Market Research
Beware a market research company called Toluna (Test & Vote)
I am posting this to warn you about this company called Toluna. They are a market research firm that conducts polls and surveys for their clients.
I came across them via an ad on Facebook. They were advertising "Try out products for free", and I like trying out products, so I completely fell for it and registered with them. I felt a bit stupid about it even then, and it turns out my gut feeling was completely right.
It turns out this company entices you to do market research work for them basically for free, by baiting you with offers and promises that they don’t keep. Of course, there are a number of fraudsters that do this kind of stuff, but usually you can tell if they are a fraud right from the beginning. However, Toluna’s furtiveness in this regard is such that I am taking the time to write about this and warn you about them.
The bottom line is: you’re not going to lose money, but you’re going to lose a lot of time if you fall for them. But the worst part is the feeling of being lied to, being deceived and cheated upon. I’d like to spare you this experience, so bear with me.
Their business model is as follows: you register with them, and they will invite you to answer various polls and surveys for their clients. As a reward, you get a number of points, depending on how long the survey/poll takes to answer. You can then take those points and exchange them a) for lottery tickets or b) for Amazon vouchers. It sounded like a good deal: answer some surveys, and get stuff from Amazon. Count me in!
I got an average of five to ten such invitations per week (guessing off the top of my head now). In the beginning, I was very curious, so I actually answered most of these surveys. They were usually big-market mass-consumption products and services, such as branded foods and telecommunications services.
One of the very first surveys I answered was about a well-known Italian coffee maker who were deciding on a name for a new product they were going to release to the market. I found it very interesting to get this kind of look behind the scenes, and to take part in deciding the new name for a product. Of course, they had already decided on a selection of candidates for the name – I didn’t get to submit my own names 
–, but still, when do you get to choose a name for a new product that will sell worldwide? So – I was hooked and kept going back to the surveys.
Unfortunately, after the first few interesting surveys, the quality of the surveys declined sharply. Now, there was just pretty mindless and typical market research stuff, the kind of which bores you to tears before you’ve even done 10% of it. Usually, these surveys were exceptionally long and took up to half an hour to complete. I was beginning to doubt I should be putting this much time into the matter.
(As an aside, many of the surveys were full of bugs and errors, the kind of which I just can’t ignore as a communications designer. Some of these were downright stupid, some were irritating. I took some screenshots even: flickr.com/search/?q=survey&w=87569910@N00 . It struck me that, instead of providing a unified interface for all these surveys, Toluna would just re-direct to the client, each of whom would provide their very own survey interface. After having seen about ten different such interfaces, I began to wonder if it was customary for designers of online surveys to ignore everything there was to know about user interface design on the web. Some of them actually bothered to jump through all kinds of hoops to make their own proprietary form elements, instead of just using standard HTML forms.)
To make matters worse, I was getting many invites to surveys that were obviously not addressing me. Usually, when you begin a survey, there are a couple of questions to find out if you’re part of the target audience. If you’re not, the survey ends and you get no reward points.
Fair enough, but usually I had already answered quite a lot of questions, giving out personal information which is extremely valuable for market researchers, before being told that I didn’t "fit in". To me, it seemed like a scam: grab my personal info off me, and then tell me to bugger off. We just took your data, but no, you’re not getting any reward.
Sometimes, they would just kick me out because "the number of participants had already been reached". Fine, but why do they make me answer part of the survey and then suddenly find out they already have enough of them? Things were starting to smell rather fishy.
After a couple of months, I had completed a considerable number of surveys, and the majority of them kicked me out after taking my info. Those that didn’t were long-winded and boring. I was losing interest rather acutely. Now that I had given Toluna so much of my time, I wanted a reward. I checked up on the points I had accumulated, happily looking forward to the promised Amazon voucher.
But alas, I found out it would need 80,000 points to get a 20 € voucher. I had something like 20,000 points, equalling around 5 hours of survey-completing work. Let me quickly do the numbers: 1 hour of filling out forms = ~4000 points. 80,000 points = 20 € = 20 hours of doing surveys. I was doing work for them at 1€ an hour.
I decided this wasn’t worth it, and I was not going to do a zillion more surveys to get my Amazon voucher. Instead, I opted for the lottery tickets. I would get a bunch of them, so my chances of actually winning something wouldn’t be too bad (I thought). I exchanged all my points for tickets. They told me they would send them to me.
So what about those product tests they talked about when they enticed me to register with them? I had to confirm my interest in those tests on their website, which I did. I selected those categories of products I would be interested in. A selected, small number of products would be sent to random testers. I wasn’t betting on my chances of actually being sent a product for testing, and certainly I never received any. But now I’m thinking nobody who registered with Toluna probably ever received anything.
A couple of months later, I have never received a single ticket. My points are gone. I am still getting something like 10 requests a week to complete surveys.
They took my data and sold it to a couple of big-money companies. I got no reward. I feel lied to and cheated upon.
Today, I deleted my account. I have no idea what they are going to do with my personal data.
I got this e-mail confirmation (screenshot above), and it says it will take them a couple of weeks to delete my account. They must be joking: deleting an account is a database operation that takes a fraction of a second.
To me, Toluna is a scam operation. Don’t fall for them. I’ve certainly learned my lesson.
Pass this on to your friends to warn them if you think they’d fall into Toluna’s clutches.
How to keep on top of your market research: small businesses
Article by small business, research
If you are the owner of a small or medium business or if you have a marketing role within a business of this type, you’ll no doubt know how difficult it is to complete all of the urgent activities on your list each day, let alone some of the activities that can feel unimportant or more like a bonus luxury activity. For many, undertaking regular market research falls into the ‘luxury activity’ category. This is because:
- The role of delivering projects and or fulfilling contracts or orders is often classified as the most important task. And if a company is small, this can take up all or almost all of the time available each day.- It is easier to secure an order, contract or project from an existing client than from a new client. So often time spent on client management is focused on existing clients as opposed to potential new clients.- If advertising and marketing budgets are small or don’t exist, it can feel as if it isn’t worthwhile completing any market research.- Understanding what is happening in your particular industry, how your competitors are performing and how your customers are behaving can be daunting. Whilst knowledge is like blood to a company, it can also be very scary to hold knowledge that doesn’t paint a good picture or to hold knowledge that you don’t know what to do with.
Understanding your market however is hugely important to ensuring your future sustainability as a company. Whilst of course it is important to fulfil current contracts and to keep existing clients happy, a little bit of time needs to be put to one side each month (or week if you can spare it) to take a look at how other companies within your industry are performing and to understand how your potential clients / customers are behaving. More general market research is also useful for spotting potential pitfalls in your current service delivery and for spotting potential opportunities for new customer groups or for creating and delivering new services.
