The idea of earning money from survey sites and market research is really appealing.
What's not to love about getting asked a few questions and being paid to give answers?
We know companies need to run focus groups. We know they need to test new products, new services, and new ideas like advertisements. As potential customers, our opinion matters.
But like anything else great in this world, there are thieves and scammers lurking around the corner ready to take advantage of unsuspecting people.
Ten years ago, most survey companies were clearly scams. Market research companies just weren't looking online to pad their survey pools. Nowadays, many market research companies are using the internet to get more responses. The legitimate companies are drowning out the scams, but the scams still exist. And the scammers now have models to copy so they look like legit companies!
The end result is that it's becoming increasingly hard to tell the difference between a legitimate opportunity and a scam.
Today, we're going to teach you how to tell the difference.
Table of Contents
What's a scam?
There are two types of scammy survey sites:
- Sites that just pitch you other products and services.
- Sites that make you pay to get surveys.
They lure you in with the promise of untold riches through market research but bait and switch it on you. In the first case, they make money off you when you sign up for other products or serices. In the second case, they get you to pay them.
The ones that make you pay to join are similar to the old “work at home” scams. Work at home scams are simple, the promise of “work” if you buy their “startup” package. Replace “work” with surveys and “startup” with membership fees and you have an old scam with a new facade.
In both cases, the companies will also take advantage of the juicy personal information you may have provided. To give you an idea of what happens, I defer to Troy Hunt, a security professional I last mentioned in “Why I Have a Secret Classified Email Address;” his post on how your data is used by giveaway sites (think of those “win a free iPad!” email submission sites) is must-read.
How the Legitimate Survey Business Works
Before we get into how to determine if a survey opportunity is a scam, we need to understand how the legitimate market research business works.
A big well-known company (like a brand name consumer goods company) needs to do some market research or run a focus group. Both are expensive to do in person, as focus groups often pay $100+ for 60-90 minutes of work to a participant. You can only imagine how much the research company adds to the bill. Online surveys are much cheaper!
So those big companies hire a market research company to send out online surveys to folks with the right demographic target (age, income, marital status, geographic region, etc.). You have survey companies with enough business to run their own (Ipsos i-Say USA, etc.) and you have smaller companies who are there to fill in the gaps.
These second tier companies are often the ones you see listed all over the internet.
In some cases, the survey company only does surveys. These purists are often the closest to the market research companies. In others, there are a lot of other “point earning” activities you can do like “read email” or “watch videos” or “play games.” (more on this later)
I've been doing surveys for about six months from a variety of vetted companies and you start seeing the same names – Qualtrics, Samplicio.us (Federated Sample) – those are the main guys.
The tough part about market research is that it's an unpredictable business. It's unpredictable for the survey taker (you) because companies won't always want your opinion.
The result is that you get surveys irregularly but you earn a little cash along the way.
You won't feed your family with surveys but it can earn you a little extra to help pay bills and get further ahead financially.
How the Scam Survey Business Works
The problem is that scam survey companies will prey on that trickle of money and suggest that they can send you a flood. They can't. They make those promises so you'll sign up.
Then what happens? They try to make money off you directly, rather than make money from market research companies by having you respond to surveys.
How do they make money off you? They send you offers, like entries into sweepstakes (enter your zip code and email for a chance to win a $500 Apples iTunes gift card!) or other scammier survey sites.
They'll send you offers of free samples or some other bribe to get you to enter in an email. All the while, earning about $1-3 per sign up (that's about the going rate for a double opt in email address).
The distinct difference between the two is that scam survey companies will often inundate you with offers immediately upon signup and without any suggestion that you'll get anything out of it. Legitimate companies set it up like a cashback or pointback scenario, sign up for this offer and get 500 points or $5, thus cutting you in on the commission they earn. You still need to do your research though, which I'll get into shortly.
For a scam survey business, you are the product.
Beware Impersonators
Recently, I've been asked by many readers if Company X or Company Y is legitimate.
In many of those cases, the name of the company was legitimate. The person they were talking to or emailing with was not.
The scammer was pretending to be working at a legitimate survey company!
Identifying this is very hard but if you're asking questions, that's a good thing. Call the company and find out if that person is real and works for them. I discovered this type of scam after a reader, Casey, asked me about Taylor Research company in the comments below.
