1.mobile.png This should be under the items, and not rejected cause of missing upc. Or have missing upc as an option.

    Also, add a comment box on the HITs would help so we can explain things to you and tell you why we are rejecting from our end. There is a lack of communication on your HITs and email's we send in a lot of us are quite upset about this. It just shows that a requester doesn't care about what is happening.
     
  6. trueakitalover

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    This is from June 15, 2012

    Dear Sir,

    You are rejecting work, I think there is a big problem on your end. I know that out of 7 rejections, I know I didn't miss a date on all of them. I will start copying what I am typing and sending to you in an email. I think that the date field is not working correctly. I am adding the dates and it is not registering on your end. Can You please review these. Please respond to questions, emails and such. You don't have a positive view on our rating system that the workers use, due to non communication from you. I suggest you take the date section off. It is causing a lot more problems than it is doing for the good of your experiment. Please review and test these first. You should be testing this stuff out first and foremost.

    His response was this.

    Turns out there was an issue on our backend causing some HITs to get rejected incorrectly. We have fixed this and apologies for the error.

    Jon
     
  7. trueakitalover

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    This is from June 18th, 2012. You can see how long I have been trying to communicate with him and trying to get him to improve the HITS for us. With no avail. Albertsons is one that doesn't have the UPC Codes most of the time. Hmm he doesn't tell us what we should do. I can put 00000000 and it will still get rejected which is very frustrating.

    Jon,

    In regards to some of your HITS you are asking for us to transcribe them into upc code format and they may not have upc code, but just the words, I have been saying that they are not full receipts, cause I can't transcribe them correctly. I have been having problems with rejection's from your end. Please do understand that we can only mark what options you have given us. If you added a feed back option where we can add why we rejected it, you would understand it better on your end.

    Please do consider, adding an option for can't transcribe because of receipt definition is not in upc code.

    Also, please take it from our point of view if we are saying it is too blurry it means it is to far and we aren't going to try to break our necks for .09 a HIT to transcribe it when it is not a decent size print to read. There were some receipts that were way out of focus yesterday. I have 7 rejections from you. If you could add where we can have it magnified in the HIT it helps us out way better than toggling between two screens.
     
  8. trueakitalover

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    Jon,

    I don't think my rejection for -10.43 was all in fact you can't enter in -10.43 it says enter as a number. I think you need to explain things better.

    Also, If I am doing the receipts and taking time to type and time from my other list of HITS I do getting a rejection for a missing UPC number of only 1. is not a fair rejection, The time to transcribe takes time and really the timing part is not fair. If you have one UPC wrong it should no t be a full rejection but possibly a deduction of 0.01 cents for a missing UPC number.
     
  9. trueakitalover

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    Since June 15th I have been telling him about issues. Now it is what September 06,2012 they decided to return an email how nice of them. Maybe they are realizing that their directions don't say how much has to be blurry in order for us to be able to mark it blurry. Let's see what they can say or do now. They need to see the real problems. Did I mention all the problems you are having often or semi-often?
     
  10. abrahamrohithroy

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    I usually won't enter the numbers with "-" sign on them, simply ignores them. Most of those are coupons and discounts which are less important, I guess. Even if I try to, it shows an error as you said.
     
  11. trueakitalover

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    Yes, but what I am saying it had a -10.43 as the total and he rejected it. I was like that was totally unfair to us as the workers.
     
  12. abrahamrohithroy

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    Don't give them a chance to reject. What I do in this case is, simply return the HIT. -10.43 is definitely not 10.43 and if you enter 10.43, they will reject for sure.

    You're right. There are many pitfalls in their webpage design and they have to improve it if they want more quality results.
     
  13. trueakitalover

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    But see I was like why would you have a site where you can't enter the -10.43 or the coupons also, they could track peoples spending better and see who uses the coupons and who doesn't if this is really for market research as they claim it to be. I told them they need to have clear and concise directions. I have a feeling that they will be putting a block on me if I don't stop with my emails to them.
     
  14. Scott

    Scott User

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    I have found the app the work comes from for the iPhone accidently (saw my own receipt after scanning one in while turking. (more later on this)

    I have also been rejected for not putting in coupons that are on receipts (Kroger does this with the product if the coupon is on your card and you scan it first) so you can't put in -#.##

    Also I have been rejected when (Kroger again) does "Product Name" 2 @ 2.50 ea - $5.00
    You cant put in $5.00 - It seems it wants it listed twice as $2.50

    As a USER of this app, I wouldn't want it twice I would want to see either 2 "Product Name" $5.00 or "Product Name 2 @ 2.50 ea" $5.00

    However as a USER it would be nice to have it say "You saved #.## on coupons" (But not the "fake" savings for using the Kroger Plus card) or just have it say "Coupon -$2.00 off Product Name"

    But on HIS (Jon's) point of view, I have seen the work not be consistent in inputting the data each time.
    Sometimes I see it say "4 Product name" and sometimes I see it listed 4 times. (Frozen Dinners)
     
  15. HITSupervisor

    HITSupervisor Member

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    HIT issues

    Dear Shannon,

    Yes I am here as I said I would be. But if you are the only one on this forum that does our HIT's, then I will leave. I need to address as many workers at one time as I can, I don't have the time for individual responses, as much as I would like to.