So how can you keep on top of completing crucial market research activities when you are a small or medium sized company with little spare time on your hands? Some tips to help you are provided here:
1. Sign up to trade magazines that are relevant to your industry. These can provide you with helpful, routine updates on what’s happening in the industry on a weekly or monthly basis, and they can be read whilst travelling on the train, in the bath, over coffee or even in bed!2. Do a bit of a Google search and see if there are any online publications or websites that provide routine email updates on news within your sector. Market research is so much easier to complete when you are digesting it in 5 minute daily update emails!3. Create a market research template that looks at product availability, price, turnaround times, company presentation, ease of company contact etc and rate your company against each of these areas. Then on a monthly basis, rate 5 of your competitors against the same criteria. How do they compare to your company? What can you learn from them? Where are you better than your competitors? Look at different competitors each month, but also revisit some of the competitors you’ve already looked at from time to time to see what progress they have made with their services.
Once you have all of this information you can use it to;- Create new services that you know there is a market for- Locate new groups of customers- Amend your current service provision to bring it up to scratch with your competitors- Expand your knowledge of the industry you’re working in…and share this knowledge with others in your company and your customers- Create a marketing plan and pull together marketing material that is in line with the current market and that will appeal to your targeted audience.
Strategic Market Research
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Market Research
For a company to embrace market research as a facilitator of change, it must be willing to take the approach that makes the most impact on its organization. That approach is the key in making a difference using market research. In this guide, author Anne Beall shares her unique procedure for conducting strategic market research. With more than fifteen years of experience in conducting market research, Beall details the strategic principles she has developed that impact the way in which market re
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Market Research question by Mountain Mike: How does market research apply to property management?
My mom wants to get into property management and the job descriptions all include “market research”? What kind of market research would you do for apartment buildings? She was a property manager for 3 buildings for 27 years and she never did or even heard of such a thing. What kind of background do you have to have?
Market Research best answer:
Answer by Lisa S
Market research in this case means a basic knowledge of the housing market (rentals) in your area. It might include knowing strategies to improve a complex, or buildings profitability, or how to persuade the tenants to be more timely in their payments. It’s not any one skill set, but several.
In other words, the days of simply collecting rent are over. But if your mom is a quick study, she might be able to persuade them to give her a try, based on her previous experience.
Good luck to her!
Dear Mr.
I work for Toluna.com.
We have seen your post on Flickr and feel very concerned about what you have said and of course by how disappointed you have been by our services.
I would like to take this opportunity to answer some of the questions that you raised in your post.
Toluna is a panel operator that works with the biggest market research agencies in the world and is a listed company that employs nearly 300 people worldwide
Data privacy is at the heart of our business so we would like to ensure you that when you answer a survey on Toluna, your data are transferred to our clients in a anonymous way for statistical purposes only. If you cannot finish a survey for any reason, your questionnaire is considered as incomplete and your data is not transferred. Even Toluna does not keep this data.
After a member unsubscribes from our panel, all your data are removed from our database after 6 months (this is in case there has been an error and the user wishes to reopen their account). You can also request from us that all your data be removed immediately.
Cancellation of an account is immediate but in the past due to technical problems, some members have received emails from us a couple days after they unsubscribe. In order to prevent frustration in this unfortunate case, we have decided to tell users that the complete unsubscription process can take up to two weeks to avoid any bad surprises, even if this is very unlikely
Surveys work with quotas for statistical reasons. For example if the study requests 100 men aged 25-35 years old, if you try to finish the survey as the 101st person, the survey will close. It is impossible to invite only the exact number of respondents required, as response to surveys from respondents can vary according to many criteria (day, time, target, weather,..)
We try to keep the surveys below 20 minutes and we strongly recommend that our clients do so too, we also oppose surveys that would take more than 45 min to answer.
Regarding prize draw tickets, we dont "send" the tickets, they are electronic. They show in your account on your “points” page and also under your “vouchers” ordered. All winners are listed on the prize draw winner page: uk.toluna.com/winners. The process of selecting the 20 winners every month is purely random and automated.
The number of products to test is shown on the test product page together with the list of testers. You can also check the opinion sections where testers write reviews about the product they received from Toluna.
Toluna is not really a place to make money. Our reward schemes simply aim to thank our members for giving their opinion and helping brands to improve their product and services. Nevertheless we send thousands of gift vouchers every week to our members and this is a very significant cost of our activity.
Once again we are very sorry that you didn’t enjoy your memberships on Toluna as many members have done worldwide over the last 8 years now, and hope that this email has clarified some important issues regarding our service.
Laurent Sabouret
Toluna SAS
14 Place Marie-Jeanne Bassot
92300 Levallois-Perret
France
Thanks, Laurent, for taking the time to reply to my post. It is much appreciated that there is a human being at your company who listens to users.
I have been a toluna member for a few years now and I’ve never felt cheated in any way. All the information about them is in the FAQ section, i knew from the very beginning the I would have to spend some time filling in surveys in order to earn points, and they have always been transparent about it. As for the product tests, I never actually tested anything but keep on trying.
No need for this post, if you read their info carefully you will know you have to sit and spend some time in front of the computer screen so u can gain something in return. In the end, that’s what these sites are about.
I usually do read instructions and FAQs carefully, but still I felt somewhat taken advantage of. Of course, this post is a rant, it was written in anger. This distorts the factual truth. Still, I’m going to leave it here as-is. You might be right with your comment after all though, maybe I was just too curious and I shouldn’t really have signed up with them for good.
I have had a great experience with Toluna. I started with Your2cents. I have a $10 check in my car to cash from them. I have enough points to receive another $10 check. I have only received one product to test but it was worth it. I was selected to sample a sauce. I wish I new what kind it was because it was delicious. So far with all the survey sites out there, this was the only one I have received a check from. Im not going to get rich by any means with the few surveys I receive a week but I do enjoy them and seem to qualify for most of them. I am signed up with Greenfield as well. Most of their surveys are sweepstakes drawings and the ones that are paid are long and dragged out even when you dont qualify. Tolunas surveys compared to other companies are very short. I would recommend them to everyone. This is the first company that I didnt feel scammed with. Its interesting to read posts on different survey companies because some are clearly a waste of time. Like the ones that have you sign up for a bunch of crap and then you dont receive what was offered in the beginning yet I read good reviews on that garbage and I would never recommend those sites to my friends. If the woman that had a bad experience with Toluna is signed up with other sites I would be interested in knowing what ones. Out of all the sites Ive signed up for I have to say Toluna is the best so far.
Sorry. I mean Mr.
Hi "Mornin Glory" and "erygreeneyes". What did Toluna pay you for those two comments?
Hi. I’ve been a Toluna member for a couple of years, and so far in that couple of years I’ve made about £50 in HMV vouchers, which is a bit of a help at Christmas time, but to be honest I just treat that as an added bonus. It’s not just a survey site, it’s also a networking site. I visit the site every day just to share my own opinions with the other members, and you get quite a good dialogue going with some of the regulars. I’m a member of quite a few survey sites, but Toluna’s the only one I visit every day.
