InspiredOpinions

Schlesinger Associates, a market research company with offices located in the US, UK, France, and Germany, is conducting a research study with business and leisure travelers who have been through one of the major airports in the UK within the past couple of years.

Each participant will receive $100 for 60-90 minutes of their time and valuable input for sharing their experiences during a Webcam-based interview on Dec. 2, 2015.

Please click the link below to see if you qualify:

https://cs.schlesingerassociates.com...97094074011138

Or Call:
Assata at 800-981-3923 ext.245

LondonElite

Have you checked with the moderators as to whether this type of commercial posting is within FlyerTalk rules?

FirstInFlight

I must confess that I often wonder if people are actually willing to do this. Your link takes you to a landing page that says nothing - it just asks you to enter a lot of personally identifying information. In this age of identity theft are people really willing to just give out their names and DOB to whoever wants that information in exchange for some vague promise of money?

LondonElite

Indeed. Highly suspicious and certainly not professional.

Efrem

The good news: Schlesinger Associates is a legitimate market research firm. The Internet domain in the link, when you strip off all the survey-specific stuff, goes to what looks like their home page.

The bad news: The poster is brand-new to FT. The domain is registered via Perfect Privacy LLC, a firm whose sole purpose is to prevent people from finding out who really owns a domain. (Full WHOIS lookup record here.) No other legitimate corporation I'm familiar with, and I've looked up lots of domain name owners over the years, uses this or a similar service.

Added in edit: Another red flag is the very short lead time (48 hours) until the interview. Creating a false sense of urgency is a favorite trick of spammers and such: "your [e-mail/credit card/online banking access/etc.] will be cancelled if you don't respond to this alert within [24/48/whatever] hours." A legitimate survey would normally provide more lead time, absent special factors (which the survey sponsor would usually mention).

Bottom line: For me, absent any indication of vetting by mods who might have more information than we members do, hiding domain ownership is a deal-breaker. I would not provide that sort of information on a site that deliberately hides its ownership, no matter how legit it looks.

If I misread anything, I hope the OP returns to clarify this situation.

InspiredOpinions

Hi all,

Thank you for taking the time to express your concerns. I would like to address each concern in this post and certainly understand why you have them.

1) The link brings you to a Screening Survey that tells us whether or not the study is a good fit for you. All Personal Identifying Information that we ask for is used for only this purpose and is further explained in our Privacy Policy (https://www.inspiredopinions.com/page/5).

Alternatively, you can call the number and we would be happy to see if the study is a good fit.

2) The short lead time I do apologize for. Typically, we get anywhere between 2-4 weeks to reach out for help on research studies, but this one was a quick turnaround.

Hope this answers some of your questions. Appreciate all of your help and let us know if you have any other questions.

Best regards,
InspiredOpinions by Schlesinger

BearX220

It's a poorly designed and somewhat misleading proposition from a legit source. They appear to be hunting for US-based travelers who transit LHR frequently, and dangling the promise of $100 for submitting to a Skype (or similar) interview. But the real agenda is to fill out Schlesinger's database of survey respondents. Before you know it you're "completing a profile" on their website, setting the hours during which you agree to receive SMS texts from these guys, etc. It's creepy and insidious and I bet only a very small number of respondents are ever offered $100. Why would it have to be a webcam interview, anyway? What's wrong with a phone line? Strange.

I went through the process just to see what would happen, but unsubscribed immediately.

InspiredOpinions

Hi BearX220,

Because we have to screen every potential respondent, we cannot divulge every detail on the project, so as to maintain the accuracy of each answer to the screening questions.

As for the incentive, those who do qualify and participate will receive $100 - It's just a matter of whether or not a potential respondent fits the criteria we are looking for.

As for the profile you filled out - We often have similar studies such as these among others. You can choose to, or not to, include any information and whether or not you would like to join the InspiredOpinions research community. Alternatively, if you call the number provided you will not have to create any sort of profile.

Thanks,
InspiredOpinions

InspiredOpinions

Hi Efrem,

Thank you for voicing your concerns. Let us try to address them.

Typically, we are given 2-4 weeks to reach out to potential respondents - this particular project was a VERY quick turnaround, which we do apologize for.

As for the information we ask for in the Screening Survey to see if potential respondents are a good fit for the project, you can learn more about our Privacy and Data Protection in our Privacy Policy (https://www.inspiredopinions.com/page/5). We would need contact information to set up the interviews if a potential respondent is qualified.

We understand your caution and concerns. Any help is appreciated and we will be glad to answer any more questions you may have.

Feel free to check us out at www.SchlesingerAssociates.com or our research community, InspiredOpinions by Schlesinger at www.InspiredOpinions.com.

Best,
InspiredOpinions

LondonElite

Nevertheless, has this been vetted by FT? Commercial posts are generally not permitted here.

BearX220

Like they say, if you come across some business proposition on the Internet and you can't figure out what the product is, the product is you. No thanks.

You ask for a great deal of personal data-sharing up front while promising nothing in return -- merely the chance of something, with odds known only to yourselves. It's a fundamentally inequitable and exploitative offer.

Efrem

Given that the OP has returned, so is therefore presumably monitoring this thread, I would like him/her to explain why the owner of the schlesingerassociates.com domain finds it necessary to hide his/her/their/its identity behind a cloaking service. The information about the owner that can be found in a WHOIS search (see link in post 5 above) is, if that owner is in fact Schlesinger Associates, already public knowledge. Absent a good explanation of that unusual behavior, which I have never seen before on the part of any commercial organization (and which therefore leads me to suspect that the owner is someone else, masquerading as Schlesinger Associates) I am still highly skeptical of this request's legitimacy.

(For the record: I am sometimes paid to be skeptical of this sort of thing. My clients have thanked me more than once for being more skeptical than they would have been themselves, thus saving them from falling for some rather nasty stuff.)

FirstInFlight

If a legitimate company wants to know if I am suitable for a survey they ask my age - not my DOB.

You are building a database - and since you are, at best, loosely affiliated with a legitimate company - I presume that the ultimate goal is to sell the information that you gather.

And before you tell me about your privacy policy - I'll point out the post above that notes that you are concealing your identity. So that would make your policy.....worthless.

Adam1222

Not sure where the moderators are but this entire thread is not suitable for the info desk. let's just move on until the mods can shut it down.