ePoll Surveys Review: Is This a Legit Site?

e-Poll Surveys is among the most overlooked panels around. The site doesn’t pay very well per survey nor does it frequently feature in my list of top five survey panels. However, I still decided to review the website solely on the basis of the panel existing for such a long period of time.

History of ePoll

The parent company of e-Poll Surveys is Bridge Entertainment Inc. ePoll Market Research is known for its distinctive E-Score Celebrity Rating system. This system tags more than 40 unique attributes to every popular personality. This is then matched to particular brands, products, advertising campaigns etc.

e-Poll Surveys’ tenure in this industry has lasted over 13 years and the company has served clients from a wide range of sectors including automobiles, television, entertainment, pharmaceutical etc.

The company provides a wide range of qualitative and quantitative consumer research to entertainment and media companies, other agencies and even companies belonging to the Fortune 1000 club.

Having started in 1997, e-Poll Surveys first introduced newer panel recruiting methods and incentive programs, which the online market research industry has adopted wholeheartedly since then.

The panel mainly offers surveys that conduct research on the attitudes and behaviors of consumers towards the media and entertainment sectors.

Members of this panel get the chance to take part in marketing research that is exclusively related to the entertainment sector.

As for rewards, e-Poll Surveys offers points that can be redeemed for gift certificates from popular online stores.

The parent organization of e-Poll is based out of California and is a BBB accredited business. It holds an A+ rating with the agency, which is about as good an endorsement of its legitimacy as you can find.

What Happened to www.epoll.com?

If you have been with this site as long as I have, you would notice the difference in its name and website address.

The site used to be called ePoll.com. But recently it has migrated from its earlier domain to a new one. You can now find the site at epollsurveys.com with no changes to the site itself.

Membership

Becoming a member of this site is, and will always be, free. However, the site accepts members from only the United States.

In order to become a member of the site, you will need to fill out a form and provide certain details about yourself. You will then be required to confirm the registration via email.

Your first survey awaits you once you are done with these formalities. Completing the same earns you 100 points, which kick starts your foray into earning more rewards with the site!

You are sent an invitation whenever a survey comes up. The email invite usually talks about the survey’s compensation and occasionally, the topic(s) involved.

How frequently you receive these invitations is something that entirely depends on your profile and demographic. For instance, I receive around a couple of invites per week. The frequency also changes with time.

Surveys that require you to watch TV shows and review them are quite rare. However, I still do get them at intervals of two months or so. It’s best if you can take a survey as soon as it comes up. This is because surveys get filled up quite fast.

The average duration for most surveys is around 10-15 minutes with some hitting the hour mark due to inclusive tasks like video watching.

Most surveys from e-Poll are based on advertising and entertainment. A few might require you to watch certain shows on TV (usually those airing on cable TV).

This makes them very attractive for people who actively follow TV shows. For instance, I’m into talk and reality TV shows in a big way so I’ve received my share of surveys based on those topics.

However, the most fun surveys are the ones that ask you to watch a particular show and afterwards, ask your opinion on the same. Yes, the length of such surveys is often beyond half an hour or more but you get to entertain yourself in that time and get to watch stuff that hasn’t been aired till now.

You might also be asked to watch a show when it actually airs on TV. In such cases, you are sent the survey the following day, which you can answer to review the show.

There is also a possibility of you being sent DVDs of movies or TV shows for home viewing. However, these are again rare since I got them only a couple of times.

Having said that, don’t be fooled into expecting similarly pleasant surveys from e-Poll all the time. At times, you can be asked about certain TV shows, characters and celebrities.

You are asked if you know anything about them and if you reply in the affirmative, a barrage of repetitive and boring questions will be put to you asking about your thoughts on a particular topic.

Personally speaking, questions that need you to associate different persons on TV shows with personality traits are very dull.

The duration of such surveys also directly depends on the kind of familiarity you share with the topics under discussion. I tend to skip them at times as the reward is not worth the effort and time put in.

Compensation for Surveys

In keeping with the industry standards, followed by panels like Opinion Outpost, e-Poll uses the points system to compensate its members.

Usually, the average rate for most surveys is around 500-1000 points. There might be some that pay lesser while some others might enter you into sweepstakes.

However, in what is a positive, your account’s point balance is updated the moment you complete a survey.

You can check the balance of these points by navigating to your e-Poll account and clicking on the tab titled “e-Poll Rewards”.

Cashing Out

The reward options available to members include PayPal and gift cards.

• Gift Cards / PayPal

For gift cards, you have the option of choosing from retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, Home Depot, Target and many restaurants. Your minimum amount for cashing out is $5 (gift card or PayPal deposit).

The points you require to earn the same are 3500.Conversely, the highest amount of money you can cash out is $30 (again via PayPal deposit or gift card). You’ll need 17250 points to do the same.

In what is a downer, however, the waiting period for processing rewards is between 6 to 8 weeks. I had to wait a few weeks before the receiving the reward myself.

Apart from this time delay, I didn’t have issues of any sort when cashing out through gift codes from Amazon.com or even PayPal deposits.

• Donation to Charities

Poll allows you to donate some of your earnings to any charity you choose, which is something I really appreciate and like. The company enjoys associations with many charitable institutions of repute.

You can know more about these charities by visiting the e-Poll Reward Store, which hosts a list of such places that benefit from your donation. It includes one of my favorite, Humane Society.

Additionally, for every 2,500 points that you donate from your account, a donation of $3 from the pockets of e-Poll will go to the charity you choose.

Review of ePoll Based on My Experience

e-Poll is a legit and good site although it’s not without its limitations.

1- Points taken away for inactivity
It was back in 2010 when I was so busy with my personal life that I just didn’t have much time to be active with every survey sites. So I had chosen to be active on a select few, which ePoll wasn’t one of them. And as you can see from the screenshot below they deducted 2000 points from my account.

I don’t really understand why some sites do that. It’s just not fair and frankly I think it alienates many people.

2- Login issue
There is also the issue with logging in. The account login process is as much a test of patience as it’s of wills. I had to get a new password not once or twice but four times!

And no, I didn’t forget my password as I use the same one across all survey websites. It’s e-Poll that keeps changing my password intermittently without even informing that I am supposed to log in and choose a new password.

3- Not a user friendly site
There is also the patchy navigability of the site. It actually seems like the whole operation is overseen by a 13 year old from his mother’s basement. This is strange as the company backing this site is quite reputed and well-established.

4- Not enough information
You will find almost no information on the webpage and worst of all, it requires you to enter your password when navigating between the homepage and the FAQs webpage.

Quite easily, this is the most ridiculous site I’ve experienced in recent times. In fact, logging in to an online bank account is easier than this.

Conclusion

To sum it up, I’d recommend joining e-Poll Surveys especially if you are into watching movies and TV shows regularly. It’s even better if you’ve got cable as e-Poll’s surveys are mostly about what airs on cable television.

Yes, the site’s pay per survey is not as good as some other sites, and invitations are not that frequent, so you wont be earning much with this site.

But as I mentioned in this review, the plus point with ePoll is that its surveys are quite fun. This is most apparent in cases of surveys based on new advertisements or TV shows.