Posted by mb on January 26, 2000 at 11:03:47:
In Reply to: Check this out!!! posted by mb on January 22, 2000 at 16:04:25:
My ISP just offered me $500 for letting them know about Rhinopoint looking for ISPs. They filled me in that this company really is switching completely to ISP related service.
For those of you with bad experiences with surveys, it's true there are some bad companies out there. I've done a lot of surveys for years (plus I worked for a short time for a University, who did government surveys to influence congressmen and senators regarding legislation changes. I won't tell you the horrors to come with the educational system based on surveys I did for them. We had to key the answers people had in person on a laptop. Yuck!)
However, I've done a lot more neat ones, including some that I did years ago where I'm now seeing the technology happen today. We've tested peaches, watched movies (actually soaps ... yuck), eaten dinner at top restaurants, and played with electronic devices which, at the time, seemed to make no sense whatsoever.
I've actually done more off-line surveys than online, but I belong to about 5 different survey groups and I have ALWAYS been treated with courtesy and respect. Further, I have never been spammed or forced to do any survey or provide information that seemed questionable.
The worst survey I probably did was to view some sort of media on a "new" software that had something to do with streaming audio/video. That one took about 20 minutes to get through (which is a lot of time for any survey. Think about it, people lose interest in most things after about 5-10 minutes). My average time on any survey online has been 5-10 minutes. The forms are generally easy to get through because they have to be used by a broad audience.
Frankly, I appreciate getting my ISP service free for this one. I get a lot less from most of the other stuff online. For offline stuff, I have ALWAYS been paid for onsite surveys, and even with the peaches one they sent me $10 with the box of peaches, and the phone followup took about 10 minutes at my convenience. I don't see what the animosity is toward this.
Perhaps someone would like to express other opinions.
mb
: Here's an interesting free ISP where you keep your current ISP and get reimbursed up to $22 for completing a survey once a month.