Bombshell! I knew we were being cheated

[somelady]

I took a survey on Mintvine $0.40 10 minutes,  at the end they asked demographic questions and I was dq'd. The survey had contact info of the university sponsoring the survey so I wrote them about putting demo questions at the end of the survey. Here are a couple of  the email responses. Thus confirms what I have always thought, the survey sites are are really cheating us. This company paid them $5.00 per participant and the site paid $0.40 to participants for the survey . They also rearrange the surveys to put demographics at the end to cheat us out of the reward.

Emails:
I'm sorry to hear this, I was not aware the qualtrics survey company has you take the entire survey and then just doesn't pay you if you do not meet the inclusion criteria. That seems really unfair, and I'm a bit surprised that qualtrics does this. Researchers generally assume that more expensive survey companies like qualtrics treat their survey workers better than the cheaper alternatives for survey data (e.g. MTurk). I'll keep this in mind if we use qualtrics to recruit a selective population in the future.

Hmm, that's interesting to hear. For the survey you completed, we paid Qualtrics about $5 per participant. If we were to have posted that survey on MTurk, we probably would have offered about $0.50 - 0.75. We were willing to pay more to Qualtrics because we thought we would be receiving better quality responses (e.g. survey workers who pay more attention than many MTurkers, members of a hard to reach populations, etc). We were under the impression that Qualtrics has their "own" workers who work directly for them, and get paid more than MTurkers. It's disappointing to hear they just get workers from other survey websites anyway, we could easily just use these websites ourselves.

[paulgro]

Never heard of that company. I guess that's a good thing for me.

[seven]

MTurk is just strange. I've checked it out and it's just not for me. Obviously there is a market out there for it though. Many active participants. 

[JD]

No idea what Mintvine actually got as a router from qualtrics but once a survey is routed they sure seem to take a lot off the top from what a survey taker gets. Well as is said frequently on here, you get what you pay for. Pay me more and I give well thought out answers. Pay me cheaply and I will give perfunctory answers. And Qualtrics is the survey company that loves to put sneaky attention questions in their surveys.

[Trueblue]

Glad to see the you get what you pay for comment. I can't tell you how many times I feel like putting in a survey answwer something like "this is what you get for 60 cents!!"

[oldchap]

I doubt many pay even 10% of what they get from their client. And there are many who will avoid paying even that by screening you out AFTER you've answered all the questions

[footfree]

Maybe it's Mintvine who should be made aware of the fact that you contacted them and were told the true story of how you were to be paid.Not that I want you to get in trouble but I do think these companies need to be called out on the how badly they treat the people who are making them their lively hood. Personally I hope this hits them in their wallet.I don't think  anyone should get away with treating their participants like this and not take a hit themselves.It's that old adage what goes around comes around.I'm glad you called them out on their poor treatment.

[somelady]

It's not just Mintvine, they all do it, not to mention the ones that make you pay to get your reward. We should all complain to the survey panels about the rewards but I don't think it will do any good.  I am hoping that the companies that hire them will hold them accountable. I wrote another one the other day, from now on if the survey gives contact info for the company conducting the survey I will write and tell them how little we are getting paid.

[cilana86]

This is an interesting thing to learn. However, the survey companies themselves, I'm sure want to make a profit. Of course they wouldn't pay the $5 per participant. They could have paid more than .40 cents though.

[rosiesmom]

I looked into Mturk, and I could not for the life of me figure out.  I do not do webcam stuff, and I think this was a lot of that.  I wasn't sure if it could actually make sense to get involved with this one.  I chose to step aside.

[jberri12]

For market research companies, we (the respondents) are just a data source, a cost of doing business.  If they could get all their data for free, they would, but to get the kind of data they need for their customers they have to pay for some.  We are just an expense against their profit.

 

Trying to appeal to their conscience probably won't do any good.  It's unfortunate that we get the short end of the stick, but I don't see that changing any time soon.

 

For me, taking surveys is just another source of extra income, so I optimize and make what I can from the system.  I wish the pay was better, but the information above doesn't surprise me.