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Oh, it may be much worse than you realize. PointClub/InnovateMR, has this service feature that allows clients many months to "review" and invalidate surveys. Meaning that the client is analyzing the selections and rejecting what they don't want to pay for. So even if you clear the trap questions, there is the likelihood of having the honestly completed survey "invalidated". I think this is an unethical practice, since the client is custom tailoring results by rejecting the data that doesn't suit them and introducing a bias. PointClub fields numerous financial surveys where this has been done. The panelist dashboard is designed to make to nearly impossible to detect when a survey has been "invalidated". This is done by providing an exceptionally clunky history tool that one must step through page-by-page, ten items at a time. The advance button to do this wanders, making it necessary to hunt and peck to select the button each time. This makes it very trying to advance through the history until the red Invalidated text is visible. Also, you can't directly download one's history and pull it into a spreadsheet. It has to be copied and pasted page by page, into a document to then strip the formatting that would confuse excel.

promise

Relationship.

Committed

felon

Branded went into decline about two years ago, after the site "enhancements" that seriously impacted yield potential. When undertaking surveys with branded/mintvine, you are actually dealing with at least two independent companies Branded and YourSurveys. I think many of the problems reported on survey rating sites stem from the partnership with "YourSurveys", which according the TOS & privacy statements for YourSurveys, is controlled by Points2shop. YourSurveys support is pedantic, hubris supported by flawed activity analysis tools, arrogant in that they can't make a mistake and quick to accuse the panelist of transgressions and have an account nixed by undisclosed "policies". Completing surveys through YourSurveys is like becoming enmeshed a Kafka novel, "The Trial". It has become so bad that I only do the polls now.

I started noticing these EDU surveys across all the panels I participate since the fall of 2017 and started archiving the IRB onboarding statement on the agreement page in the winter of 2017. I looked today and I have 1500+ of these saved pages. Most of these surveys are from Qualtrics, the surveys are often terribly written and written by amateurs with poor grasp of English. It appears qualtrics will field anything a school wants to pay for. In the last year there has been an up tick in international surveys from UK, Germany and Canada. Many are psychology experimenters. Of course since March the COVID-19 surveys seemed to have gone viral:)

I have a payment pending and then they are gone! I have had so many broken surveys(of course they malfunction when you are almost done ) and so many DQs/Quota filled messages AFTER finishing, its disgraceful. Of course, they do nothing but send a canned response full of grammatical translation errors. They cant even reward you the 12 points for their problems. No one needs to spend 6 months to make $25--no one.

Yeah, finally was able to cash in! All it took was lots of begging and threatening to complain to my state attorney general’s office. I shouldn’t have to resort to this just to get my points. It’s ridiculous, and my review at half a star stands until PointClub shows significant improvement!

Used to participate and earn at PineCone until they rejected my request to be reactivated because of no activity on my part for a few months. Praying PineCone will accept my registration and become forgiving and humane again.