Someone pretending to be from Taylor emailed him from a GMail account, which set off alarms for Casey (good!). When he called Taylor Research, who is very real and respected, he discovered that everything was real except the person who contacted him and the number he was supposed to call. He was the 3rd person to report it and the police are investigating.
Trust your gut!
Who Can You Trust? (besides your gut)
It's hard to know who to trust before you sign up but I always look at the Better Business Bureau and see what their rating is, whether they have complaints, and what those complaints are about. One of the more popular sites, Swagbucks, has an A+ and 114 closed complaints in the last 3 years. 114 sounds like a lot but when you consider how many members it has and the time frame, ~3 a month is a low number.
Here are five survey companies I've signed up for and can confirm don't have any of the flags listed below.
Then start looking for these red flags:
- Never pay to join – Huge red flag, you should never be paying to join… legitimate companies spend a lot of money building their rosters because the more people they have, the more likely they can fill in those demographic gaps. They would never ask you to pay to join.
- Never give social security number, credit card information, or full address – There's really no need for any of that information. The most a company should ask for is general demographic information (age, sex, zip code, income, family, etc.), they don't need your full address and certainly not your social security number.
- If they force you to go through promotional offers before they show you anything – Some companies have added these other pieces, like watching movies and playing games, to the core survey offering. The reality is they only get so many surveys so to keep you an active member, they offer these others pieces. They don't make you wade through offers to get to surveys.
- Look for a privacy policy – Legitimate companies will always have a privacy policy and it will be prominently linked on their site, often in the footer. If it's hard to find, I'd move on.
- They email you from an anonymous account – A legitimate company won't be emailing you from a @Gmail.com or @Yahoo.com or some other free email service. They will have their own business website with their own email address, like @wallethacks.com.
- Never take a big payment of any kind where you have to pay some of it back – A common scam is for someone to send you a big check and have you send them something back of value, either money or an expensive product. It's known as advance fee fraud and the check will bounce (after spending a few days looking like it's successfully cashed) after a few days, once you've already sent back money or items. Never do this.
- If it sounds too good… – The language companies use can tell you a lot about them. Scams will promise you hundreds or thousands of dollars a month or extremely high payouts on surveys. Your internal BS detector is very good, if you sense something is off then walk away.
Here's a survey site I find suspicious…
Here's the homepage… at first, nothing looks suspicious about this company.
When you click on Get Started, the green box is replaced with a “letter” from “Patricia Johnson” with a form at the bottom for name and email. When you enter your name and email, you are sent to this screen where you watch a short video.
The video explains how “Kevin” makes hundreds or thousands of dollars making money sharing his opinion, from the comfort of his own home. The video explains how market research works, like I did in the paragraph above, and is completely accurate. The only complaint I have about the video is that it oversells how much these surveys pay and how much you can earn.
Watch long enough… and then this appears:
And that, my friends, is why I would never sign up for this site. They want you to pay for membership. Biggest red flag of them all.
The tricky part is that it's hard to know before you sign up! You might be tempted, after putting in your information and watching a video, to give it a try. What's the worst that can happen right?
Will you earn hundreds and thousands of dollars? Maybe.
Is it worth it? Maybe.
Would it shock you to know that this company is willing to pay a $26 commission for each person that signs up? 🙂
Final quick tips…
Here are some other ideas that can help:
- Always use a separate “survey only” email address – Some companies pay you to “read email” (which is code for they'll email you advertisements) and it can be a lot of email. Plus, if you end up accidentally signing up for a scam, you doing poison your regular email address.
- Set up a junk “tester” email address – If you are really worried, you can always set up a junk mail only “tester” email address (I have a gmail account I never check, specifically for this) to run through the sign up process once, just to make sure. Sometimes you can get away with using a temporary disposable email, like the ones offered through Guerrilla Mail, but sometimes sites will not allow you to sign up with a disposable email address.
- Check the BBB – If the name is extremely generic with lots of dashes, it'll be hard to find their company name. This itself is a bit of a red flag because most of the legitimate companies have real names to help with the branding. The ones with generic words don't want to stand out! For legitimate companies, it should be easy to find them on the Better Business Bureau.
- Check if they are affiliated with CASRO – The CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organizations) is the leading market and survey research organization.
If you find a survey company and aren't really sure whether they're legit, you can always email me and I can take a look. I can even be your guinea pig and sign up first. 🙂
Just send me an email with the name of the company and I'll take a peek.
