Survey Club Scam or Not?

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , — Cash for Surveys @ 3:41 am

Survey Club is a free online survey company that pays cash to people who visit websites and and fill out brief surveys about the websites. It’s an easy way to make a few extra dollars in your spare time. But you have to be careful with this site. Unless you want a bunch of magazine subscriptions delivered to your door. So is Survey Club a scam? Read more and see for yourself.

I signed up for surveyclub.com a month ago. Since then, I haven’t really made any money. Although the site boasts a lot of hype about visiting websites and getting paid, I found that they were more interested in selling magazine subscriptions and health insurance than actually paying for opinions.

Click on to surveyclub.com and you will get an audio sales pitch. They tout themselves as the “Number One Online Survey Club in the World.” Several testimonials on their site from different people boast of making at least $1,000 to receiving $125 for a single survey.

I’m a little leery about any “get rich quick scheme” and this site reeks of that. I’m also leery of anyone who is making $1,000 a month sitting behind a computer doing surveys all day. Things that sound too good to be true, are usually just that – too good to be true.

Surveyclub.com boasts of people making “thousands of dollars a month” just for giving their opinions. Any halfway intelligent person would be skeptical of this. The only way you are going to make “thousands of dollars a month” sitting in your home without having a widely marketable skill is if you’re selling drugs from your home. I wouldn’t advise that any more than I would advise participating in this site.

Unlike the most other online survey companies, Surveyclub.com does not pay you for taking the surveys. Payment is made from a variety of alleged “Fortune 500 Companies” who will “send you a check.” You cannot pick the surveys you want to take, opportunities are sent to you via e-mail and they usually have some sort of catch.

I have received literally hundreds of e-mails from various companies promising me everything from a car to a luxury vacation. Although I am currently not working at a job, I am a halfway intelligent person. I don’t believe in “getting something for nothing” and can usually smell a scam a mile away. These e-mails are deleted. Since I have signed up for this website, I’ve received many e-mails (most of which are directed to my spam folder). The ones I get in the my regular e-mail folder get deleted.

The one survey I did respond to, in the very beginning, was for $8. That didn’t seem like an outrageous amount. Until I read the fine print. In exchange for my $8, I had to pick four magazines to subscribe to. I would get them for one month and then be able to cancel the subscription. Sorry, but that’s just a little too much trouble to go through for $8.

Online survey companies can be a fun way to make a few extra dollars while you are at home. But they can also be a way to lose a lot of money and have your inbox flooded with unwanted e-mails. Like everything else, there are good online survey companies and bad ones. Surveyclub.com is a bad one. It preys on people who want to get rich quick (aka, suckers).

If you are thinking about joining an online survey company to make a few extra bucks, skip surveyclub.com. Take it from someone whose been there – it’s really not worth the trouble.

ACOP Review

Filed under: Online Surveys — Tags: , , — Cash for Surveys @ 6:40 am

American Consumer Opinion or ACOP Review

An online survey company that offers participants a chance to win a cash drawing for completing quick, fun surveys and actual cash (between $4 to $50) for completing more extensive, in depth surveys that they refer to as “focus groups.” The site contends that focus group participants generally do not make less than $50.

To join American Consumer Opinion, you need to go to www.acop.com. This will bring you to the ACOP home page where you can sign up for the site. After you complete the questions, a confirmation link will be sent to your e-mail address under the name of “Ann Parks.” The site warns that many of these e-mails end up in your bulk or spam folder, so if you are interested in receiving e-mails from the site, you should add the name “Ann Parks” to your e-mail address book.

American Consumer Opinion has been around for about 10 years. It’s a legitimate site, but, unfortunately, does not offer a lot of money. There are several pros and cons to joining American Consumer Opinions:

Some Pros:

- The site is open to international residents. You don’t have to live in the United States to participate and there is no age limit, although since many of the surveys pertain to work and other adult-oriented activities, teenagers will find the questions boring;

- There is a steady flow of both short surveys and longer questionnaires available to participants;

- Your information is private; they will never try to sell you anything, spam your mailbox with ads or telephone you.;

- The site has been around a long time and is respected in the marketing community.

Some Cons:

- There is no guarantee of earning anything for completing the short surveys, only an opportunity to win cash in a monthly drawing. To date, I haven’t won anything. Only one person wins each month and the winner receives $250;

- The cash received for participating in a lengthy survey is not paid to you by ACOP, but by the company requesting the information. You may end up waiting four to six weeks for a $4 check;

- You don’t get to pick which surveys you want to complete, you’ll receive them by e-mail;

- There are times when the site goes “down” in the middle of your survey, which means you have to take the entire thing over again. The reason the American Consumers give for this is that the site is experiencing “too much traffic.” But it is extremely frustrating.

American Consumer Opinion is a subsidiary company for Decision Analysis Inc., a Dallas based marketing research company. The company performs research for a variety of corporations around the world, including fast food chains, railroad corporations and airlines.

On a scale of one to ten, I’d have to rate this site a five. It’s not a big money maker, but is totally legitimate and private.

An alternative site that I recently discovered is called Your Free Surveys. Like ACOP, it is legitimate. We’ll have a full writeup in a future blog article. For now, they are running a special where they pay you a $4 bonus upon signup. You can read more about the site here:

http://fastsurveymoney.org/yourfreesurveysite

Mystery Shopping Company Demystified

Filed under: Mystery Shopper — Tags: , — Cash for Surveys @ 8:03 pm

So what is a mystery shopping company?

It’s really no mystery! A mystery shopping company is a firm specializing in providing retailers, restaurants and other businesses with secret shoppers – also called mystery shoppers.

The reason? These shoppers get the benefit of experiencing a visit to the firm that an upper level management employee would never see on an official visit. Let’s say that you’re a district manager of a convenience store chain. You visit your stores weekly or maybe every other week. And you have a set day for visiting each store.

You know that the manager – if he values his job – will have every employee on his best behavior that day, the store will be immaculately clean for you and every clerk will smile at every customer, say please, thank you and attempt to up sell. It’s just human nature.

However, a mystery shopper is treated just like every other shopper on any day you – as the district manager – aren’t present. And because of this, these shoppers get the true insight of how the employees in this store are really treating customers day in and day out, how clean the store is and what the placement of products really are.

Mystery shopping has been around for more than 35 years. It’s an effective way to get a true “snapshot” of a store or restaurant.

How can you tell if a mystery shopping company is legitimate, given all the scams that seem to be out there?

Before you even make an initial commitment, discover whether the firm you’re looking at is a member of the Mystery Shopping Providers Association. To be a member of this organization, a mystery shopping firm must undergo an approval process. And then it must agree to uphold a set of ethical standards.

If you’re in doubt about the status of the company you’re considering working for, go to this organizations web site at http://www.mysteryshop.org/. Here you’ll find a listing of its membership. If the company you’re considering isn’t a member of this association, that doesn’t mean they’re not honest and legitimate.

When you’re considering a job as a mystery shopper, just keep one idea firmly in place: no legitimate firm will ever ask you for money to work for them. And no legitimate company will ever ask you to cash a check for several thousand dollars and mail it off to some unknown address.

Mystery shopping is a great way to get paid doing something you love. But you’ll never become insanely wealthy from it. If you keep those two thoughts in mind, you’ll have a great time as you mystery shop.

And we’ve just taken the mystery out of mystery shopping!

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