Luth Research - AKA SurveySavvy

You may not have heard of Luth Research before, but if you are a serious online survey taker you’ve heard of their products.

Luth Research is based in San Diego, California and if I mention SurveySavvy you’re probably familiar with one of Luth’s better-known products. Not that SurveySavvy is a great online survey site (it doesn’t offer a whole lot of surveys, their pay rates are low, and it takes quite a while to earn enough to cash out), but there are many sites operated by companies like Luth that do much the same thing in order to get your opinions and to be able to market/advertise products to you.

Luth was founded in 1977 and it launched SurveySavvy in 1999. It’s founder and president is Roseanne Luth. SurveySavvy now boasts more than 3 million members.

Marketing, Data Collection and More

But SurveySavvy is not the only thing Luth does, not by a long shot. They are a full service data collection company. They operate a massive call center, conduct focus groups and one-on-one interviews and other communication activities designed to glean as much information as possible out of you for their clients. That’s just so their clients can find better (and often more intrusive) ways to contact you and urge you to buy their products or use their service.

The fact that Luth is a data collection company and intent on getting information about you from you shouldn’t be to alarming. The reason you do online surveys and agree to get paid a pittance for it is because you are willing (you know this, right) to let companies like Luth get a peak into your life and get enough information about you to let their clients know you may be a potential customer. That’s the bargain you make and Luth is just one of the companies that facilitate that process.

Hotspex gets A D-

There are a number of survey review sites like Survey Sheriff and if you read or glance at them from time to time you'll get opinions of what survey sites are good and which are not so good.
One of the survey sites often touted as being really, really good is Hotspex (www.myhotspex.com). Naturally I thought with reviews being so positive I should sign up and see why. Well, I have to tell you Hotspex is not so hot at all. Moreover, I cannot understand why anyone would rate them highly, or use Hotspex at all.
When I signed up it was fairly easy and not much different from any other site. But, after months and months of being a member I've yet to achieve anywhere near to an amount of Hotspex "bux" (their point system) to cash in for anything. In fact, it would take almost 3,000 bux to earn enough to get $25 in PayPal cash or some kind of gift. So far I've earned 100 bux, so you can see that it'll be a cold day in you-know-where before I get a cent from Hotspex.
Why is this? The answer is simple - there are never any surveys offered by Hotspex. Strange as this may seem for a survey site, I can't remember the last time I received an invitation to a survey and the last times I did all I've gotten for my trouble is the aforementioned 100 bux.
As I mentioned I don't understand why anyone would rate Hotspex highly, but I don't and I suggest you not waste your time with it. Stick to the proven money makers - sites like Opinion Outpost, Toluna, and a couple of others I've written about on this blog. Survey sites, like Hotspex, that don't offer surveys are definitely not on my top 10 list and they shouldn't be on yours.

Age Discrimination and Surveys

Do survey sites discriminate against older folks?
I'm not claiming they do, but I do have a suspicion. While most surveys ask you what category of age you fall into, they claim it is just for the purpose of separating their findings into certain demographic groups and that it's just for research purposes.
That may be true. However, recently I suggested to a friend of mine that he might like to join a survey group since it involved cars, which I knew he would like since he's a big car enthusiast. The only difference between he and I was that he was past a certain age and I was under that age. The survey site was even encouraging new members to join who were interested in cars. While my application to join the survey group was accepted, his was not.
Further, I tested a survey - one that is offered by many sites; it's actually the same survey that is offered over and over again. In one of the surveys I put down an age that was over 65 just to see what would happen. It was rejected. When the same survey came around a few days later, I put my actual age and it was accepted. I did this two more times just to make sure it was not a fluke. Sure enough, the older age was the one that always got rejected.
There's not a problem with survey sites choosing to exclude people of a certain age, or some other demographic. In most case they are marketing a product or service that is more likely to find an audience with a certain, usually younger, age group. But, if you are of a certain age you might find yourself with fewer surveys being offered to you.