Survey Junkie – What I Wish I Knew Before I Started

Get paid for just taking surveys!  Yea, but…

I’ve heard that taking surveys is a waste of time for very little pay. Challenge accepted! I signed up with Survey Junkie. There is a download that installs on your computer. Without it, you can’t take surveys. If you uninstall it, no surveys will appear in your Survey Junkie dashboard.

Let’s just dig right into it. After I set my account and logged in, the left navigation pane contains the points accumulated from taking surveys. Each point equals 1 U.S. cent, so 100 points = $1.00. Just below the points summary and the ‘Redeem Now’ button, there is a section called ‘Get Higher Paying Surveys’.

• General Profile
• Technology Profile
• Shopping Profile
• Health Profile
• Household Profile
• Interests Profile
• Travel Profile

It’s necessary to go into each section and answer the questions to set up your profile. Companies use that information to determine if you’re eligible for their surveys. There are about 14-19’ish questions in each section. Don’t embellish. Answer truthfully. They can be updated at any time. The right side of the page displays the available surveys along with the number of points to be earned and approximately how many minutes it will take to complete. There is no indication what the surveys are about until you start taking them.

Are the surveys real?

Yes, and here is a real example of one survey I took for The Hartford Auto Insurance. I had to compare various mock-up print ads for a direct mailing campaign, each phrased slightly differently. The point was, if I received the advertisement in the mail, which ad would entice me enough to check out their offer.

Will you always qualify for a survey?

No, and this part was extremely frustrating. As I stated above, it’s important to answer the questions in your Profile section to get higher paying surveys, but… I’d click on a survey, answer the typical age, race, zip code questions and then begin the survey, only to have it tell me, “Sorry, you don’t qualify”, “Sorry, you broke the rules”, “Sorry, the survey is full”. That last one was the most annoying because I’d be in the middle of a survey and suddenly their quota was reached. Boom! They’d abruptly slap you off the tit at the very moment and not allow you to finish it. Some surveys got hung up and wouldn’t display the next page. One time there was a coding error and the code, along with an error message displayed on the screen. If I refreshed the page to attempt to reload it, then “I broke the rules”.

Time to cash out

I got tired of the apologies. It was also extremely frustrating when a survey lasted beyond 10 minutes because the line of questioning was so repetitive. I stopped and guesstimated how many hours I had wasted for a grand total of $10.48. I decided to cash out. I clicked on the option to get an Amazon credit. They “sent” a verification email to me with a code I had to enter. I never received it. I get all their other emails, but that email never arrived. Then I chose to get paid by PayPal, instead. I was directed to log into my PayPal account, which I did. Was returned back to Survey Junkie and once again, they “sent” me another verification email with a code. That never arrived, either. After much clicking around in my account, I discovered that you cannot be paid unless you submit a copy of a photo ID like a driver’s license or government ID. Well, hell, I thought that was over-stepping it, especially when I saw they would be using… wait for it, wait for it, facial recognition software to scan your photo. Oh, HELL NO! The thing is, they don’t tell you that upfront when you sign up. I spent hours taking surveys, the companies got their results, Survey Junkie got paid by the companies, but I can’t get paid until I allow them to invade my privacy even further by allowing them to scan my face?

You will never get any verification emails until you send them a photo ID. They say they do it because of fraud. What are they going to verify a photo against? It’s overreaching. You are giving them PII, personal identifying information.

Biggest time waster, EVER

Just don’t do it.