BTW – I don’t think Toluna will be paying me for sticking up for them, but if they do I’ll let you know.
I don’t know about TOLUNA. When they were Your2Cents.com, I received my vouchers on time. Since TOLUNA took over, I haven’t received my payment yet and it’s been over eight weeks and I emailed support and haven’t received any help yet so yeah I think I’m done with TOLUNA. Kind of sad, because I kind of liked them, an easy way to earn extra money, but not if they are not going to pay you. Stay away from Toluna!
I find it somewhat amusing that this Flickr comment thread is apparently turning into a bit of a place for general Toluna critique
Well we all need a place to speak our anger
I realize it’s only a $10 voucher but I was really looking forward to it. Why do legitimate sites (like the original Your2Cents) let themselves be taken over by people who don’t pay?
UPDATE: I called their 800 number (it is found on their FAQ page) and they said my voucher was mailed on 9/21/09. They said if I don’t receive it by this coming Monday, they can resend me another check. So hopefully I may still get it. I’ll post an update if I do !
UPDATE: I still haven’t received my check, I called a second time and they just told me the same thing as before. It’s been 10 weeks now since I requested the voucher so I think it is safe to say do not bother with Toluna
UPDATE: I did receive my check!
Toluna is still in good standing. The check arrived almost 12 weeks after I requested it, I don’t know if it was because of the switch over why it took so long but I did receive it so I’ll stay with them for now. So if you requested a check from them and haven’t received it, you will 
I just "unsubscribed’ at Toluna. Test&Vote [contact@testandvote.com]
I was only on it for two sessions. Hated the sloppy, bare, badly setup pages or interface. And especially disliked the inadequate translation of what I thought was maybe bad french to bad english.
So I received a quote ‘unsubscription’ which follows. This short, five or so words per line, confirmed my suspicions. Obviously replies come in small email boxes (?)
I mean who gives an option to ‘unsubscribe’ and then says it is passing the request along the line?
Hello,
We confirm receipt of your request to terminate your account.
We will transfer it to the technical service, which will deal with your request as quickly as possible.
You may receive solicitations in the lap of time necessary for the termination of your account. Please don?t take them into account.
Thank you for your understanding.
Best regards,
The Test&Vote Team.
7 months ago Toluna wrote:" Cancellation of an account is immediate but in the past due to technical problems, some members have received emails from us a couple days after they unsubscribe. In order to prevent frustration in this unfortunate case, we have decided to tell users that the complete unsubscription process can take up to two weeks to avoid any bad surprises, even if this is very unlikely"
I received this comment today. (As listed on my previous comment)
Hello,
We confirm receipt of your request to terminate your account.
We will transfer it to the technical service, which will deal with your request as quickly as possible.
You may receive solicitations in the lap of time necessary for the termination of your account. Please don?t take them into account.
Thank you for your understanding.
Best regards,
________________________________________
The Test&Vote Team.
Copyright © 2001 – 2009 All rights reserved to Test&Vote
I’ve been chasing Amazon vouchers since September – and still no sign of them! Toluna aren’t even responding to email now so I am convinced the whole thing is a scam; get people to work dangling a carrot of vouchers and then not sending them. Hard to believe that they can’t even supply £10 vouchers after all the surveys I’ve done, its not exactly a fortune but to a fraudulent organisation the intention is not to pay out for anything.
I was a member of Your2cents which worked well. They were taken over by Toluna and then changes started to happen. I qualified for a $10 reward and received it. As I approached another $10 reward, they raised the minimum payout to $20. It took a while and seemed like it got harder as neared the $20 point mark but I made. I asked for a payout, which I’m still waiting for. I started earning more points and earned enough for $5. Suddenly, when I went to the site, all my points were gone. There was no explanation. I tried to answer a short survey but was not given credit because "my profile was incomplete". I was never told to update my profile and I don’t know how it became "incomplete". Beside that, there were no instructions as to how I could "complete" my profile. This is starting to look like a scam site to me and I am considering complaining to the USPS that hte site is committing Internet fraud.
Ever since Toluna and Greenfield online have merged it has been quite a nightmare!! There are several panelists not getting credited for, in some cases, 50+ surveys that were completed!!!! That’s alot of hard work, time and energy given for nothing!! The worst part of all is that many, many panelists have been emailing Toluna and Toluna will not respond to any of these issues!!! What’s going on???
Toluna is a scam. I am speaking from experience. Reasons?
1. Your points for completing surveys are not credited.
2. They have a very very very slow and poor customer support service. I have written since 8 weeks ago to them concerning missing points but nothing has been done till this very moment.
3. It takes forever before points are credited for completed surveys. Seems to me like a deliberate delaying tactic. There are many paid surveys that credit you with your points immediately- not toluna. Can you imagine that a survey i completed since february has not been credited .
4. Their surveys are excruciatingly long. I spent 90 mins to complete a survey, when i was just a few clicks away from completion i experienced an unexplainable technical problem and the points for that survey was 3000. I believe this was deliberate from them.
5. One of the ways to identify a good and genuine paid survey group is how long it takes for you to cash out / Claim rewards. I need 60000 points for toluna, i don’t even know the reward because it is not stated on their website.
For those who have had nice things to say about them i know toluna will perform well for just a small number of people just as a smoke screen so that a few people can say they got good services from them, maybe 1 in 500,000.
Toluna is useless / A fraud / A scam / A rip off and i will report them to bbb. Please spread the word -toluna is a scam.
I’ve been a toluna member in the UK for some time and have claimed back 2 vouchers worth £24 over the last couple of years. Yes it takes ages to fill in the surveys. Yes sometimes you get broken surveys. However mostly if you qualify to enter a survey and complete it you do get the points. I’ve got two nice DVD box sets sitting on my shelves bearing testimony to the fact that you can get rewards from toluna for completing the surveys.
I probably fill in a survey a week or so when I’ve got an idle moment in a coffee break. As such a few DVD vouchers or whatever every year seems fine to me. They’re not a scam. They do what they say. Just don’t expect to be making large amounts of money out of them from filling in surveys and entering prize draws.
I had problems chasing a missing voucher earlier this year, that saga dragged on for weeks. It took 4 months for a £10 voucher to arrive. I had to laugh today when I saw I had enough points to claim a voucher, only to find the redemption page has vanished…! I suppose that is one way of avoiding slow / non delivery claims.
in one day I’ve had 23 emails from toluna, I unsubscribed 30 days ago.
schoschie. Could you please contact me at praetorian48@justice.com as I do need to talk to you about Toluna and the problems I have had – I need some advice as to what I can do…I have had much worse problems than you and feel this is not the place to discuss it. You seem to have a clear head on your shoulders and I need advice from someone in the know.
Many thanks.
Mike.
