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Yeah, here I go complaining again! I just get so aggravated over these survey sites. Anyway, there are a couple of things that made my blood pressure go up a little. First are survey sites that have one of those stupid open ended questions that have nothing to do with the survey. An example is "Describe how you budget..." InnovateMR is notorious for these, and I absolutely hate them. I normally answer something to the effect that the question is not relevant to the survey and I refuse to answer. Normally, I can get by saying this and it moves on to the real survey. Other sites do them to, and it seemed like every survey I hit on today had that. And not one of them let me move on to the rest of the survey. So being petty and all, I decided to just write two words. I think you all can use your imaginations and guess what those words were. I was getting disqualified anyway, so I figured I might as well have some fun and break the monotony. The second thing that has been annoying me is several of the surveys I tried today had those questions as to what I do for a living. Since I'm completely retired, I pick retired. But nooooo, these survey sites today did not have that nor "I don't work" or "unemployed" as a choice. Then they want to know the revenue of the company I'm employed in, even though I did manage to select "other" and type in RETIRED in all caps. So these tone deaf survey sites think that someone who works in a company with half a billion dollars in revenue is gonna take a survey worth $1.34! No. They are delusional at best and booger eating morons at the worst thinking CEO's of large companies are filling these things out. I think it's totally ludicrous. What a bunch of idiots. So I'm going to make a nice cup of coffee and move on to my online Spanish lesson.

Screw

Yep. I don't spend much time trying to qualify for partner surveys, as I rarely qualify for any.

I had one survey I tried to do today that might have been on Valued Opinion where they asked me my age, and when I told them my age, it said it was not a valid answer. It mentioned something about how I could be under 65, even though I am not, and so I was forced to select that. I did finally get rejected for the survey. I also got a lot of Dynata surveys where they asked me questions about my place of employment and did not give me the option of saying I was retired. All of those I opted out of. I also got several surveys that asked for my cars VIN number, and I opted out of those. I decided it was too much trouble to find my VIN number.

Prolific has been a good source of quality study/surveys for a couple of years. However, as you noted, there is a decline at prolific as a organization and as a fielder of surveys. There is a decline in the quality of Prolific offerings. Increasingly what is offered are not all from educational institutions, are experiments on unwitting subjects, that have a different conduct code, and there is much more survey scrubbing. I think Prolific has been "discovered" but the less savory cohorts of online survey panels. Meaning the crap we're use to enduring is now showing up in the academic space. The payout process is still like it was described when I signed up. I haven't been accused of VPN abuse, i'll test that to see what is going on. Are you in the USA? In the past I've had to contend with VPN/Proxy accusation use from other survey panels, such as Your-surveys.com, and the interactions were like dealing with the Pakleds from TNG. Support was self impressed with tools that they bought that they could not demonstrate understanding of the operations of the tool used to asses me. I was accused of hijacking an AOL access point to take a your-survey, Bull. So, challenge prolific support and demand a competent response.

I have had a few this week on Omee that I completed the whole survey and got the Quota full. I'm sure they just throw my survey out (not) Very aggravating Every time that happens it's after I complete it that's wrong

Rod

I am *so* on-board with the OP's rant! May I add some of my own? :) The aforementioned open-ended, completely irrelevant questions, like "what was your favorite vacation ever?" and they want you to be as descriptive as possible. I DESPISE THESE QUESTIONS. But something I learned the hard way when I first started doing surveys is that your responses actually count. In other words, telling the survey provider to f-off may make you feel better for a moment, but can result in being permanently banned from the survey site. So can writing a one- or two-word reply. Even though those questions are annoying and irrelevant, it's best not to shoot off a smart-mouthed reply, because you're the one who may suffer as a result. The questions about employment annoy me to no end. As others have mentioned, the ones that assume you're employed and have must-answer questions about the number of employees and your company's revenue. WHAT? WHY? I'm retired. Why assume everyone is employed? I know that when I was working--making six figures--the last thing I would've done in my spare time was online surveys for pennies a shot! And what about surveys that--AFTER you've picked the 'retired' option on one question--ask you on the next page what your occupation is?! And it's a must-answer, so you can't skip it. But inconsistency with a panel's internal records can cause problems. I mean, say that on PanelX I've indicated that I'm retired, but on SurveyZ I'm FORCED to pick a choice for my occupation, despite indicating that I'm retired. What do I do? If I pick an occupation, like "IT manager" or something indicative of my former career, and then it gets compared to the profile I filled out at PanelX, I can be kicked out for being inconsistent/providing false answers/etc. And then there are survey questions that are totally illogical. I look at them and just think....huh?! For example, a survey will say "*IF* you do blah blah blah...." but I don't do whatever it is, so I try to skip it. But it won't let me. I MUST pick an answer even though I DON'T DO whatever it is they said *IF* I do.... Or the ones that ask "BESIDES you, who else lives in your house?" and it's a must-answer question....and you live alone....and there is no "I live alone" or "no one" choice? Being forced to pick an answer that does NOT accurately reflect your household skews their results, but apparently they're too stupid to figure that out!