    So lets get to the point, lets not trash Jon anymore and lets discuss how to make the HITs better for you and the quality of HIT work better for us. Jon does not reject your work, I DO along with several other supervisors. Each supervisor has their own level of performance acceptance, same as each HIT worker has their level of quality for completing our HIT's, and yes you all complete them differently, I could often recognize your work when I was checking it more regularly than I do now.

    I want a calm, cool and collected discussion. I have alot of forum experience and I know how nasty forums can be, if that happens here, I'm gone and I won't come back.

    Celeste, aka HITSupervisor
    I will check back into this forum topic to see your questions and comments as I have time, I work well over 40 hours a week, so please be patient for a response. Thank you!


     
  16. trueakitalover

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    Let me say this Scott,

    I don't put the quanity ever I just put the product and 5.00 in the amount area. I think he needs to have better directions than put in the upc code and the price. He should say if he wants the quantity, the date and what to do if there is no date on the receipt. I was putting that day's receipt in the date box and he would reject it and then he would accept it. I leave it empty now if it is not there. Does he want the sub-total before saving's or after savings is another great question. Like I said they keep saying that they want to talk with us but I have given them this forum 2x now. I haven't seen them come here and address jack crap. Like I say Business is Business and B.S. is B.S. They don't respond to our emails ever when we do write in to them. I have asked questions many times and they just ignored it. They could do a magnifier in the site for us. There is another requester that has the magnifier for us can't remember their name right now. There is another requester that has where you can scroll the receipt as you go along so that you aren't sitting here scrolling up and down the page to remember the products and prices. That is really aggravating to do. Anyone agree or disagree?
     
  17. abrahamrohithroy

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    I strongly disagree with the magnifier and the scroll-as-you-go-along feature. Both will only increases the loading time of the page and makes the API more sluggish to work with. I normally save the receipt images and opens it alongside my browser window, in a way that the image occupies left-half of my screen while the typing field in the browser occupies the other half. Try this.
     
  18. Hi. It's me

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    Dear Celeste,
    It is nice to know that Jon is not the sole person rejecting these HITs. This would definitely explain his "moods". I'd suggest putting a company or group name as the requester rather than his name, as it doesn't really seem fair for his name and reputation to suffer if he's not responsible.


    I'll reply to your actual message later in the day/address concerns as I'm pressed for time at the moment.
     
  19. abrahamrohithroy

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    I had that gut feeling that Jon is not a single person. Now, HITSupervisor is saying Jon Brelig is nowhere there when they review the hits. lol :D

    We have to meet the quality standards of many reviewers and that too when there is no specific rules or instructions. Each reviewer has their own particular standard and if we get lucky, we'd end up not getting rejected...lol.
     
  20. HITSupervisor

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    As far as I know there are instructions for the HIT tasks, each task we have has a different set of instructions. We hope that they are read before you do a HIT. But it seems that some workers do not read them at all.

    We supervisors have a set of rules to follow to approve or reject a HIT. We give the benefit of the doubt to the worker as much as we are able. We leave feedback why we rejected, we give the "answer" (such as the correct total or store name) when we reject. But most workers do not seemingly read the feedback, imagine how frustrated we are when it comes back wrong again and we have to reject again after we took the time to give the right answer!

    Please try to remember that we also have a job to do and we are charged with maintaining a level of quality. When the quality level is not where it was or should be, we tend to get harder to bring it back up. There are countless workers doing these HIT tasks and many do substandard work that drags everything down. We cannot allow that to happen, we need to have the job done right, surely you can understand that.

    There are some workers that do a great job with a very poor receipt, but there are others that do nothing but say it is blurry when it is perfect, it is not English when it is, and so on.

    We supervisors sit in the middle between the HIT workers, the product users and the company bosses, talk about stress! We cannot please everyone, but we do try and we try to give the benefit of the doubt to the HIT workers, that is our first instruction when we are trained!

    Yes I may reject for a different level of blurriness than another supervisor, but that cannot be helped, we have seconds to look at your work and make a decision and sometimes we are not going to make the one you want or the same decision another supervisor would make. This is no different than all of you make either, what is blurry to one HIT worker is not to another. There is no easy solution to this for any of us.

    Blurriness is a major reject issue. Most of you may not know this, but blurry receipts in the first step that we approve, go onto another HIT worker that has to fully transcribe them. If we cannot check the next workers data, we tend to reject it right away now, we do not want incorrect data and wasted time for anyone.

    In the HIT task where we ask for the "banner" this is step one. When we ask in this HIT if the receipt "is legible", we mean the WHOLE receipt, not just the store name and total! This is what seems to be misunderstood. If the store name and total can be seen but the rest of the receipt is not able to be read, then the next HIT worker cannot do their job properly. This is why we now reject for blurry in the banner ID step, too many of the receipts going out were not being transcribed correctly in the next step.

    We let many things pass in the first few months that we do not allow now, totals must be exact because a new step in the processing was added, it is called duplicate check. The computer will look at the store name and the total and if they are the same they will send them to duplicate check because duplicates are not usable. This is why we now reject for any totals not being perfect. So please make sure your total is perfect now.

    In most of our HIT tasks we ask for a txn date, txn date does not mean the date you work on the receipt, it means the date on the receipt. txn = transaction

    If these things are not in the instructions, I will try to see that they are added.

    If we can make a sensible list of things the instructions should tell you, I will pass it to the people that make the HIT tasks.

    Celeste

     

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