Hi Mike, I don’t think I know more than you do… I was unhappy with Toluna, so I quit, and I posted this to tell people about my experience and possibly warn them. That is it, basically. I’m afraid I couldn’t be of any more help.
So you posted this and expected no one to answer? You do have a brain don’t you?
I’ve been a member of Toluna since I was 15. I didn’t do much back then, obviously not the sort of thing for a teenager, but now that I am 19 and have a bit more of an idea about the world and life in general, I started up again. I knew that it would take a while to hit the £15 voucher limit, but did that stop me? No, because it’s not a site for money, and ANYONE can tell you that. Plus, what’s wrong with getting a £15 voucher for putting in 20 hours of work? It’s free money and it’s not like you’re being worked hard – you’re doing a bit of clicking and conversing with people.
It’s not a perfect site, nothing is; the vouchers are delayed, they do send surveys that don’t always allow you in, and they take ages replying to your queries. With 1 million members I’m not actually surprised at that though. There’s no need for people to have one problem with a site and start blasting them though, seriously you did one aspect of this and expected a lot in very little time. It doesn’t work that way.
I’ve been fully active since February 2010, and have so far recieved one voucher physically, I have one on order due next week, and I have enough points to get 4 more vouchers – 6 vouchers in 5 months, how is that unfair and too much effort? You obviously only did the survey side – and you read the FAQs?? Don’t make me laugh!
6 vouchers in 5 months is what an average person can gain; it doesn’t take up too much time at all, hell most fo the people I’ve spoken to sit there and manage to get quite a lot of stuff done in their lunch hour! And 20 hours for a voucher is nothing compared to some sites where you have to do at the very least 20 half an hour surveys, which are all spread across the year – £15 in one month is the best reward around, and it takes no effort.
Yes the site has problems, and because of the volume of members siging up for the ‘free products’ rather than reading the T&Cs about what the ‘free’ products actually are, its no wonder they’re down for maintenance a lot with people joining and then abandoning or complaining because they didn’t get something straight off. People like that are just lazy if that’s all they join up for, and as far as Toluna goes it’s a ‘community’, not a ‘money making scheme’. Not everyone gets to test a product no, and considering there’s 200 products for about a million members how does that work out as ‘unfair’? They can’t give a million iPads out for crying out loud!
As for the lottery tickets, we don’t get them here in England, but if you waited 2 months and then decided to cancel your acount without contacting them (as they actually take 8 weeks to send it, not for it to arrive) then what do you expect? They would have been processing them at the time you cancelled, and as soon as you pressed that button they’d have been cancelled and not sent out. Your own fault on that one.
If you want fast and easy money, find a job. Websites don’t pay, and this is coming from a student who has very little experience under her belt – pathetic really how I’m probably the youngest on this thread and know more about it. Don’t sign up to survey sites like a gullible fool, not put the effort in and then complain about it and not expect people to try and set you straight. You were no help here to anyone whatsoever, all you’ve mentioned is the surveys and how you were being screened out. There’s no mention of the community side, the other rewards available, nothing – you spent 2 months on a site that takes 3 months to get used to. Useless info here.
To be quite honest, I wouldn’t want you on my site either.
Well thank you very much for sharing your thoughts, sir.
Thanks for creating this page, schoschie. Even though there are widely divergent views on this page, it helped me decide that I want nothing to do with Toluna. I received an email from them on an email account that I rarely use. It is quite possible that I generated the email by posting on some web site, but I don’t recall it. So when I went searching for info about Toluna, I found this page. Thanks again, schoschie!
ncc8
You’re welcome.
I’m still kind of amused about the way this page has evolved
I left all the comments on here, both pro- and contra-Toluna. In that way I think it’s possible for people to make their own judgement.
(Even though I presume those pro-Toluna comments aren’t really by Toluna users, but maybe I’m a little paranoid.)
I am honest! I just put my last £15 voucher towards the first 4 seasons of the BBC comedy Ideal.
Last voucher went towards my box set of Black Books. One before that was for Peep Show. I’m beginning to develop a habit for survey produced comedy box sets. 
I have been doing surveys for several years. Since Toluna took over, I have never been able to sign in, even after contacting ‘customer service’ a number of time and trying to re-set my password. I have NO idea how many points I might have…I was trying every survey until recently. The last two inquiries I have made via their ‘comments’ segment have gone unanswered. As far as I am concerned, they ARE a major scam.
I am with a few different survey sites and Toluna is one of my favourites. This bloke sounds like a real baby that did not get his own way and now wants to try and say that a multi Million dollar company is a scam. REALLY!!! They never said you’d get rich doing surveys with Toluna, and as far as saying that you need to do a "Zilloin" surveys to get any vouchers is rubbish. I have redeemed many times, so I think you really need to grow up just a little.
Very well said jmaria01, you have hit the nail right on the head mate. Cheers to you jmaria01!!!!
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/52502154@N07] You can’t have too much of "an idea about the world" if you think £15 for 20 hours of work — no matter how easy — is something to be happy about.
Quite true
everyone who replied your comments about Toluna being a good company is an Anonymous member.. Just another proof of their scam…
Thanks for posting this
Yup, what a coincidence
Read this with interest after receiving an invitation to Toluna email. Glad I found this thread, thanks for sharing!
They are trying to get me to advertise their business on my website. No thanks!
Dear Schoschie & others,
On behalf of Toluna I would like to give you some answers to your queries and assure you that our company is NOT a scam.
•Data Privacy regarding your survey data: If you cannot finish a survey for any reason, your questionnaire is considered as incomplete and your data is not transferred. Even Toluna does not keep this data.
•Survey Quotas: Surveys work with quotas for statistical reasons. For example if the study requests 100 men aged 25-35 years old, if you try to finish the survey as the 101st person, the survey will close. It is impossible to invite only the exact number of respondents required, as response to surveys from respondents can vary according to many criteria (day, time, target, weather…).
•Length of surveys: We strongly recommend that our clients keep surveys below 20 mins & we oppose surveys that could take more than 45 min to answer.
•Delivery time for Vouchers: Since we send such large batches of vouchers, it can take around 8 weeks for your voucher to be dispatched. We assure you that every voucher is sent and would like to highlight that we do not have control over the postal systems, which do sometimes have an influence over the delivery.
•Contacting Us: No account and no concern will be ignored as all of our members are equally important to us.
•Points: Are usually rewarded within 4 weeks of the survey’s closing date. Any member screened out is automatically given a free ticket into our monthly prize draw.
•Testing products: You will not receive a test product every time you sign up since there are lots of members signing up to test the products. Receiving a test product is also based on several things in your profile.
Many more questions can be answered on the FAQ and Tutorial sections of our site.
Above all, we would like to remind members that our site is not only a survey site, but a networking site and we pride ourselves on having a very sociable community. We do try to reward our members for their time as much as we can, though we believe that there is much more about us than just the rewards; it is a site where you can voice your opinion & socialise with other likeminded people. Please see our “About Us” section of our site for more information & an insight into what life is like on the site.
