Scam?

August 26, 2004 10:00 PM

Does anyone know if Money For Surveys is a scam? I feel silly even asking since I always assume things like this are a scam, I just happen to be seriously broke right now and i'm grasping at straws. Additionally, is there any good sites for checking which of these sites are scams and which are legit?
posted by untuckedshirts to Work & Money (14 answers total)

There are plenty of opportunities for making money taking surveys. One of my friends does this all the time.

I dont know about this organization but my advice is this: The moment they ask *you* for any money, in the form of a fee or a sign up cost, forget about them.
posted by vacapinta at 10:12 PM on August 26, 2004

Are you sure this works? This seems Too Good To Be True®.
You get $15 for filling in some worthless fields!!

What's the scoop?
posted by Gyan at 10:43 PM on August 26, 2004

The Scoop is you have to pay $19.95 to get a username. Beyond that, I dunno.
posted by jmd82 at 11:39 PM on August 26, 2004

I took a paid survey in a mall after being approached, once. I was told it would take much less time than it did. Of course you want to finish it so you can get your $8.00 check, but you realized you have not made very much money for your time. An hour and a half, if I recall correctly.
posted by weston at 12:28 AM on August 27, 2004

The easiest way to find out if anything is a scam is to take the exact name of the company or person involved and do a phrase search for it with the words "scam" or "hoax."

So: "money for surveys" scam yields this very question on Google Answers.
posted by Mo Nickels at 4:37 AM on August 27, 2004

Pine Cone Research is the only company I know of that sends you a $5 check in the mail along with their request to do a product survey. I've done several - not enough to consider a source of income, but enough for a little extra cash. Problem is, you can't just go and sign up. You need to happen upon a signup link, which are usually banner ads somewhere else. Occasionally, someone on SlickDeals will post PineCone links in the "freebies" forum as well.
posted by ferociouskitty at 7:08 AM on August 27, 2004

i've done market research things, but not surveys, where you get paid around US$50-100 for a couple hours of sitting in a room (usually with free sandwiches and pop or coffee and donuts) looking at print ads and telling the nice people how they make you feel. there are usually ads for the groups at the end of the classifieds--you call the number, leave your name and number on the machine and then eventually get a call back. you have to be available at the drop of a hat and it does usually take up a half or whole day. i did it in grad school for extra cash.
posted by crush-onastick at 7:49 AM on August 27, 2004

Vividence offers $10 Amazon gift certificates for usability surveys about websites that usually take 30-45 minutes. (Plan an itinerary on orbitz.com. Now that you've done it, what do you think? That sorta thing.) They don't come up too often though, so it's not a very good way to make quick money.
posted by hootch at 8:00 AM on August 27, 2004

In checking out some of the links/suggestions in this thread I ran across this site: TamingTheBeast.net. It has a list of online survey sites that it claims have free sign-ups.

I'm going to sign up for those that I can and see how it goes.
posted by deborah at 8:21 AM on August 27, 2004

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/shopping/features/9299/
posted by blueshammer at 8:36 AM on August 27, 2004

I've done market research stuff, but only through craigslist -- it takes a couple of hours and you get around a hundred bucks.
posted by sugarfish at 11:03 AM on August 27, 2004

if you're that broke (i know the feeling) you should check out surveys with craigslist. You can easily get a few hundred bucks within a couple of days
posted by bob sarabia at 12:21 PM on August 27, 2004

Is this site itself a scam?
posted by Gyan at 2:34 PM on August 27, 2004

The problem with craigslist is that if you don't live in a big city, you're pretty screwed. At least I have a hard time finding surveys that I could take online or at home.
posted by stoneegg21 at 5:46 PM on September 7, 2004