List of Legit Survey Sites
This list includes the legitimate survey sites I know. If the company you're wondering about is on this list, you can be reasonably assured they're legitimate at the time of this writing. If they aren't on the list, they could still be legitimate just smaller (so I don't know about them). I just can't say either way. All these companies are on my list of ways to make money.
- Ipsos i-Say USA Our Most Popular!
- Swagbucks Very Popular!
- InboxDollars
- MySurvey
- Harris Poll Online
- Vindale Research
- Pinecone Research
- E-Poll Market Research
- ProOpinion
- Opinion Outpost
- VIP Voice
- Toluna
- Global Test Market
- Valued Opinions
- Point Club Surveys
- YouGov
- Mintvine
- SurveyJunkie
- EarningStation
- OpinionPLUS
- MindsPay
- Panda Research
If you want to share an experience (good or bad) you had with a market research company, let us know in the comments.
Using a separate email account is key in my opinion. It seems like anything you want to sign up for these days will immediately add you to some type of email list. Some websites even send out multiple emails per day…on purpose! My extra email, which I use to sign up for deals, has thousands and thousands of spam and promotional emails at any given time.
Yeah definitely, I think a segregated email is crucial… the market research companies do send a lot of email so I like to use my junk email address. 🙂
Great info, Jim. I’m always hesitant about surveys because I’m not sure which ones are legit. So thanks for covering this!
There are a lot of crappy sites but also a lot of good ones, fortunately the bad ones look a certain way, act a certain way. 🙂
my husband and I recently received a letter in the mail addressed to him from America Survey Research giving us both user names to go the the web address listed and complete a survey. if we do so we will receive $2. and responding also makes up eligible got follow up surveys each will earn me $2 or more per survey. at the bottom it states after completing the survey I can expect to receive CASH in the mail within 1-2 weeks. this doesn’t seem legit. do people really mail cash?
thanks
Jill
I have been mailed cash before but I’ve never heard of “America Survey Research,” have you googled their name and address to find out any more information about them?
yes and I don’t find any hits on with the website given.
the first hit is CASRO
the website given is americansurveyresearch.org
Yeah, thanks so much for your advice. Can u please send me some of the survey sites that are legit? I need it badly. Thank you.
I list a few on this page – https://wallethacks.com/best-market-research-survey-companies/
Hi. I am also wondering about American Survey Research (but their website supposedly is americanresearchsurvey.org; I say supposedly, because there’s not much to see when you go there).
I’ve actually been sent money by this outfit. For their first survey, they sent me $2 cash, and for the second one, which was longer, they sent me $5 cash. It’s real money, but now I’m wondering if I’m being set up for something on down the line — or if I inadvertently gave them info I shouldn’t have.
The reason I wonder, in addition to their generic sounding name and virtually empty website, is that the surveys didn’t amount to much, just a few demographic questions and a couple of political ones (“How likely are you to vote?”; “Who are you most likely to vote for?”). I’ve spent a lot more time filling out surveys that I did for free!
I don’t think I gave up any essential info, such as my social security number (If I did, I’d be kicking myself). But they did need my mailing address to send me my cash.
Anyway, this could be legit, and I don’t want to sound ungrateful for the 7 bucks I got, but now they’re saying they may send me more emails to invite me to participate in other surveys for cash. It’s not a ton of money, but am I really even that valuable to them, given what that their surveys seemed rather superficial to me?
I think your skepticism is completely fair but I can’t find much information about them either. I would just tread very carefully. Money is great but it is only $7 (don’t feel like you are being ungrateful or grateful, you worked for that money if even if it doesn’t seem like you did) so please be careful.
This is a follow-up to my previous message/question about this.
The websites americanresarchsurvey.org and americansurveyresearch.org apparently were created in August of this year, with an expiration of just one year from now. Their domain ownership and location info are hidden. I wish I had kept the envelopes I received the money in, to see I could tell where they were mailed from.
I’m wondering if the money is a way to build trust, and later they will ask me to send *them* money for something, or will ask for bank account/credit card info, etc. If so, they’ll get nothing from me. But I do worry a little that by going this far with them (taking two surveys and having them send me some cash already), I’ve inadvertently opened myself to problems.
I don’t have much information about them so I don’t know for sure, but it could be a way to build trust but as long as you don’t give too much information (no way you need to give bank account or cc info), do not send them money, and only accept cash – you should be OK.
You can always ignore future contact.
