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A couple of general rants


dawn_b_adams

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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. 

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I know I get lots of surveys that ask me also how many employees are in my company, and its annual budget and my title in the company, when I am retired.  I just usually say one employee and other job.  I think a lot of people that are doing surveys are either on disability or are retired.  

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Same here. Also retired and get the question about where I work with no option for "retired" as well as the "how many employees" one. Another type survey are those that ask if you use a specific site (like Etsy) and even after explicitly stating that you do not , they ask away every possible question about the site. 

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I think that the frequency of these vapid open ended and meaningless questions are apparently from same the playbook, "Creating Surveys for Fun and Profit" that these survey panels get from the conventions they attend. This strategy is good for screening out the mindless dummkopfs & minions of stupid bots trying to make a fast penny. A properly trained AI can pass this.

When asked for what I do, I try to find something close to part-time consultant or something close to "I'm not going to tell y'all".

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21 hours ago, dawn_b_adams said:

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. 

Let me join in on the rant if I may ( as that is all I do on here anyway ) HA.

One I get lots is what makes a perfect sandwich, complete and utter waste of time. What I have found in the last couple of days is, I am answering the control questions correctly, but getting screened out straight after, which is weird.

I had a nightmare on Qmee yesterday, four completed surveys and got scammed on all of them, two surveys that broke near the end, I felt like giving up yesterday.

 

Today had another survey, 20min borefest and the dreaded red writing telling me I didn't qualify, I was fumming, I wanted to complain but I do complain alot to them and I was thinking they might boot me off for complaining too much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Bal, I hear you there on the perfect sandwich question. About every day I do surveys I get that one. And regarding Qmee, so sorry to hear you were screwed over. Over the last week, that happened to me three times. Three times I successfully completed the survey with late disqualifications at the end. I complained each time. In my most recent complaint to them, I threatened to file a complaint with BBB if this keeps happening. They say they will get with the partner survey site and inform them, but I want my money. I've made that quite clear to them. They cannot keep doing this to people. It's unacceptable and criminal on their part. 

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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

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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....  :wacko:

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!

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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.

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14 hours ago, NFriday said:

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.

I X out of any surveys asking for my VIN number. Why would a survey site need that information? I’m thinking of contacting the next survey site that wants this information and tearing them a new one. I’m so sick of this. I see I’m not the only one who gets these stupid questions on my occupation.

As to what LinuxPowered stated about how to respond to the open questions, I stand by what I do. I already tried the basic response “This question is not relevant to the survey. I refuse to answer.” It’s an articulate statement, to the point. If they don’t like that, they can shove it. None of the partner sites that pull this crap are ones I belong to, so I’m not worried in the least I will be banned. I will not take crap from these sites. I’m not worried about consequences. I do this because I want to. If I’m ever to the point where I can donate plasma, I will completely stop doing surveys. I do them for the money, nothing else. 

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18 minutes ago, dawn_b_adams said:

As to what LinuxPowered stated about how to respond to the open questions, I stand by what I do. I already tried the basic response “This question is not relevant to the survey. I refuse to answer.” It’s an articulate statement, to the point. If they don’t like that, they can shove it. None of the partner sites that pull this crap are ones I belong to, so I’m not worried in the least I will be banned. I will not take crap from these sites. I’m not worried about consequences. I do this because I want to. If I’m ever to the point where I can donate plasma, I will completely stop doing surveys. I do them for the money, nothing else. 

When I first started surveys about a year ago, I found out early on that you can be penalized for not providing a good enough response. Now, what qualifies as "good enough" is open to debate! It was a Cint survey, though I don't recall which panel it was on, and they dropped my 'quality score' by 40-something points (it starts out at 100), which put me in a "no surveys" group. The time for being reinstated was something like 3 or 6 months. A long time.

My solution has been similar to what @dawn_b_adamsdoes, with my own twist. I'll say something like "Please accept my apologies, but I decline to answer this question." And I generally cite some obtuse 'personal' reason, like it brings back bad memories. So far, so good. I mean, if they're not going to honor personal boundaries...wow!!!

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On 11/13/2021 at 9:16 PM, dawn_b_adams said:

I complained each time. 

I've had the same thing with Qmee many times this last week, fully completing surveys - and not short ones - and then being rejected. This really is unacceptable.

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On 11/13/2021 at 9:16 PM, dawn_b_adams said:

Bal, I hear you there on the perfect sandwich question. About every day I do surveys I get that one. And regarding Qmee, so sorry to hear you were screwed over. Over the last week, that happened to me three times. Three times I successfully completed the survey with late disqualifications at the end. I complained each time. In my most recent complaint to them, I threatened to file a complaint with BBB if this keeps happening. They say they will get with the partner survey site and inform them, but I want my money. I've made that quite clear to them. They cannot keep doing this to people. It's unacceptable and criminal on their part. 

I agree Dawn. The nightmare continues on Qmee for me. Today I have had two in the morning not pay out and one not long ago.

Pure and utter fraud on the part of these dishonest and shady survey companies.

I do email them about it when I am angry, but as I put in my last message, I feel like one day they will just drop me for being a nuisance (even though I have every right to complain) so I haven't bothered.

What annoys me about Qmee, is they just blame the survey company, saying they don't agree with it, they why don't they remove these companies, I know why, as it makes them money.

Sorry if I bored anyone with another rant HA

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On 11/14/2021 at 7:27 PM, dawn_b_adams said:

I X out of any surveys asking for my VIN number. Why would a survey site need that information? I’m thinking of contacting the next survey site that wants this information and tearing them a new one. I’m so sick of this. I see I’m not the only one who gets these stupid questions on my occupation.

As to what LinuxPowered stated about how to respond to the open questions, I stand by what I do. I already tried the basic response “This question is not relevant to the survey. I refuse to answer.” It’s an articulate statement, to the point. If they don’t like that, they can shove it. None of the partner sites that pull this crap are ones I belong to, so I’m not worried in the least I will be banned. I will not take crap from these sites. I’m not worried about consequences. I do this because I want to. If I’m ever to the point where I can donate plasma, I will completely stop doing surveys. I do them for the money, nothing else. 

I do the same, if they ask me a silly question, they get a silly answer

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