Monday, January 21, 2008

Avoid paid surveys scams

Are All Paid Surveys A Scam?

There has been so many negative opinions of surveys online that some who read them may ask themselves the question are all paid survey a scam? The answer to that is no. There are a lot of legitimate survey companies out there that will pay you for your opinion. Companies need to know what consumers think about their products so there will always be opportunities to get paid for your input.

There are however a significant number of companies that call themselves paid surveys but are only there to take advantage of you. Please continue reading on to learn more.

A Look At A Couple Of Online Survey Scams

There are a couple of major online survey scams. The first one involves simply getting your email. The bogus survey company then either sells your email information to marketers or uses it for themselves to send you spam emails. You are very unlikely to get any actual survey or money from those sites.

The second of the major type of paid survey scams involves companies that require you to first sign up for a "free trial" offer or buy a product before getting paid. The trial offers you may be able to cancel before getting charged so some may consider it a grey area. Since survey companies are there to pay you and not vice versa so I think they can also be considered a scam.

How To Avoid Paid Survey At Home Scams

Here are a few tips to help you avoid paid survey at home scams.

1. Don't ever pay any money for getting a survey. If you have to pay any money you can almost be sure it's a scam.

2. Before signing up with a company check out reviews from others who have already joined. You can easily find reviews by a simple search on google. This is the best way to find out if they are a spamming scam. Also read more than one review. I recommend checking out at least 5 reviews on different websites before joining an opportunity.

3. Avoid survey websites that promise you a guarantee in income. No legitimate company will be able to guarantee you a level of income or pay.

4. Don't put much stock in testemonials. Most companies that run paid survey scams will hire people to write testimonials to put on their sites so don't rely on them.

5. Just watch out for a lot of hype. Scammers will use a lot of hype to try and get people to sign up.

6. A good resource to find out companies with complaints against them is surveypolice.

(source: http://www.squidoo.com/paid-survey-scams)

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