A little peeved... & confused

OK... I know all of us try to do these surveys or product testing. However, how do you answer when they ask you "are you currently reviewing another product for a different company?" or something along that nature.

I always am truthful.... but it seems that I'm missing out on ALL of them for being truthful. What do these companies want? Someone who has NEVER done a product test in their life?

What do you do? How do you answer?

I guess I am missing out too. My friend does tons of PT's, but she says she has never done them.

If you're like me, you have no memory of the preceding 3, 6 or 9 months, so just say no!

same here, I cant lie... so I miss out. pisses me off sometimes... LOL I finally gave up trying to even get any. havent even done a survey in a llllllllllooooooooonnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg time. I got to where I never got anything out of them.

I have missed out on a few because I told the truth..one of them was a $75.00 focus group..that really ticked me off. And the thing was that they wanted to know if I had participated in ANY kind of market research. So it didn't matter that what I had done previously had nothing at all in any way to do with what the focus group was about.. go figure...

The thing that's wonky about that question is that they're sending you this question through a survey company or research group that regularly sends you surveys to take. So yeah, it's very much a trick question. I admit to having checked the "Never" box before. Usually while ranting and raving about the stupidness of the question.

The one question that has me confused is the one that asks how many email addresses you have that you check at least once a week. I have 2. Don't we all have 2? A junk one and one we'd rather not have filled up with crap trying to sell Viagra and Russian wives? So having 2 mail addresses means I can't participate in a community board for a product? Whatever!

I lie and say I have one email. I have two but I sure as hell am not about to give them my other so they don't need to know it exists.
As for the others I only answer yes if I have had a PT or a decent paying one. The 45 min $1 survey stopping me from getting that PT... never happened. I also ALWAYS lie to OTX. ALWAYS. I am 11 and I work in three or four of teh listed categories short and sweet. And no I feel no guilt whatsoever from lying to them.

I always lie to OTX, too. Anything to disqualify and get out of there ASAP. Because I'd rather DQ now than after 25 minutes.

I am going to try that, I always get stuck with a loooong one, then dq

I actually do only have the one e-mail. I just set my spam filter to permanently delete a lot of stuff.

As to if I'm doing another survey or PT... I answer yes if I'm doing a related one. For example, if I'm doing a diaper PT, then I'll admit to it on a survey about diapers. If the survey is about telephones, I'll say no. Otherwise I'll DQ for something that really doesn't matter.

Like Chelle, I've been out of the survey game for quite a while. But I'm working my way back in as of last week.

Well, I emailed this company and complained, and basically stated how unfair it was that they would promptly end my survey after "have you done a product testing within the past 6 months"... and I asked them "do you REALLY think you're gettign people who have never done a product test"??

Well, I got an email back, and they admit that they believe a portion of their database is filled w/ people who probably have lied about doing a PT in the past and that they know most of the people who are on their site HAVE done a PT before. I guess my question to them is.... WHY have that darn question there then?

Here is what I am thinking. the companies want to pick folks who have never had a PT bfore they want fresh meat.

the survey companies know that most people lie, and expect people to lie. they are just doing what the customer wants, and we all know what idiots the CEO's of companies are. I mean look at the purpose for this board....

Just sayin....

My friend always told me( about men but anyway) Lie,cry and deny lol

Chelle, the only real reason I can see for a company wanting fresh meat is because they don't plan on paying them anything. If they have people who have tested before and expect something for their efforts they are going to get all kinds of attitude and probably get negative feedback, or at least more than they normally would have if they were paying a fair price for someone's efforts. I have stopped taking post-test surveys if they aren't willing to offer me anything for it.

I rarely get PTs. In over eight years of doing online surveys, I've gotten about five PTs spread across three survey companies. I've also been told in the past that a PT is coming and it never shows, maybe an additional three times. Not much of a track record.

As for email addresses, I have one. I filter out incoming emails into multiple directories to save time. I don't think that particular question is really a deal-killer on those surveys. I think they simply use it as a graceful exit after they've already decided you don't qualify for their forum/PT/commuspace.

Of course, I also DQ out of ALL of the Invokes, Neilsen, and Commuspace surveys anyway because I'm a Linux user. I hate to add up all of the $$ I've lost because of that (but not enough to have paid for a whiz-bang new computer and MicroSquish software). If their programmers would simply stick to international browser standards instead of sucking up to MS, Mac and Linux users would be good to go. But that's another rant.

I'm considering making a New Year's Resolution not to do non-paying surveys unless they look like they lead to a PT or other reimbursement. I will continue doing the university studies even if I dump the commercial site ones, even if they're only for lotteries, since they're for a good cause and often very interesting.

You must be in a difficult demographic, Nyssa. I think there have been times when I may have had 5 PTs going on simultaneously. One might be a lotion, one a frozen food, one a snack food, one a paper product, and one...I don't know, you get the idea. I know that having my kids out of the house now is going to hurt me. Many times they're interested in the views of teens, especially on snack foods, cereals, and frozen foods. I seem to get a lot of anti-aging type PTs now, though. Lotions and such.

I find it really helpful to troll the survey boards over at SlickDeals, because people will often give a heads up on a particular survey number as to whether it actually turns out to be a pt or not. It saves me some time, although it can be irritating too, when I see other people getting a PT that I don't get offered.