Once again we are very sorry that you didn’t enjoy your memberships on Toluna as many members have done worldwide over the last 9 years now, and hope that this email has clarified some important issues regarding our service.
Hi,
just read about Toluna on the add in facebook which I am kind of rediscovering now.
Thanks to all of you for your nice discussion about this company as this blog is the only source of information I found in google about Toluna which does not come from Toluna itself. Not even wikipedia makes a mention to this "network". Fact that to me is at least curious.
well schoschie,
concluding all the comments over here, should deactivate my toluna account?
Well, I deleted mine, and I’m not going to register again, but I don’t think I should decide for others…
How authentic this company is? If they are honest to pay then why do they take too much time?
How is it a scam? you don’t have to pay them money so they’re not scamming anyone
modjo30: It is a scam if you invest many hours of your time for them, for which they promised you a reward, but, in fact, you receive nothing. You might also call it a rip-off.
No schoschie, a scam is when a person or company/organisation takes money from you and you get nothing in return, you need to live in the real world
Dear Flikr members,
I am writing on behalf of Toluna. We spend a lot of time making sure that our members receive the vouchers they order and survey points for surveys they complete (these appear to be the most topical issues).
VOUCHERS: Since we send such large batches of vouchers, it can take up to 2 months for the voucher to be dispatched. We assure you that every voucher is sent and would like to highlight that we do not have control over the postal systems, which do sometimes have an influence over the delivery.
If you do not receive your voucher we always re-send it to you.
POINTS: Are usually rewarded within 6 weeks of the survey’s closing date. Any member screened out is automatically given a free ticket into our monthly prize draw.
The less complex surveys are awarded within 24 hours. Please see our latest blog for more information.
We currently have a lively and happy community on our site, which is used not only as a survey site, but also as a networking site.
We are sorry that some of the previous users above have not enjoyed their membership with us but hope that this message has helped clear up some confusion.
I can refute the above quite easily. I never received my voucher.
You need to badger them some more if you’ve not received your voucher (usually via email depending on the voucher in question). They really do give you the vouchers. I’ve had 3 or 4 now (I forget). Don’t have much time to use the site these days and recently left it, but it was perfectly OK for me as I’ve already commented on this photo before.
I have had a similarly bad experience with Toluna. Not only did I not receive my vouchers, but I did not receive any response to my emails asking where my vouchers might be. It would be nice if the Toluna representative above could explain why their customer service is so bad, particularly when related to the very incentive that gets consumers to join in the first place.
It should not take constant badgering in order to get through to these people, to the point that essentially they get free work, as I can imagine a lot of people try for some time, then give up.
A little effort would go a long way, as if they just employed a few more people to man the emails and sort these problems out, then they wouldn’t get comments such as the above slating them for ripping people off.
I am also getting exactly the same experience recently. I wqs with Caio and they were pretty good at paying via paypal. Now toluna has taken over and I have been chasing them for months to move my a/c over so I can withdraw my £100 they are holding via vouchers etc. However they keep on saying the a/c is being moved and now have stopped replying all together !!! How unprofessional and annoying that they have to resort to such menial behaviour to earn a living while praying upon innocent peoples time and effort. Surely there must be an organisation that we can complain about them to ?? Like an FSA or something similar
hmmm….I am soooo confused after reading the majority of these posts …..(sigh) !!
Yes, me too
I also had the same experience. I was with Ciao and they were very good and after Toluna took them over all the points that were in my account doesnt even show or it says runtime error log in later. The money that was there i couldnt even withdraw. Such an unprofessional behavior i havnt seen before.
Well, well. I for one have had no bad experience with Toluna. I take surveys, I collect points for the ones I complete and I have received payment. No complaints here. So, there ARE some of us who are happy with Toluna and have no problems.
It’s not a scam. If it were, I would be having problems, TOO! I am NOT having problems. Sorry the rest of you are, I am sure that it’s very frustrating.
Thanks for creating this thread schoschie. It’s given me some good insights in to Toluna. I wouldn’t call this site a scam (I can see where you’re coming from though), however I would say it takes up a lot of time and rewards are not always guaranteed if you do no fulfil stated requirements with website terms or if some other incident occurs.
Personally, I’m not prepared to spend my time filling out mass amounts of surveys for such a small amount of rewards (if you get them). In the long run, I would be losing money on the electricity I use to keep my laptop going to complete the surveys. If you do get the vouchers and rewards promised to you, that’s really only enough to compensate you for the time spent using your computer to complete the surveys.
Toluna isn’t a site to go on to make money, It’s really just there to get people opinions. In the long run, the users gain no marginal profit from the site.
If someone has a lot of opinions, some free time and is willing to share, then sure, Toluna is a good site for them and I just hope their vouchers and such comes to them. For the larger majority of people though, this type of survey site is not for them. I contribute to surveys I’m interested in on my own time with a few websites which don’t include any sort of reward. So it’s not like I don’t do what I can to contribute in certain topics.
Oh and the few of you which are insulting the original poster with comments like:
"This bloke sounds like a real baby."
"I think you really need to grow up just a little."
"So you posted this and expected no one to answer? You do have a brain don’t you?"
"pathetic really how I’m probably the youngest on this thread and know more about it."
"To be quite honest, I wouldn’t want you on my site either."
For people who sign up to opinion surveys you sure do have a lot a negative contradictory comments to bring across. The OP is just stating his experiences (both good and bad) with the company and the first thing that comes to your mind is to insult the guy and call him brainless?! *sigh*
Summary: Not really a scam but it takes up a lot of time. You make no real financial profit from it. A site mainly just to get opinions. Any rewards are meant as a bonus.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/52863208@N06] [http://www.flickr.com/photos/50396944@N07]
No modjo30,
A scam is defined by the following:
a stratagem for gain; a swindle
(tr) to swindle (someone) by means of a trick
Not necessarily anything to with "taking money from you"
I think you need to live in the real world, perhaps come out from your cave…troll
BEWARE!!!! Toluna is a total scam. First of all they don’t credit you with points you’ve earned.
Their excuse is your computer system is incompatible. Well, I’ve tried every system there is and still have problems.
Just today, 11-01-10, I went to their main web site. I had actually earned 81,577 points, which was surprising.
I tried to redeem 60,000 for $20. But before I could complete the process, their pages quit loading. Yet the 60,000 points were deducted from my account.
I clicked on their contact us link. That brought up another page, with a link that said click here. But clicking on that link brought up a blank page. So there’s not even a way to contact them.
And as far as their surveys, they’re ripping companies off who are paying them to conduct a survey for them. They word the surveys, so you are forced to pick wrong answers.
