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American Consumer Opinion (ACOP) has throttled my account


schludermann

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Folks,

In the past I've reported incompetent and inconsistent behavior with ACOP and willingness to fabricate reasons to not pay panelists. SP is rife with reports of this conduct going back years.

The problems are so frequent that the BBB office that ACOP is in has a public notice that they know about the chronic issues, probably tired of getting them. 

 

Well in my last go around with ACOP/Burke I was stiffed for a very long survey I completed, I posted the response from Matt at ACOP on SP forum. I also included the president,  Jerry Thomas, in the dialog and inform them I was building a complaint to report their activities, starting with ESOMAR.  Since then my account has been throttled. Throttled means I get notices of pending surveys, but they disappear once I log in, even for surveys with a 3-month activity period. Instead of a survey I'm directed to their never ending router. 

 

So, if you have experienced unethical behavior dealing with ACOP, please post them here or message me. I will be summarizing ACOP's behavior and then passing it out to the professional associates that have involvement with the survey & marketing industry. I'm particularly interested hearing from individuals that live in Texas.

 

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I'm sorry to hear you're experiencing this. I don't do any surveys through them. Would it be worth your time to file a formal complaint with the BBB, or have you already done that? Sounds like they have a slew of complaints though, seems nothingnis being done. Maybe getnout the word to social media, especially news outlets. There may be a good consumer reporter looking for a good story, you never know. I hope you get your money. I'd drop them after that. Best of luck to you. 

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6 hours ago, dawn_b_adams said:

Using the BBB is totally worthless, as you could tell from the BBB listing. The BBB gives ACOP an "A" rating.  However, customers have hundreds of complaints and a one out of 5 star review from the customers.  The BBB doesn't have any teeth or enforcement capacity, and the BBB will be forthright about that. To get an "A" rating, the business merely has to respond and offer a resolution, no matter how relevant or ludicrous the offer is in context to the complaint and there is only one pass. You should understand that the BBB is sustained by subscriptions from the businesses the BBB professes to resolve issues with. I call that "Captured by industry".  It took me awhile to learn that the BBB is only for individual issues.  For chronic and repeat panelist abuse  it is more relevant to submit complaints through professional organization that have a role with conduct standards. These organizations are Insights Association: www.insightsassociation.org (formerly CASRO), The American Marketing Association (ama.org), Advertising Research Foundation (thearf.org), Qualitative Research Consultants Association" (qrca.org), American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR). All the associations listed so far, the parent company of ACOP professes to subscribe to each organizations ethics and code of conduct. Each organization has a complaint process. Now Decision Analyst (parent of ACOP) is not a member of the World Association of Opinion and Marketing Research Professionals (ESOMAR), so submitting a complaint to ESOMAR will not have much effect other than  to show a pattern of unethical treatment of panelists and survey conduct, should they decide to join ESOMAR, Decision Analyst will likely have to explain these complaints. 

Now for Texans abused by ACOP,  I'm willing to aggregate, summarize and go attend relevant regulatory agencies meetings with public comments in Austin and tell these agencies what is happening to us fellow Texans.

 

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