Toluna, Again

I've been blogging over the past couple of months about the strange goings-on at Toluna. To recap, one day I found my Toluna account transferred to a mysterious iQuestion account. When I complained I was told I had asked to go to the new site, which I hadn't. Worse, there were no surveys to take at iQuestion, and none ever appeared over the weeks I 'resided' there.
Apparently, my protests to Toluna have had an effect. Recently I was reinstated to the Toluna site and the iQuestion site became inactive. There were no explanations for the changeover that took place in the first instance. And, I had to reenter a great man of the profile information I previously had entered on the Toluna site.
But, to make it all worthwhile, Toluna provided a few extra points to my account for my troubles. Not much, but a nice gesture nonetheless.
I'm not sure what to make of all this, or what words of wisdom to pass on to you dear readers.
OK, maybe a couple.
First, my belief is there was some trickery involved on Toluna's part to capture survey takers. So, it pays to sometimes read the fine print on what surveys you are given.
Second, there is a human being somewhere deep inside these mostly robotically operated survey sites. Occasionally, although not often, you can reach out to them by yelling loudly and protesting aggressively and frequently if you feel you've been wronged.
Lastly, would I have bothered with my protest had it been one against a lesser valued site (e.g. they pay next to nothing and don't often have surveys to take anyway)? Probably not. But I can depend on Toluna - with all its faults - to produce good returns each month, so it was worth battling. And it feels good to have won.
So, pay attention and fight for what you believe is right - if you feel it's worth the time and effort. In this case there was nothing to lose and a few bucks to gain.

Survey Site Review: GFK Custom Research

If you come across a survey sponsored by GFK Custom Research there is one thing you can usually be sure of – the survey will be long.

That’s the case with several notable survey sites, like OpinionsHere, and GFK is no different. It’s not necessarily bad that surveys are long, but what is often problematic with long surveys is that you can spend a lot of time on them only to be informed that after a considerable time has passed that you have been screened out. Such is life with online survey taking.

GFK is based on New York City, but it’s part of a global network operating in 37 countries with 12,000 employees and its corporate headquarters are in Germany. Its focus is in the areas of consumer, pharmaceutical and media service. That’s why you will see many surveys having to do with medicinal products in the surveys you get from GFK. But, it also delves into automotive, financial, health and other survey subjects.

Note – GFK is not a survey site you sign up for to take surveys; it’s a research firm that distributes surveys to multiple survey-taking sites, so you may see GFK just about anywhere.

GFK claims its corporate history goes back to 1934 in Germany. Indeed its name is composed of the initials of a set of German words that are so long and hard to pronounce that I won’t even try.

For the survey taker the only question I’ve found about taking GFK surveys is time. If I have nothing better to do and am willing to spend (waste?) my time, I’ll take a GFK Survey. Otherwise, I’m prone to pass on it and move on to a survey that is shorter in length. Your choice.

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?