Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Surveys come to an end...

I think I've finally unsubscribed from all the survey sites I've been on. (There may be one or two left, but they'll go as soon as I get the next email invite from them.)

I joined up with a bunch of these sites way back in 2006 when I was out of work and thought I might make a few extra dollars from doing online surveys. Fat chance. I mean fat chance that I could make those dollars quickly enough even to fund a cup of coffee.

Some sites have slowly totted up the points over years, until I now have - or would have had, if I hadn't unsubscribed - vast numbers of points, such as 45, or 23. And of course, unless you attain some magnificent number that in fact you haven't a hope of getting close to you'll never earn anything.

Some sites, to be fair, do actually pay you. It takes a while (and it doesn't help that they cut you out of a number of surveys almost before you've started) but I have had movie passes, and vouchers for shops like Farmers and so on. One particular New Zealand survey company is legitimate in every sense, was in existence long before the Internet was available, and knows what it's doing.

Most of the other survey sites are cheapskates, who won't give away anything more than they have to. (And I'm afraid most of those appear to be in the US of A.)

But even apart from the rewards, I got sick of answering the same kinds of questions over and over. The lack of imagination in many of these surveys has to be seen to be believed. It's almost as if they copied each other's surveys and then used them for a slightly different product. After a while your mind loses interest completely. Worse, sometimes the survey goes on and on and on, and you wonder if there's any finishing point. Of course, you don't get any extra points just because it's three times as long as the one you did last time. All you've done is churned through dredge to find that your brain has clogged and you need to go and find some drain cleaner pretty damn quick....

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