The good, the bad, and the ugly

[dawn_b_adams]

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. 

[lunastargazer]

Good list and good to know. After this whole fiasco with my current last 2 has left a bad taste in my mouth with surveys. Coke Rewards, Ibotta and Fetch Rewards started out good and they're now pretty lousy. Most of these survey companies started out good. E-Rewards was really good before they got bought out by Dynata. If something happens to these accounts, I'm done with surveys. I could make more money having a garage sale.

[Bal]

Completely agree on Prolific, best one out there for me. At least you know when you do a survey, you will qualify and not have your time wasted.

Paidveiwpoint is not a great earner for me. Been with them along time and only just now got to the $15 needed to cash out.

I would also add Populuslive to the good list. I have had two £50 payouts from them, plus they send you via bank transfer now so you don't have to waste time with a cheque.

As for the bad, well there are too many to mention. I gave up on Opinion Outpost years ago, awful company, pollfish, say-so, peanut labs all shocking. There is one called easy surveys (should be called impossible surveys) as I have never got one, EVER!

 

What can I say about good(bad) old sample cube, a complete waste of time, it's like getting on a roundabout, round and round we go until we collapse of boredom. I did post on here that I actually did get a survey with them recently, but that must of been an error from their part as they surely wouldn't want people to complete one of their surveys.

Let me just give an honorable mention to Your Surveys, a scam of a company that constantly rips you off, taking quality score points away for no reason whatsoever, accusing you of using a VPN multiple times and not paying for surveys you have completed. The high point of the company is the amount of time that customer service gets back to you, my God you can wait a lifetime. All round terrible company. Just look at there reviews on various sites.

 

[CatShaw54]

Sounds like you are doing pretty well.  With OneOpinion, I make all of $25 every two months but I stick with it since it's a legit site.  PointClub is still taking eons to pay out and I'm earning very little there these days due to their reduced pay rate and galloping DQs. Pinecone surveys do pay $3 but lately their surveys have been coming through other sites and pay all of 50 pennies, which is puzzling for such complicated surveys, though I do like taking them and sometimes they lead to product tests (love love love). I like ClearVoice quite a bit and get product tests there too. Prolific is indeed the superior survey site. The surveys are from universities and institutions and are deeply interesting and exercise the brain. I love them and often I even get bonuses for individual surveys because they recognize a diligent survey taker there.

[NevadaJones]

32 minutes ago, CatShaw54 said:

 "Pinecone surveys do pay $3 but lately their surveys have been coming through other sites and pay all of 50 pennies..."

I see this too sometimes.(Often on Qmee.) But I generally close them out and hope I'll get the same survey through Pinecone for a much better pay.

[schludermann]

Of course when it comes to surveys, YMMV.

I did Paidviewpoint for several years until last month and has an attribute score of 10,000. Paidviewpoint throttled my account to 10 cent profile surveys from Nov-May, 55 surveys in a row, and didn't bother to tell me until I asked. They stated the reason for throttling was because a client didn't like by responses. By then I had done about 750 surveys through PV. So because of one client, 0.01% of my activity, my account was hobbled.  These panel was probably hoping I'd just cash out and leave.  I downgraded my SP review of PV and interred all their emails to the junk survey folder.

Pinecone for a long time has an intermittent slog of a survey panel, $10 every 6-8 weeks.. However, starting last month the frequency of reaching a $10 payout more than doubled. in July, I've had two already.

Ipsos annoys the heck out of me with operational glitches, and support is capricious, fickle, disingenuous and more likely to show incompetency. Ipsos has also greatly increased the use of routes, like Cint. It's a race to the bottom.

 

[dawn_b_adams]

Schludermann, so sorry to hear that Paidviewpoint throttled you like that. That is just downright sketchy of them to do that. These survey sites are always telling us to give our honest opinion. Then we do, and they get all offended and turn into whiny little snowflakes and decide to punish us even though we did nothing wrong. I think most of them are pathetic hypocrites and I will start blasting these sites on Facebook. Let’s see how they like being blasted where everyone can see their sketchy ways. Idiots.

[dimefynder]

Didn't notice this thread the first time around...

 

Same experiences almost verbatim. Except I haven't gotten off the ground with Prolific yet, due to a glitch of some sort, and a paypal linking problem I have with them (and MyPoints  and Survey Junkie). Can live with amazon gift cards, though.

 

I ignore Review Robin routinely, because I got ripped off several times in a row. J.D. Power is on that list now, too. Won't tolerate the rejection after the tedious journeys anymore. They seem like such a highly respected outfit, too. I've been telling some survey sites why I won't touch those.

 

Haven't had a bad thing with Paidviewpoint yet - surprised they are still in business this long without linking up with many companies like Swagbucks or Prize Rebel does.

[Dee4990]

Completely agree re Peanut Labs!  I get cheated out of points & made the "mistake" of complaining about them. Now they are "stalking" my email with nonsense replies & will not disengage - getting pretty stupid & I will have to "block" them!  Jeez...  isn't this suppose to be fun & enjoyable?