This company should be shut down and the owners in prison.
toluna is a total scam!!! anybody ever notice how the winners of those "random" drawings never actually have any account activity on their profile pages? no pictures, no tests/surveys taken or made, nothing! and they usually just made their account a few days before the drawing. Lucky huh?? that’s because they don’t exist! the whole drawing thing is to entice members into taking more surveys and generate more traffic to the site, and then when the time for the drawing rolls around, they create a fake account to make it seem like someone already won. it’s a very shady and disgusting business and I for one am glad you posted this. I’ve wasted too much of my time on that stupid site.
Their rewards system ( in Australia ) sucks. Bring back PayPal rewards instead of online CD vouchers from a company no one wants. I thank schoschie for bringing up this rant.
On a funny note, their website homepage says :
Welcome to Toluna!
The site that lets you voice your opinion and learn what other people think!
Ha , ha , ha…(right!)
Toluna is A #1 in my book — the surveys have dropped off quite significantly that I qualify for BUT I make it up in taking the daily sponsored polls. I don’t know of another site like it where you can post polls and topics, etc.
Dear Members,
I am an employee of Toluna and am writing on its behalf. We are sorry that some of you have been having trouble with your accounts and would like to help by addressing some of the issues some of you have brought up:
Vouchers – Since we send such large batches of vouchers, it can take up to 2 months for the voucher to be dispatched. We assure you that every voucher is sent and would like to highlight that we do not have control over the postal systems, which do sometimes have an influence over the delivery.
IF you do not receive your voucher we always re-send it to you. You must contact us if you do not receive your voucher after the two month period so that we can re-send it.
Prize Draw Winners & Product Testers – Our Prize Draw winners and product testers are selected by a computer and are completely random. Please note that prize draw winners have up to 15 DAYS to reply to our congratulatory email. If they do not reply to the email at winner@toluna.com (ie. If they are no longer a member, etc) another member is selected at random and wins the prize.
Below are links to a couple of examples of members who have won product tests recently:
us.toluna.com/opinions/681339/I-cant-believe-actually-tes…
us.toluna.com/topicpagev3.aspx?tid=688106&Sort=recent…
We do try to reward our members for their time as much as we can, though we believe that there is much more about us than just the rewards; our website is also a community site where members can share their opinions and communicate with people from around the world. We currently have close to 4 million members on our site and we hope that you will join them.
Many more questions can be answered on the FAQ and Tutorial sections of our site at uk.toluna.com/Help and uk.toluna.com/tour/Site/index.aspx.
We hope to see you soon on the site.
Kind Regards,
The Toluna Team
I have had nothing but good experiences with toluna. I have recently rejoined the site after not using it for around 4 years. In the first week I made 55000 points! You are not going to get rich off this site, if you want to make decent money you get a job! I go on the site for the community mostly, I am disabled so cannot work so its nice to be able to talk to people and get rewarded for my input.. My younger sister is on the site and thinks its amazing, she is only 16 and is getting on average two vouchers every three months, she uses them to buy peoples birthday/christmas presents.
I think its unfair to call it a scam, do they maybe seem to make it sound a bit more easy and glamorous then it actually is? yes, but at the end of the day there are a lot of companies who ask for your opinion for free! these may be small rewards but your getting something and I actually find some (not the long boring ones lol) of the surveys interesting. I have also had more freebies then I could mention. Not product tested big things like hdtv’s unfortunately but I have had so many, bubble bath, shampoos, crisps, chocolates etc.
Overall I think its a good site for people like me who can’t get out the house a lot, disabled, single parents, teenagers, andyone who wants to earn a bit of pocket money basically. Remember guys nothing comes free in this world, want to make REAL money? Then you have to work REAL hard
on the subject of toluna survey@toluna.com i keep getting the e.mails every day from this toluna.com they claim there in my safelist and that i have add them to my e.mail contacts what a total lie i have never subcribed to this crap yet the pester me continuesly i tryed to get a direct phone number for them so i could gave them a peace of my mind but no number to be had this is continuesly harassment by toluna i tryed to block the e.mail at SURVEY@TOLUNA its siaid i could not block as it was on my safe list when i check all my safe list it was not on there my firewall kept turning its self off wen i click on the e.mail SURVY@TOLUNA.COM my firewall has never don this befor till i start getting the crap e.mails i notice now when i did a scan a found a trojan on my computer i then found tracking cookies they were from toluna.com i want thes scum of my computer
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/56582694@N08]
EMPOLYEE OF TOLUNA GRATE SO I CAN FINALY HAVE MY SAY AT LAST
my personal details have been gaven to your but not by me and at no time have to gave yous any sutch permission to use my details you said yous had been added to my safe list on my computer why u telling lies for i have the computer here in front of me and ur no where in my safelist or contacts all i get is e.mails after e.mails demaning i do some crap service wen i go to block this e.mail SURVEY@TOLUNA.COM it says canot block as its added to my safelist what a total lie i would not do thes crap serveys if i was paid £100 aday for it its just big scam to draw people in you need to wise up and stop abusing the system
I’ve used Toluna for a year now and find it to be a decent survey site and I have not had any problems with them.
My only complaint is the fact that it has taken them 8 weeks to process the e-vouchers I have requested.
I am also a member of ‘Valued Opinions’ and as soon as you reach the £10 mark you can apply for a number of vouchers and they give you the code immediately.
8 weeks seems a very long period of time to produce a code that can obviously be created in a matter of seconds.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/54835937@N04] linda is an idiot
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/56582694@N08] your a fitlty liar. your site rips honest people off. you should be in prison you scum.
I am writing this to let you all know toluna is a scam website. They trick you out of everything they promise you. I would stay away from toluna.
Please no personal insults here, let’s keep the language civilised.
toluna is scam website for sure because they give you so many survey but the rewards are nothing and they even don’t select you for any test
I know this is another anonymous post but I think Toluna is simply a site for people who LIKE to complete surveys and LIKE to voice opinions about all kinds of products, also with other people (hence the community side of things).
Toluna makes money by giving these people the opportunity to do what they enjoy.
The rewards are just an extra, it should not be the goal of the site, after all hours of work for a few dollars is not much. It shouldnt be work, it should be somewhat fun for you. Otherwise the site is not for you and you should not subscribe.
They of course do some clever marketing to make you sign up and test their system by promising you that you will get real physical products in your mailbox. Thats maybe the only dodgy statement they make, and a lot of companies make dodgy statements in their ad campagns so I dont think thats that bad.
I joined last night, Spent over half an hour filling in my first survey only to be told at the end I don’t fit the criteria. Tried to contact them, contact page not working. Needless to say, account closed.
Soozy_bee you should contact the BBB. File a complaint as everyone should. Toluna likes to rip people off and not pay them. I really dont know how they are still in bussiness. Then you have someone claiming to work for toluna posting on here saying tolunna is not a scam. What a joke. Toluna ripped me off and they will rip you off as well. Dont trust toluna. There are way better survey sites. Try opinion outpost. They are not a scam.
