As you know, I'm a physician. One of the few perks of that occupation is that I am frequently invited to participate in market research surveys which pay quite well. While most people are doing online surveys to make a few dollars, I'm doing ones that pay $50-$100 for surveys that I can sometimes zip through in 15 minutes or so.
Even so, I ignore 80% of the invites I get because some of the surveys are so incredibly boring and tedious that if I'm not in the right frame of mind, I can't stand doing them.
I decided to do one tonite while we were all sitting around watching tv. They said it would take about 35 minutes and pay $70. The opening screen said there would be about 50 questions. The questions weren't numbered and there was no progress bar indicating how far along I was in the study. So I got started. The format was incredibly boring and tedious, but I kept at it for what seemed like a very long time. Eventually, my family and I decided to play a board game, so I took a break. When I came back, I continued the survey and began counting questions. After 50, I stopped reading and just clicked randomly to see if there was an end to this torture. After 75, I just gave up. I e-mailed the survey company to tell them their survey was faulty and had no end. I also told them that I felt I was entitled to some compensation for the huge amount of my time they had wasted with their defective survey. I've done a lot of surveys for them, so I'm curious to see if I get a response, and, more importantly, if I receive a payment.
This is the first time anything like that has happened, though, so it is probably some software glitch. Oh well. Such is life. Earlier this week, I got checks for $60 and $80 for other surveys I have done recently, so I can't complain too much if once in 10 years something like this happens.
Lucrative online surveys - sometimes backfire
December 30th, 2006 at 02:43 am
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and BTW, very glad you joined us on the blogs. hope you enjoy it!
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