Thank you. I think I’ll ignore their future invites, just to be on the safe side. The almost complete absence of a web presence or record of anything about them makes me suspicious.
I’m back with a bit more follow-up on this company. I ignored two or three more of their solicitations to participate in further surveys, then I didn’t hear from them anymore until two or three weeks ago. This time, their website had a bit more information, including pictures and email addresses of their two researchers (maybe it’s just a tiny but legitimate start-up). This at least made it feel more real than it did before.
Anyway, they invited me to participate in another survey for $5 cash, so I did it. It was a pretty simple and quick political opinion survey, but the questions were worded in push-poll style (they seemed to be trying to get a particular response on the issue of health care). I’m still waiting on the $5, but’s only been a couple of weeks.
Right away they asked me to participate in *another* survey for $5. I started to do it, but abandoned it part-way through because all the questions were about political issues in Washington state and I don’t live in Washington state. I didn’t think it would be right to say if I would support a ballot measure that I know nothing about, in a state where I don’t live!
So now I do feel a little better about these folks. So far they still haven’t tried to get any information from me that I wouldn’t want to be giving out. I don’t think they’re out to scam me. If it’s push-polling they’re doing that might be a little questionable, and they could stand to improve their demographic targeting, but that’s about it.
Frederick, I just got one from American Survey Research (americanresearchsurvey.com) and I saved the envelope. Not much on it but it was mailed from 95813 (SACRAMENTO) Presorted Standard U.S. Postage Paid.
I took it and it seemed legit.
Mine was a political research question about an extremely volatile issue. I’m unwilling to share my opinion to be used in a political argument even if they gave me $2,000 unless I knew who was behind the survey and how the information was going to be used.
mine was mailed from PO Box 24142, Brooklyn, NY 11202 if that helps. I was worried myself but this site made me feel much better.
I can’t find that site anywhere. They do have FB page.
Is AIM research, assistance in marketing, in Hackensack NJ legit? I received an email from them to participate in a focus group. I found a few comments about their staff but that was all I could find.
Thanks,
Marge W.
I only took a brief look and they appeared legitimate to me. I found some Yelp reviews (not exactly the best place for this type of stuff) that indicated they do focus groups and a Better Business Bureau listing for their Ohio office (http://www.bbb.org/centralohio/business-reviews/market-research-and-analysis/assistance-in-marketing-in-columbus-oh-70011390) with an A+ rating. Personally, I would trust it for a focus group.
Thank you so much ! Glad I found your article. If I participate, it’s good to know going in what is normal for them to ask you and what never to provide.
Thanks again,
Marge W.
Glad it helped!
Have you heard of attest market research..someone sent us a message through LinkedIn w an offer to do some market research..money is sent to us upfront and we go buy a product and give them feedback on product knowledge etc..sounds too good to be true.
It sounds reasonable but without more information it’s hard to say – how well do you trust the person who sent the message? How will they send money? etc. You need more information.
Jen,
Do you accept the offer w Attest? I received the same email so I am wondering if it is legit. Thanks.
Hi Jim
Is allied market research a scam?
Thanks
I’ve never used them so I don’t know.
I came to this site to check if allied market research is a scam, too. I signed up as a mystery shopper with them. The check they sent to me bounced. I was just lucky that I had not sent pictures of the iTunes cards they asked me to buy to them. Once I was notified at my bank that the account that the check was issued from had been closed, I emailed allied market research to find out what was going on. I never heard back from them.
It sounds like you were taken advantage of.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for the great write-up. I recently received an e-mail from Taylor Research (www.taylorresearch.com), Inc. in which they offer you compensation for being a Research Analyst. Upon visiting their website and clicking that you’d like to become a ‘market research participant’, it takes you to a new site (www.youropinioncounts.me) where you can register to be a part of 3 different types of panels (consumer, executive or medical) and be paid for various assignments (reviewing products, providing expertise via your profession, etc).
Have you had any experience with Taylor Research or Your Opinion Counts or know anything about them?
Initial red flags: initial email sent from a gmail account, request for address.
BBB has them listed as a registered company for many years with no complaints. Other online review sources are a mixed bag, but nothing referencing any sort of fraudulent activity (waste of time, etc.. that kind of poor review, when poor).
Thanks for your opinion.
I would call Taylor Research from the number on their website and ask them if this is how they recruit – using a gmail account sounds suspicious to me. That said, all the stuff matches (www.youropinioncounts.me is run by Taylor Research) so I feel like you, it’s 50/50.