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/56582694@N08] You are a liar. Quit rippping honest people off. I have reported Toluna to the BBB and everyone who reads this should too!!!! TOLUNA IS A SCAM SITE!!!!!
It’s not a scam. Sorry if people here don’t like my anonymity but I’m not a member of Flickr ordinarily and am not going to go through the whole process of signing up just for this. I’ve redeemed at least 4 times since becoming a member – once in 2008, and then twice in 2010 (when I began using the site again) and once more just today. Yes, the vouchers do take a long time to arrive, but ultimately I think you do get a lot more from Toluna than from many other survey companies (and I say that as an active member of Maximiles, MutualPoints and others).
Again, no personal insults please, people. Keep this civilised.
I laughed at the comment above "Dont trust toluna… Try opinion outpost. They are not a scam." lol!… Iv been a member since 2009 and i enjoy it. Iv got vouchers like 3 times in the past and iv not had any problems realy. i think some of the prize draw winners look fake becase theyr only on toluna for the surveys not topics/polls, like me. my profile is blank.. but i havent won the prize draw yet. fingers crossed!
WOW, didn’t read all of the post but I have to say I like Toluna. No you are not going to get rich by completing their surveys and polls but I have received several checks from them (in a timely manner) and products. There are some kinks and some of the surveys are BORING and some of the polls and opinion are silly (and/or stupid). And there are some sites out there that I didn’t like. I’ve had good luck with Toluna, ISay and Lightspeed! The checks may be small but they make me happy!
@ ms_tol You must be a toluna employee spreading your lies. You make me sick. TOLUNA IS A SCAM WEBSITE BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Toluna is a rip off company, I have completed 75-90% of a number of surveys and been told i do not qualify for the survey and have been screened out!!!!
Bollocks!!!!!
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/58503147@N06] fuck toluna they rob people
I think most people who are not happy with Toluna are people who are not honest with their information and answer questions only to get the survey points. Your answers are compared to your previous answers to see if you are being honest and if you are not you will not make most of these surveys. If you do make a survey and answer any questions in a way other than how you have answered them before on the site you will be considered dishonest and not get your points (such as changing your age to fit into a particular group). Toluna is one of my favorite sites even though I don’t qualify for a lot of surveys, I understand that different products are aimed at different populations therefore need a certain population to evaluate them. Stop hating and use some sense.
@mkyonmibck — that sounds reasonable but I don’t think that happens, because the surveys are usually run by different companies (Toluna just sends you there) and I doubt very much that they would share their (very valuable) data. Also, you would require a very sophisticated system that understands natural language for this kind of evaluation, since the questions are not in any way standardized or semantically categorized.
Also, I answered all my surveys truthfully, and still my experience was bad, as I described in my original post.
@mkyonmibck – you are an asshole and a liar. tolnuna owed me a voucher i worked over 12 months to get and they never sent it. then they like to trick you into doing a 50 minute survey and after 45 minutes of work you dont qualify. toluna will fuck you over and out
I have belonged to Toluna before they were Toluna. I’ve been pad my times and gotten to try product such as toilet paper, kitty litter, face wipes, etc. It only take a little of my time and there are so many ways to get points if you really want them. I cash out each month. I love them.
I have been with Toluna for a bit now. I have been paid(checks) on at least 6 occasions.While it is true you may not qualify for most of the surveys,the ones I have have been credited. The only complaint(s) I have had is the large point surveys take forever to credit(10,000 and up) and the length of time it takes for checks to be sent.The other complaint is the site is always glitching,making it impossible(as tonight) to get in,or lags so bad you cannot do polls/opinions. I also wish they would go back to the Pay Pal system as it was so much easier.
these servey companys is just like pyramidgames .. if u dont enter them at the start u wount get a dime… Stay far away from these things and who sits and fills in a servey for 90min for just some shity points.. lol
To Toluna: stop advertising about ppl geting to test products and advertise that u are a servey company directly instead just another scam from that company
My conclusion is this TOLUNA is scam and stay AWAY
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/58925318@N07] yea and u work for them
I am in the process of closing my Toluna account. I joined just over a year ago and although it took a while to build up the points and getting screened out of many half completed surveys was annoying I did start to receive vouchers. I then began to work on the community side of things and the points and vouchers built up big time. However a few months ago things started to really go downhill. There were problems with the web site, problems with points being credited, problems with voucher delays. I am currently owed 5 vouchers, (that’s £75 worth in the UK). They are claiming that 2 of them were sent to me weeks ago and I have never received them. The prize draws are nothing short of a joke as the people who win them are either closed profiles or brand new members who have had no input on the site. Now they are telling us what we can and can’t post in our opinions which I ma guessing is a means to cut down on the opportunities to earn points. I’m not sure if they are only doing this to their UK memebers or if it’s a worldwide thing. I just hope I manage to at least get my other three outstanding vouchers.
Bloody Toluna deleted my account recently and then INSIST that I unsubscribed it myself. I mean, come on!I still have over 12000 points on it and if I am thinking of closing my account, I would have cashed in the points first! Somehow, they do not subscribe to the reasonable man standard.
I suspect it is because they are trying to avoid giving me my reward as I cashed in 60 pounds worth of amazon vouchers. That was in January 2011 and I still have not received them. The most annoying thing is the reward takes FOREVER to be processed and arrive.
If you look closely at the ‘points’ you get per survey, you are sometimes getting like 80p per 20 minute survey. That is really low as compared to the millions in profits they raked in recently. That’s how they make their money!
Avoid like the plague. It is well and truly a Mickey Mouse operation, and not the nice kind.
We had a poor experience too. My partner has been building points for the last year, decided to exchange them for £30 worth of ‘love to shop’ vouchers in October 2010, it is now nearly April 2011 and we are still waiting, after opening a support case with Toluna to investigate they came back to us saying they got sent to an address that was NEVER registered with them. And now say they cannot be re-send and there is nothing they can do. I find this very contradictory as a Toluna employee wrote on this thread saying ‘if you do not receive your voucher you must contact us after 2-months and they will be re-sent’ but this clearly is not the case with us, they are constantly saying now ‘there is nothing we can do’ every though we can clearly show it was an error on the part of Toluna. We are very upset but will continue to argue our case. Does anyone know of a governing body that could be contacted to take this further? As Toluna have simply stopped investigating and are repeatedly saying ‘there is nothing we can do’. Any help would be appreciated.
This comment thread is effing brilliant. I saw the ad on Facebook, thought it sounded cool but due to general suspicion of deals that sound too good to be true, I googled it and this page popped up.
I APPLAUD YOU, DEAR SIR.
I myself work for a market research company and whatever toluna is doing sounds like a complete gyp/scam/rip-off. No decent, reputable market research company would be so horribly inefficient in doing what it does. Their excuse of these vouchers being a gift is a horrible facade for the truth; the truth is that yes, market research companies WILL give respondents a gift for their time and effort, but damn it, respondents don’t need to bargain and wait for months to get a reply or their vouchers.
