Speeding Ticket

You know I love speed -- when it comes to taking surveys. Although the survey companies warn against it I still do it and I advocate that others do so as well. The reason is simple: There's just no way to earn much of anything if you go slow. The survey companies know this, but they are so desperate to prove to their clients that survey takers are taking their surveys seriously that they must try to slow things down to prove how serious this is.

Baloney! Being asked a zillion times to take the same old movie survey is nothing short of ridiculous. Taking longer than a nano-second for you to take such surveys is also absurd - especially since movie surveys, as well as others frequently posted, are little more than shams because they are notorious for bumping you out for failing to be eligible for because all of a sudden they've gotten enough entrants who have taken the survey - which all seems to happen only after you've completed the survey. And, we all know, these surveys are just marketing schemes anyway.

At any rate whether you take a survey slowly or quickly is often a moot point. Take for example a recent survey I took for Opinion Outpost (one of the top survey sites in my view). In this case I took the survey at a fairly leisurely pace. However, it was a very easy survey to take: The questions were clear, the answers obvious. You'd have to intentionally slow yourself down to a crawl - go read a magazine between questions or something - to go any slower than I did. Despite my caution, upon finishing the survey I was denied my completion points. I emailed Opinion Outlook to complain and surprisingly got an immediate reply that they and the survey sponsor's database concluded - wrongly - that I had not spent enough time considering the survey.
Talk about your Catch-22's. The one time I took an inordinate time taking a survey is the one time I'm accused of going to fast. How's that for irony?
However, Opinion Outpost took a very unusual action by thanking me and giving me a few points as a consolation. I've never had that happen and I tip my hat to Opinion Outpost for their kindness. Nevertheless, it does point out how arbitrary taking surveys can be. The results and decisions aren't made directly by humans (although getting some points from Opinion Outpost certainly was a human action in this case) but by machines using algorithms, etc.

So, does this slow me down? Not a chance. Nor should you. The worst that can happen is a survey site decides it's had enough of you and kicks you out. No big deal, given the vast number of survey sites out there. Besides, unless you depend on surveys to feed your family this is all a lark anyway, right?