Recently I decided to start signing up for online surveys - sounded like fun - maybe I would even make a few dollars. I found a paid survey website called surveyscout.com - totally at random - and signed up - paid $35. I went through their listings and registered with a bunch of research companies and started taking surveys.
Things were going fine - doing a few surveys - making a few bucks - so I decided to find another paid survey site and sign up with even more companies. So, I looked around and found a list of such sites and picked one - again, totally at random. I picked expresspaidsurveys.com and signed up - paid $35 - and started registering with more companies.
Everything is cool - right? Only as I began to go through this new list of companies, I started to notice tha many of the listings were the same as the ones I had signed up with on surveyscout's site. This seemed a little strange, but I figured that it was just a coincidence - or that there were only so many sites out there.
Things were good - I was cruising through the new list - when one day I happened to be perusing the rest of the site and found a statement on the "Bonuses" page that made me stop in my tracks. There, for all the world to see, was the statement "Resources, Freebies, and Special Offers for SurveyScout members only!". This was a very strange thing for expresspaidsurveys to say - don't you think? (Oh, and the bonuses were the same ones surveyscout offers.)
The longer I thought about it, the more upset I got. Finally, I decided to contact them and see if they could explain this apparent discrepency. I sent an e-mail to [email protected] (the only contact information they gave) and explained my concerns in great detail - maybe there was a simple explanation.
While I was waiting for a reply, I continued to go through the list - but the farther I went the incidence of duplications, not only with surveyscout, but within the site itself continued to increase. The farther I got into the listings, there were also more and more dead-end sites, unuseable sites, sites that had nothing to do with online surveys, and the same sites under several different names - in other words, garbage.
My first reply came - it was a computer-generated auto-reply that basically told me that nobody had really read my message. The second, third, and fourth replies were identical. I had tried different methods of explanation - different subject headings hoping to get routed to someone who would actually read and respond to my problem. No luck - today I sent my fifth message to ask for my money back.
I don't know if I am just being paranoid - or naive. I expected to get an honest answer - now I doubt that I'll get anything but ignored. I don't mind paying for a legitimate service, but I feel like I have been conned into paying twice for the same information by unscrupulous people faudulantly claiming to be two separate entities. It was sheer chance that I picked these two "companies", and sheer chance that I happened to read the fine print - I wonder how many other people have been taken for a ride on the paid surveys expess?
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