My guess is the biggest fear is that someone is pretending to be them.
You were correct in someone pretending to be them. While a majority of the information in the e-mail was accurate, including the good-standing and very legitimate Taylor Research company – the email and phone provided in this e-mail were the fraudulent components. However if one were to register through the website provided (which was a link to the true and real Taylor Research firm), one would simply be denied as a participant unless they happened to live in San Diego where the particular research firm is based.
After calling Taylor Research I was informed that police have just started to investigate more, as I was the 3rd person to call with this report.
Thanks for your advice. 🙂
Whew! I thought that might be the case – glad the police are on the case.
Taylor Research looked very real but using a Gmail account to contact you seemed fishy. 🙂
And thank you for following up and taking the time to share the conclusion.
Good day.
I am currently doing surveys for partsurvey.com and I have no way of telling if they are legit or not. Could you please assist me.
I did a quick search online… doesn’t look good.
Doesn’t look good how? Becuase from what I have read most people have cashed out, but have not waited the full 14 WORKDAYS, to get their money before complaining that they haven’t received it. I am waiting for someone who has done the work, waited all the business days and then get their review. I need an honest, detailed review from someone who has really dove into the program. Thanks.
Right, I agree with your premise and all I was saying was that I did a quick search online and it doesn’t look good. I haven’t used it myself.
In more research on my own, they are definitely a scam. No way of cancelling your account, no way of changing/editing your payout information, they do not respond to their contact us inquiries, legit owners cannot be found. Their scam is when you enter your Payza or PayPal information they use that information to attempt to get into your PayPal and Payza accounts to get your bank info. They are betting on most people using the same password, which a lot of people do. Since they already have your Paypal name because you entered it on email. Can we all agree scams totally, I was totally willing to put the work in. High payouts (instant red light) for every survey for little work and of course referral so you find more people for them (caution light).
Thanks for doing additional digging!
Do you have any information about a company Worthsend Survey WM? I recently received a letter from this company which provides assignments where you would visit an assigned department store and write a survey about your experience. They also included a check for your expenses and partial for your pay, that must be cashed before doing the assignments. Have you heard anything about this company?
I haven’t but there are a lot of companies out there. Honestly, if a company reached out to me I’d be suspicious. How did they get my information?
I’d more likely start with big name mystery shopping companies (https://wallethacks.com/i-need-money-websites-to-earn-extra-money/#mysteryshop) and work with them first.
I’ve recently fallen victim to one of those work from home scam. this person contacted me telling me he ‘filled a position’ for a job I was looking for using the exact job title I applied for on the ziprecruiter app. Then offered me a job as his “personal assistant” I was sent money, told to send money to someone to buy something, and the check bounced. Now I owe my bank.
I’m scared that they are using job searching apps like ZipRecruiter to get peoples information.
what should I do now, because another person contacted me acting like they from the app too, they mentioned it in their email to me, but they are asking me to do close to the same thing. so I did not write them back.
Scammers will use any resource they can to separate us from our money. If it’s a popular resource, it’ll eventually become a target. I’m sorry you had to deal with something like that. 🙁
I would not write that person back either.
Hi Jim, I have a question. I have been completing surveys for a Company that I believe to be legitimate. Most surveys will solicit my age and that’s acceptable to me because a surveyor may be looking for a targeted age group to analyze. But, why would they then ask for the exact date and year of your birth, redundant. By the way, most surveys allow you to opt out on certain queries, not this last one, you are stopped dead in your track. Any thoughts on this? Thanks
That’s a good question — sometimes they do this to make sure you’re paying attention and not just answering questions randomly. Sometimes they use it to confirm it’s you, so the date has to match what you told them when you signed up. If you are concerned, always use January 1st, XXXX where XXXX is your actual birth year. This way they get the correct demographic information but do know your actual birthday. (fwiw, that’s what I do, except I use my actual birth month)
Please let me know what you know about UTellUs.
I don’t know much about them either but they are affiliated with Precision Opinion, a pretty large data collection firm.
Hi Jim! Just came across SmarterPennies.com
Any information on this company? Thanks in advance!
I don’t know much about them other than they appear to be relatively small (under 1000 likes on their Facebook page) and they share the exact same address as Leverage Funding, which does check cashing (according to a Yelp listing).
