Well, consider that Dynata has many clients, some of whom have those low-point surveys, some with surveys that are more rewarding for the participants. It seems logical that if presented with 5 surveys each worth 1.5 points, and 5 more surveys each worth four or five points, most people are going to try to answer as many of the higher point surveys as possible. But if very few people are attempting the low point surveys, what happens to Dynata's clientele (the survey companies that employ Dynata as well as the customers who want survey results) if those companies look at the number of survey attempts and they're very low? I would think they would not be happy about doing further business with Dynata.

If attempting to answer those cheap surveys is the unofficial entryway to the goodies, then Dynata can effectively goose up the raw numbers of attempted surveys they present to those clients. And if it's true that a large number of people are getting disqualified, as far as I know that's not Dynata's problem, as they just administer the surveys.

That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Who determines the point value of a survey? If the determination is made by the survey creator they can value the survey however they want. Presumably the survey creators are after certain data points from a group of participants. Those participants can be existing or potential customers from a particular demographic, between 25 and 40, married women, Republicans, people that are interested in cruises, people in a particular zip code, etc. They can then determine the value of the survey accordingly. Often a high paying survey can be very long. I took a survey today on tea that took almost an hour and paid very well. Surveys often estimate the time it will take to complete and offer higher compensation to get people to finish it.If the survey writers only want to know how many people traveled to Boston for the 4th of July a survey may take a minute or so and pay 1 or 1.5 points. Most low paying surveys take little time to complete and are compensated accordingly.



I attempt low point surveys under the assumption the survey will be short and the qualifications will be broad and I will likely qualify. What is more important to the survey writers, completed surveys or disqualified respondents? I would think completed surveys is the goal. It would be interesting to talk to the companies that use surveys for their data points to learn their criteria.

One thing we can agree on is putting the qualifying questions at the end of the survey and then determining the survey taker is not in the correct demographic. In my estimation they are just stealing information, they have their survey completed and do not have to pay any compensation. Another annoying gambit is the dreaded "there has been an error" message and the survey closes.

Let's say e-rewards have two surveys that they are looking to complete for the clients who pay them for collecting data.

Survey 1: Only 1 in every 10 people will qualify
Survey 2: 9 in every 10 people will qualify

To get paid, they need to fill both surveys with qualifying respondents. Their algorithms need to try to get enough people into Survey 1 to get the required number of completed surveys, taking into account the qualification rate of basically all their surveys. I'm not saying that's the only factor, but it must be a main factor. Their clients will go elsewhere if e-rewards can't get them enough people who qualify for and complete their surveys.

To your other point about who decides the incentive value, I suspect clients get prices from multiple providers of respondents and make a choice on who to use. Each provider's quote will presumably be based on the cost to them of providing the reward to the respondents.

It would seem to me a company like E-rewards gets paid either way. There are server costs, hosting costs and general administrative costs. A company like E-Rewards offers a service, they will host a survey for a fee. Why would they care if the survey is completed? The company wanting the information hires E-Rewards because they do not have the expertise or the infrastructure to host the survey themselves. E-Rewards has both. Payment to the survey taker has to be determined by the company hiring E-Rewards to host their survey. Success or disqualification, E-Rewards gets paid and if a survey taker completes the survey the company writing the survey agrees to pay a certain amount, 1 point, 4 points as a reward, E-Rewards has no control over this. If a survey has a 90% failure rate it is not the fault of E-Rewards bur rather the criteria for success are too strict. That is on the survey creator, not the survey host.

e-rewards has the relationship with the panellist/member. I would expect them to have rules over what their clients can do/offer to respondents/panellists/members for legal reasons and in the interests of retaining them. Maybe e-rewards and their clients share some of these decisions and the e-rewards terms & conditions and their website probably give clues about this, but I'm not willing to read either of them to try to work this out without a points reward!

Agreed!!

I am getting a lot of surveys that end in {"error": "missing session"} with no credit given, of course. Is anyone else experiencing this often?

Just done a fast food restaurant practices survey; advertised at 25 mins; bumped me off at 50 mins with partial credit. Lots of questions about McDonalds! Be warned not lovin it!

How long does it take for the Virgin Atlantic points to post to Flying Club from E-Rewards?? I know with some programs it's instant and some take close to a week! (My apologies if I missed it in this thread!)

This is a first. I redeemed for 7,000 Hilton points this morning; and when I checked my Hilton account this afternoon for something else, the points had posted. May this posting schedule continue!

Anyone else having survey issues? For the past 24 hours or so every survey that I click on returns the message "request expired." Logging out and logging back in does not fix the problem. Everything else, like my survey history and reward history, is working fine, I just can't attempt any surveys. Have written their help desk, waiting to see what they say.
EDITED TO ADD: Never mind, looks like I had some corrupted cookies, deleting all of them seems to have cleared up the problem.

I had the same. The mobile app still worked.

Yes, the still-functioning mobile app (which I hardly ever use) was the giveaway that the problem was on my computer and not with e-rewards themselves.

It seems e-rewards is back to it's old tricks again (still). In the last 3 days I have complete 3 surveys, 2 long and 1 short) that sent me to the "Sorry" screen after I had completed the survey (the timer was at 99% or it thanked me for completing the survey). On the two long ones I sent a notice to e-rewards - I didn't bother with the short one. I used to take a screenshot of the survey URL if I was on a long survey but got lazy this past week because I haven't been having any issues - so I didn't capture the URL for the 2 I requested help on (one was yesterday and the other was this morning so I haven't received any responses). When you submit the Help request it always asks for the "Survey Number" which I have never seen and normally just paste the URL there. In the past they have been pretty good responding and giving me the reward - sometimes a partial - at least when I have a URL to send them.

Has anyone figured out how to identify the survey once it shuts you down? I haven't been able to go back and grab the URL and it doesn't show in my history. Every now and then if I use the back button I can get to the last page of the survey - but that is rare. So what do you send them when you have a dispute - have you figured out how to get the survey number or URL?

As a 78 year old white male my surveys have dropped to next to nothing - so when they "Sorry" me after completing one - it upsets me :-)

Thanks.

The survey number used to be on the email invite that they would send out. I pretty much stopped paying attention to those emails when they no longer were telling you the topic and/or the reward amount. Now it's almost always a generic invitation, so in almost all cases I just go to my dashboard and selectively choose the surveys I want to answer. (The rare email exception tends to be the diary surveys.)

Lately I've been running into a few of those %^*$# frustrating surveys where I've reached the end of a 20-30 minute survey and only then do I get kicked out. I complain every time that happens. They often come back with a boiler plate response about how you can be kicked out at the beginning, middle or end of the survey. If necessary, I write back and reiterate that it's absolutely unfair to the survey respondents to go through the entire survey and only then be kicked out. Ultimately, they almost always give me the points in question.

What I've found is that in lieu of the survey number or a URL I tell them the approximate time that the survey ended (I usually write to the help desk as soon as I'm unfairly kicked out), the approximate length of time I devoted to the survey, the topic of the survey and the name of the survey sponsor if I can remember it (usually available at the start of the survey.) Based on replies I've received from the help desk, with that information they can tell not only which survey you're referencing but even the amount of time spent on the survey. Then it's just a matter of waiting to see if they give you the points that you earned. Sometimes I get the points with one email, sometimes it takes a couple, but I'm politely tenacious enough that I rarely lose out on the earned points.

Yes, I think it's insane that we have to jump through those hoops, or that they even have surveys set up in such a way that it's possible to be kicked out at the very end. But so long as I can receive my points with a simple email I continue doing the surveys, as the mileage and gift card rewards are worth the effort to me.