Should you sign up for MySurvey?

There are so many different survey sites out there, hoping to attract your participation as a panelist with different incentives. Which ones should you sign up for? Which ones should you not bother wasting your time one? Which ones are just outright scams? It can be hard to tell. Survey sites are run by companies that often merge or change hands behind the scenes, and the quality of each individual site can change over time. It’s important to look at the reputation of a site currently as well as in the past when you’re deciding to trust them with your time and personal information. Today, I want to focus on a site that’s been around for a lot of years but that has also seen some of these ups and downs recently: MySurvey.com.

First of all the background: MySurvey was originally established by market research company National Family Opinion, or NFO. NFO has been performing customer surveys by mail and telephone since the 1940’s, so you can say they have a lot of experience in this area! They began conducting market research via the internet in 1995 with MySurvey. In 2010, MySurvey was acquired by Lightspeed Research, and the two online panels were merged to run under the combined MySurvey name. They now conduct online research surveys in over 70 countries, an incredibly large survey site managing tons of data.

MySurvey runs like most other survey sites out there. You sign up and provide demographic information, which is used to help screen you for surveys. You take surveys and are rewarded with points and, sometimes, sweepstakes entries. The points can be exchanged for products and merchandise, PayPal cash, Amazon cards, restaurant gift cards, and other prizes.

So the real question remains: Should you sign up for MySurvey? If you look back at the site’s reputation in the past few years, you’ll find that it is pretty solid. The company is legit and the site is not a phishing scam, it really exists to provide market research and people who fill out the surveys report getting paid their money or merchandise earned for their time. The company has been in business for decades and has a reliable reputation. Several survey reports from a few years ago give MySurvey high ratings and suggest it as a great site for users with high-paying surveys and an overall enjoyable experience.

Unfortunately, reports from the past few months paint a much different picture. Even in the months directly after being acquired by Lightspeed, things seemed to be going just fine for MySurvey. But in the second half of 2013, complaints about the company picked up dramatically, some even claiming a My Survey scam. Many respondents reported problems with getting their payouts. Company policy is slow on payments, taking up to 13 days even to process PayPal pays, which are instantaneous at other sites. Surveys at MySurvey have been reportedly slow to come recently, if at all. It looks as if there was a two month period during which no one received any surveys at all, and now replies from customer service state that their goal is to get out at least one a month. That’s incredibly slow paced and not worth the effort for most survey takers. Worse, the BBB has record of over 50 complaints in the past year against this company. MySurvey / Lightspeed maintains an A rating because they have responded to each complaint, but compared to other companies of the same size that’s an unusually high complaint rate.

Should you sign up for MySurvey? I’d take a wait and see approach for right now. This company is too big and has too much history to simply collapse a massive online marketing group. These are professionals: I suspect that the problems they’re having right now are likely to be addressed appropriately and will be resolved in a matter of time. However, it’s no fun to be caught up in that mess. You may want to stay clear for a few months until signs point to a more reliable and engaging experience at MySurvey.