You are fantastic! I’m disabled and try to fill my time and make a few bucks for food doing a few of these surveys. I was looking for a product testing site but sorting out what’s legit and what isn’t seems to have exhausted me! I appreciate your page and time thank you!
I was contacted by a company wanting to do medical research via email. Then I responded and was contacted by phone. I was given the website…..Probe Market. Does anyone have information? I see they’re not part of the BBB. Unfortunately I gave my full address and phone number.
Where were they based out of? I see a Probe Market Research company in New York.
Dear Shell,
We are legitimate and will not share any personal information (including your name, telephone and mailing address) with anyone. We only collected your last name & address so that we could mail you your check after the study, otherwise we generally do not collect that information.
Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns.
Lynette Eberhart
President
Probe Research
212-922-9777
http://www.probemarket.com
I accepted an offer to be a mystery shopper through a company named Market Research Opinions and the acceptance email came from a Karen Lane. They sent me an email today saying that a check sent by Priority Mail from the USPS in the amount of $1,8710 will be sent to me by the next business day. I am instructed after depositing the check to keep $350 as services rendered and to use $1,500 to purchase three iTunes gift cards and observe the atmosphere of the process of this transaction. Also, I am instructed to send them a copy of the bar code serial numbers of the iTunes cards purchased, but not to use them until I am instructed. I am having misgivings about this
There’s a very good chance, knowing nothing about that company or the people you’re talking to (if they even are from that company), that it’s a scam. It’ll come as a “cashier’s check” (in quotes because it’s a fake check) – your misgivings are correct. No legitimate business I know about operates in that way.
I have a similar experience. A friend sent me a LinkedIn message about an opening for a secret shopper postition with a company called Total Research. They just asked for my name, phone number and email. I filled the little section out and got a response within the next few days form a lady named Karen Lane. They had accepted me and were going to send me a bank check for $1870.30 with the same pretense, keep $350 for yourself and buy 3 $500 Walmart gift cards. I received this check today. I am to observe the associate tending to me and relay my observations. Scratch off to reveal the code on the backs of the giftcards and send them pictures of the front and back of each one. The check has the names: Thomas A Bayers and Patricia E Bayers. The names on the envelope sending the check are Lionel Gabi and Timothy Brooks. The contact info for Karen Lane is [email protected]. I have the same hesitancy as everyone else does. I just thought this would be a good opportunity but the check scares me. Lol.. I couldn’t find anything about these people or the company. I won’t be cashing the check. What do you think of all this?
With such limited information I don’t want to jump to conclusions but I would not do this. It looks exactly like these same scams.
Thank you so very much!! Appreciate your help!!
Wow, I just ran across the same scam and the same lady Karen Lane. This is totally a scam, glad I did my research.
Now her email is [email protected].
I’m glad we were able to help you avoid getting fleeced!
Hi Jim,
I’m wondering about American Consumer Opinion at https://www.acop.com/ and they say they’re operated by Decision Analyst, Inc.
Thanks!
They seem to be a legitimate company but there are a lot of negative reviews on BBB (there always tends to be a skew towards negative on reporting sites like this). I’ve never used them so I don’t know for certain how good they are.
I signed up with MySurvey. At first all was good, then they asked me to participate in a challenge thing, where I had to answer questions and video cooking meat. I had to download an app. This was weeks ago. I was supposed to be rewarded just for getting accepted, then more points when the challenge was completed. No sign of either. Now that I have complained, every long survey I take, after I click the Submit button, it comes up with the message that an error has happened. I think they are using my survey input, but not giving me the points. I keep getting fobbed off if I make contact via email…….
Does anyone have any experience with Survey Club? https://www.surveyclub.com/create-account
They seem legitimate, but were not on the list of good sites to take survey’s with on this article, so I am wondering what other’s experience has been with them?
I haven’t heard of them before but the BBB rates them a C+, which is not good. They’ve been around for a while, nearly 10 years, and I’m not sure why they get a C+ since they’ve only had one complaint. (though they probably didn’t respond to it)
My feeling is that I’d probably pass on it. This isn’t based on anything specific, just gut feel. Most of the survey companies have pretty good reputations with BBB and you can keep yourself pretty busy with just those.
Do you know anything about Knowledge Panel or OpinionHire surveys They are not on your legit list. Thanks
I’ve never heard for them before.