Putting in 30 hours to earn a couple of bucks which you still need to haggle with the company over is completely unethical and just downright low. Doling out vouchers to 5 out of 10 people who deserve them is not something to be proud about; their standard should be managing to keep up with their system and giving out their vouchers to EVERY SINGLE PERSON who’s done their bit for this company. Saying they’ll give something but not living up to it is a fucking failed promise, and displays a completely shoddy management (the folks who manage the scams) and frontline service (people complaining about useless customer service, and all that).
I spit on companies like these, and all the people they’ve paid above to say how wonderful and fantastic toluna is. Well, these buggers are probably getting paid in vouchers that they’ll never receive, so jolly good for them.
Thanks a lot, Schoschie, for revealing the truth about this turd-filled excuse of a company.
throwaway1234, please don’t post people’s personal information. It is not a fair thing to do. It is okay not to agree with anything someone posts here, but it is not okay to pillory someone personally. However, because the info posted was/is publically available and since there is no direct threat involved, I am not deleting the post.
Please try to stick to the facts and don’t turn this into a personal bashfest. Thanks.
Allright; the person in question has e-mailed me that she has in fact received personal threats. This may or may not be true, but I deleted the post with her personal information anyway. I also deleted her original comment.
Please refrain from attacking people personally. It helps no-one. Thank you.
Hmm.. and for those who think that the site takes long to deliver your rewards only ‘cos it’s a big company doesn’t make sense to me. It’s now a world of delivering what you promise, and delivering on time. So what if it’s not a money making scheme, but give what you promise? Why do you want to haggle someone for so long? This makes me think if would they tolerate the same thing being done to them by their clients? Never. They just take the people for granted, I’m sure. And someone said, they take time with everything cos they have a million users. Well, in that case, DO NOT allow a million memberships if you can’t handle it. You’re not doing anyone a favor by finally issuing their voucher after 12 weeks. And many here even complained of discrepancies in account balances and things like that, and no replies to their emails whatsoever? This goes on to say the business ethics this company follows. If it were really concerned about its real force-drivers, the panelists, it would have diverted a majority of their time and consideration towards resolving their issues, and treating it on a priority basis. They seem to face all the technical issues possible, on the face of this Earth, but somehow shooting emails, that area remains unaffected. Mysterious. And even those of you, who got your vouchers, do you have even one instance where you got it in one shot? No. Probably no one has. It’s only after you chase them for long, do not give up, that they issue it. What does this indicate? They try and ignore you at first to see if that works. And I’m sure in most cases it does. So, now imagine the number of people going uncompensated and how this company keeps all the earnings to itself.
I am on Toluna yet, signed up a few days ago, taken a few surveys, and yes, they make-do with plenty of my information before telling me I don’t fit. What’s the most one can need to judge you if you are eligible or not? Age? Employment status? Sex? Industry you are occupied in? Why the heck your position, your household income, the office computer operating systems… and then get told, oh no, this doesn’t fit, sorry, but here, a voucher for a lottery! Even this screening process takes at least 10 minutes of yours. Never have gotten a complete survey myself, wondering what it is like.
These guys are making a lot of money, and it’s well, a shame if they can’t even provide something as measly as these vouchers to people who take their time out and do the job for them.
And modjo30, here’s the definition of scam for you:
a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation, Deprive of by deceit.
To ask someone for their services is like offering a job or hiring someone, and then not compensating for it as promised, IS a scam. But people who still believe this to be a fair way of doing business, well, all the best.
-twelvedegreesnorth@hotmail.com
Sorry to hear that some of you are not happy with Toluna. I am awhitehill on Toluna and I’ve been a member since 9/10. There was a survey that took me 25 minutes to do and in the end it asked me what my race was, which after I answer I got disqualified. It did not say they had enough people within the group. I was not happy about that. They should have asked that info bio stuff in the beginning. So I said to myself I’m not taking anymore surveys that is 25 minutes or more even if the points were large. Most of the surveys I do now are for 1200 to 3000 points and if it takes longer than 10 minutes I would quit. Before I decided to stick with Toluna I did have my doubts. Sure I have not won any prize yet but have moved up a level and have earned bonus points. I did get to test a product once. I think because I did not like the product, I am no longer on the list to test products perhaps? I used to do surveys for opinion outpost but since their upgrade I have not qualify for anymore surveys. To date I have earn $100 from Toluna. So my suggestions are to vote for points, post interesting topics, and do short surveys or surveys that offer smaller points. I’m not a rep or am getting paid for my comment. Just thought I’d comment.
My experience was similar to the top of the page- finish 30-40% of a survey then "screen out". Also- don’t even bother registering for items to test. Then I found out that not only were the rewards for dodgy online retailers only (CD WoW for example), they expire almost immediately (within a day or two) and can’t be used for 80% of the merchandise on the site. Maybe in the UK they are OK but in Australia it’s not a full scam but definately dodgy. I am a member of a couple of other survey sites with whom I have a good relationship and who actually send out products once in a while. John C from Perth. (Not an anonymous slagger, but not putting my full name or address on here.)
ANY ONE WORK FOR TOLUNA? I NEED YOUR HELP.
Toluna rejected me to redeem my check 3 times.
I DON’T have 2 accounts, the reason i’m so angry is,There is only me in my household doing the survey, and only me using my computer, and I only open one account, why they said i have 2 accounts? that’s why i keep e mail them I’M INNOCENT, and toluna have to provide me evident that what’s my second account is? I AM DEFINITELY SURE they made mistake, their customer service is lazy or don’t care us, how come don’t reply my e mails at all, if i really have 2 accounts, why they keep sending me e mail survey invitation they can just froze my account, why they want to take my survey opinion if i’m screw them. MORE IMPORTANT, toluna’s incentive are very bed cOMPARE TO OTHER survey company, if i want to cheat i will find other high pay company to cheat, no need to spend 25 mins to do a $0.60 survey. most of my other survey company i join, for 25mins survey i get pay at least $1.50 to $3. PLEASE KNOW, I’M NO TRYING TO CHEAT
Anyone has the same experience ??? The toluna rejected redeem my check, they said I have multiple account which is not, i only has one account. So I send them support ticket, buy it has been 4 weeks, but no repy back. And Toluna everyday still send me survey to do. if I have multiple account they should already suspend my account why they keep send survey to do, and not let me redeem my hard effor money. Happened to anyone ???
The way Toluna operates suggests that they have serious cash flow problems. I have seen posts that suggest that they have no line-of-credit with Amazon, despite the fact that Amazon vouchers are the most popular choice of people redeeming points. I have to wonder if Amazon do not trust them to make timely payments – Toluna certainly keep members waiting for earned rewards interminably.