I’m in a mood today for some reason. I think it’s the heat. Very hot and humid, and that kind of weather makes me irritable. Anyhoo, I thought I’d post some survey companies I think are good, some middle of the road, and some badder than bad. First the good: 1.) Prolific - This survey site is top notch in my opinion. I don’t get screened out of surveys through them. The pay for most of the surveys is excellent. There is a mix of very short surveys, some longer ones, and ones that may go an hour but pay really good. The minimum you need to cash out is only £5.00. They have PayPal, and they get it in your account usually within a day of cashing out. At this point, I make more money through them than any other survey site. Highly recommended. 2.) Paid Viewpoint - This one is a little different. It took me like a year to get my trait average up to 10,000, the maximum, and took some time to get to the $15.00 minimum to cash out. Once I did though, on average, I can cash out once or twice a month through them. I don’t get screened out of surveys with them. Their surveys are very brief, and don’t pay a lot, but some days I might do 6-8 surveys, and it adds up pretty quickly. Highly recommended. Noticing a theme here? JMHO, but I think the top sites are those that don’t screen you out and waste your time. I do not like having my time wasted. Okay, now middle of the road (runs hot and cold) 1.) PointClub - The longer you maintain a consecutive streak of logging in every day (and I do mean every day, including Christmas!), the more of a bonus you get on top of points earned. Now the max was 100% bonus. Those were the days. I usually cashed out twice a month. Cash out threshold is high, 25,000 points or $25.00. And the surveys you take will pend for weeks until they approve them and add the points to your account. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, they unfortunately reduced the maximum bonus to 10%. So I can usually cash out about once a month. I have contacted them many times when I think they are too slow in approving my points or getting my cash out to PayPal. They take 3-4 weeks to get it into PayPal now, and it’s starting to irritate me. And I have filed one complaint with BBB over them trying to rip me off after doing a $2.65 survey, and them screwing me out of the points. But they do respond, so I guess that’s better than nothing. If you keep at this every day, it should work out okay. Middle of the road. 2.) One Opinion - Now owned by Dynata, who we all know sucks. Cash out threshold is high, $25.00. I used to be able to cash out twice a month, but since the slow down, only once a month if I’m lucky. They have a stupid useless AI. If you are having issues, demand to the AI that they escalate things to a human. That usually gets results. They have quite a few surveys, and send quite a few emails. They run hot and cold. Before COVID-19, I usually made about $50/month. Middle of the road. 3.) Forthright - This used to be my #1 money maker. That ship sailed some time ago. No minimum cash out, and they get it to PayPal pretty quickly. They have a lot of surveys, but it’s difficult and takes time to get one that you can successfully complete. I don’t spend anywhere near the time I used to spend on this site. Most of the surveys are partner surveys. The range in pay is anywhere from $0.50 to $5.00 per survey. They run hot and cold. I used to make about $80-$100/month from them back in the day. Not so much anymore. 4.) Pinecone - It took me forever just to get accepted on this panel. Most of their surveys are $3.00 each. You can get screened out though. Not a lot of surveys. Best to login every day to check and see if you have a survey. For some reason, there is no longer PayPal. I just put the money on a Visa gift card and let it accumulate. They are having some issues with their site, so I’m not sure what’s going on there. 5.) YouGov - Started out slow, but now is going pretty well. I cash out once or twice a month, and put it toward Amazon. Good surveys, not too lengthy. I can’t remember what the cash out threshold is, but they go by points. I don’t think I’ve been screened out of any of their surveys. 6.) Tellwut - The good thing with this panel is that people on the panel can submit their own “mini surveys”, 1-5 questions, and you can get a few points for these. Not too many points, but if you login every day, they do add up. Otherwise, the usual panel surveys and stuff. I like to put this towards my Amazon too. I’ve created three mini surveys so far on there. You can also comment on the mini surveys. I like the social media aspect of it, like to read others comments. Now the bad/ugly/total time wasters/survey panels that suck: 1.) IPSOS - Avoid this one. I was on there less than two weeks, and suddenly they booted me out, said my demographics didn’t match what they were looking for. Why the heck did they even let me in to begin with? I hear they are notorious for just kicking people out for no good reason. And when I get them as a partner survey, I will X out. Total waste of time. Avoid. 2.) Opinion Outpost - I did a bunch of surveys through them, took a lot of time. After about six weeks, I had enough to cash out. So I tried to cash out. No dice. I emailed their “customer service”, total joke. They sent a canned response telling me to clear my cache and browser settings, blah blah blah. So I did that, tried again. Still wasn’t working. So I copied and pasted the error and emailed them again. This time I got something back with step by step instructions, which I followed to the letter. Got the same error. Tried it several times, tried it in different web browsers and everything else. I emailed them again, and they never got back to me. So I sent another email requesting that they remove me from the panel and stop sending me emails with surveys, as I wasn’t taking any more surveys until I got my money. Crickets. Tons of emails from them. I finally blocked them. Avoid. Terrible. 2.) JD Power - Total scam. Another partner survey that I take through other sites. After spending 20-30 minutes on a survey and then saying I completed the survey, got something saying their quota was full. Happened to me several times. Now if I see one of theirs, I will X out. Time waster. Avoid. 3.) Peanut Labs - Partner surveys through PointClub. I tried a few of these, and always the same thing. No points whatsoever, and would get kicked out after spending 20-30 minutes on a survey, or their quota was full. Total scam. Avoid. 4.) Review Robin - Partner site through Forthright. Total scam and ripoff. They will boot you out at the last minute, and their surveys are always longer than they say they are. They are notorious for saying the quota is full after you spent 20-30 minutes on what was supposed to be a five minute survey for $0.50. Avoid. Whew, glad I got that off my chest! I know, these opinions of mine are subjective, don’t mean squat. That’s all right though. Take these all with a grain of salt. Different panels work for different people.

That’s appalling that they did that to you! Just disgusting. I will stay away from them. Do you think it’s worth it to file a complaint through the BBB? I recently did that with Point Club and got an excellent result. It’s just sick what these survey companies get away with and how they treat their customers.

Wow! this company pissed me off big time today...I've been working my way through their cheap paying surveys for a few weeks now to be able to claim for a $10 gift card...I was finally able to do so...got the amount of points needed to do so....was wondering why it was taking so long for my reward to come..then go & check my account today & it say's my claim we denied...I was like wtf!..It took my 2plus weeks to get to their claim level...got passes on all the surveys I did..then suddenly one came back that was denied...I couldn't figure out how since I've been doing surveys way too long for this to happen...so I contact customer service & asked them what happened & they get back to me right away which is weird since it states 1-2 business days min.. They said that one of my answers on a survey was not what it was supposed to be & said "sorry you can't do anymore surveys with us"..I was like what?? you're kidding... Long story short they just get rid of you for no reason / they don't want to pay you when you claim a reward....If you're looking for a survey site stay away from this one since they drop you in a heartbeat...I deleted my account right after...Scam in my opinion.. Green

I stopped using Branded after I did a two minute survey and was told I went to fast when it took me two minutes. I do not understand why any company would be run this way.