Just received a letter from UTellUs inviting me to join a scientific research panel. A personal access number was provided to be used on their website in order to sign up for the panel. They write, in bold letters, that “no one at UTellUs will ever try to sell you anything or give your personal information to an outside organization.” $2 were enclosed in this letter, for me to keep. They say that I could “receive U-Points” that I could redeem for electronic gift cards or physical checks, and that I would get 500 U-Points for completing my first survey. The letter provides a toll free information number along with the website address. The letter is signed by James T. Mellick, President – UTellUs Panel.
Problem is, at the bottom in fine print, it says that UTellUs us managed under the supervision of Precision Opinion. When I checked BBB for Precision Opinion, the BBB gives it an “F” rating. Do you have any info on UTellUs?
I don’t but when I did some basic research they seem OK but the F is concerning.
If you dig into the complaints & reviews though, there’s more to the story. The only review was from an employee who had trouble getting confirmation of employment for their apartment.
The complaints are more indicative of what’s going on and for some it’s an issue of too many calls. For others, it’s about paying out rewards. It sounds like my worry about too many phone calls and hoops to jump through to get rewards. Is it worth it? Maybe, maybe not. There are other survey companies w/o these issues.
Thanks for the quick reply, Jim.
Yeah, I didn’t give too much weight to the one review. It was sort of rambling and didn’t make much sense to me. As far as the complaints, I couldn’t really understand why people were getting these non-stop phone calls. Was it because, when they signed up with Precision, they elected to have the phone as their way of contact for surveys? A few of the people said they had never heard of Precision when they started getting the phone calls.
What concerned me the most really were the complaints about getting the rewards. UTellUs states in the letter that the intrinsic reward of making an impact on the community outweighs the financial rewards. If I just want to express my opinion, I can do that on facebook. I am only interested in the financial rewards, and i daresay many others are as well.
I went to the UTellUs site, and it seemed okay, except for one thing. In the letter that they sent, they say U-Points can be redeemed for gift cards OR a physical check. However, it says nothing about physical checks on the website at all. Should I take this as a red flag of sorts?
Thanks again for your time, Jim.
Mintvine is a scam. I redeemed $10 and While waiting for it to process worked up another $15. All of my info was verified (PayPal) and I got a rejection. Tried customer support, Facebook, twitter, you name it. Needless to say this place is a complete scam I’ve got no response and basically just ripped me off. Do a google search on the latest reviews and you will see the same…just wished I had done that myself before doing all those surveys. I would like to add I abided by every rule & always answered honestly in surveys so there is absolutely no excuse.
That’s odd, I’ve gotten cashed out several times and never had a problem. What was the explanation?
Jim:
VERY helpful. The information and especially the “legit” survey co.’s.
Thank you!
Hi Jim —
Just got an email from Opinion Research LLC to participate in a “transportation” survey in exchange for a $10 Amazon gift card. Being curious, I researched them. They list a PO Box in Washington DC in zip code 20091. This is not a legitimate zipcode and they do not have a business license to operate in the District of Colombia. Moreover, they list (844) 458-2822 as their phone number. This is a toll-free prefix and, when I called the number, I found it was no longer working. Their email address has a “co” extension, instead of “com”, which indicates a British location.
Hope this helps.
It looks like you did your homework and probably don’t trust them. Based on what you shared with me, I wouldn’t do the survey.
Just got a packaged from Beta Research Corporation. The email address Charles used was [email protected]. Their website is http://www.betaresearch.com. He sends me 3 personal money orders that are signed by him and he wants me to get 3 $850 money orders and 10 stamp books. Seem very fishy to me. What do you guys think? He also wants me to text him when i deposit the money. Have any of you heard of this? Who do I contact to report?
Sounds like a fake check scam to me (https://wallethacks.com/mystery-shopping-work-at-home-fake-check-scams/) – report it to the way it was mailed to you. So if it was the post office, report it to them. They’ll get it to the proper authorities.
Rocky Smith, I just received a similar package from the same company, Beta Research. My package contained 3 money orders drawn on TCF National Bank for $995.75 each. An Assessment form was included and this was mailed to me by a Charles Alworth. Very FISHY!!!!
Mine was sent to me by Tony Howe, a check for $2999.95, instructing me to leave $300 for myself and go purchase 3 money orders from the post office for $875 then text a 484 area code number for further instructions. Fishy. So i emailed the real company and asked if they had a Tony Howe working there and that I was sent a very large check – they advised me its a Linked in Scam. The email he contacted me from is a gmail account.