Opinion Place Review: a Legitimate Survey Site to Join?

Opinion Place is a rather new entrant into the world of paid survey panels as I realized its presence only very recently. However, now that I’ve spent enough time being part of the site, I think it’s time to give you my Opinion Place review.

So, here it goes!

Company Profile

uSamp (United Sample Inc.) is the parent company of Opinion Place and is a well-known and legal business that finds itself mentioned on both the Forbes “Most Promising Companies” list as well as Inc. 500.

The survey panel is free and anyone wishing to air their opinions in exchange for rewards can join here.

Opinion Place conducts surveys on behalf of a large number of major companies, who pay top dollar to know your opinions. The company’s surveys are spread out over a wide variety of topics including entertainment, sports, new products, shopping, and even financial services.

This survey panel made its online foray first in the year 2000 when they were part of AOL, which was how a majority of the people connected to the web back then. The company smartly changed over to a World Wide Web based website some years ago.

The age of a survey panel is never the biggest sign of its legitimacy. However, it still is a very important one as many overnight survey panel operators tend to shut shop the moment people start to realize what they are up to.

I’ll accept that I could’ve searched around for some more concrete signs before declaring this website safe to join. However, I had a strong positive gut feeling about this one. For any questions regarding the legitimacy of the site, my answer is simple and clear.

I should also mention that USamp is a member of some of the biggest market research associations such as ESOMAR (European Society for Opinion and Marketing Research), CASRO (Council of American Survey Research Organizations), MSPA (Mystery Shopping Providers Association) and ARF (Advertsing Research Foundation).

As for the BBB and how it rates OP, my search revealed a not so satisfying F rating on a scale of A+ to F. But, at the same time, there was no complaints against the site whatsoever.

That to me shows that the rating is not based on any wrong doing on the part of OpinionPlace, but rather is based on the ill rating system of the BBB that tend to give sites that don’t manage an active profile with them, lower ratings.

How Opinion Place Works?

To be able to participate in their online studies, you can sign-up with the site for free through the “Get Started” option displayed on the homepage of its website. People already possessing an account can simply log in after clicking the above option.

Once you are registered, you are eligible to receive survey invitations via email. However, I receive them very rarely and so find it much more worth my time to just log in to my account and take the available surveys. This is also quite easy to do.

Unlike other panels like Opinion Outpost surveys that only allow you to choose your redemption option once you have some earning in your account, this site gives you the option to choose how you get paid before you even take the survey.

Before you attempt to take a survey, the site will ask you about your preference regarding the reward you’d like for qualifying and completing a survey. The options you need to choose from include PayPal credits, Amazon gift cards, sweepstakes entries, and AAdvantage miles.

My choice is usually PayPal as each survey here only pays in the range of a few dollars or even lesser.

Once you choose your reward and fill up the requisite demographic information and email ID spaces, you can attempt to qualify for a survey by clicking on “Take a survey now”.

You will then be put through some specific demographic questions to gauge if you qualify for any of the various surveys Opinion Place offers through different survey companies.

The questions you’ll be asked can cover many topics like which financial products you’ve invested in, which personal care items you purchase, or even which medications you buy regularly.

These questions usually carry on for a few pages before OP finds a survey to match your answers. As such, this exercise does become a little time-wasting as we attempt to answer every qualifying question.

There is a possibility that at times, the site will not be able to zero-in on a survey matching your answers. In such cases, all you can do is try again the next day for any new surveys coming up.

Taking the Actual Surveys

On achieving qualification for a survey, you are directed to the main survey.

Note that the survey itself is not hosted on Opinion Place but is arranged through a different survey company.

Once you are done with the survey, you are brought back to their official website which is Opinionplace.com. You are then asked to click on the “Finish” button, which helps you claim your reward.

Immediately afterwards, you’ll also get a receipt for completing the survey with additional details like date, study/survey number, and the type and amount of reward included.

You have the option of either printing this page or taking a screenshot for use later in case your payment doesn’t arrive. However, I’ve never faced an issue with getting payments and it usually arrives within a week or two.

A word of caution, though; this company is very strict when it comes to members taking too much time with its surveys. If the site thinks you are spending too much unnecessary time on a survey, your reward is withheld. A screen might appear either in the middle of the survey or at the very end informing you about too much time being taken up and asking you to retry in 15 minutes.

Normally, neither can you get through this screen nor can you rewind to the survey again in order to claim your reward. As such, I’d really recommend against sitting on one survey for unnecessarily long periods.

There is also the small matter of you being allowed to take a survey only once in every seven days. So, once you are finished with a survey, a wait of another seven days beckons before you can take another.

If you ask me, this is huge downer for them. At the same time, if you do not qualify for a particular survey, you have to wait an entire day before repeating your attempt at qualification.

Rewards

The site pays you in the range of $1.00 to $5.00 as per the length of the survey in question. Some of the site’s surveys stretch longer than their stated duration while including repetitive questions.

It also depends a lot on the topic at hand. Surveys concerning financial subjects are usually boring and long, which means I usually tend to avoid them if possible.

However, surveys based on personal care items are comparatively more fun and if you are lucky, you can even get a go at product testing.

Getting Paid

As I outlined earlier, you need to select the rewards you prefer at the time of signing-up. However, this choice isn’t a onetime by any means. If you want to switch over to PayPal credits later on instead of American Airline miles, sending a message to the support staff does the job.

Currently, there are 4 options as far as getting paid goes:

1. PayPal
2. Amazon.com Gift Certificate
3. AAdvantage Miles
4. A Chance to win cash or prizes

I would deem their payments as pretty decent. Once I registered, it was a few days before I got a survey invitation. The survey in question was worth $5 and I completed it in roughly 15 minutes.

That is not bad at all! In fact, the site estimated that I would take close to 20 minutes to do so, which in the end turned out to be pretty accurate!

And now comes the best part. This site is one of the very few panels that don’t have any minimum limit for cashing out!

Yes, you read that right. Honestly speaking, this is one policy that I’d want every survey panel to adopt wholeheartedly as I know how it frustrating it can be to be very close to the minimum cash out limit and not receive any new invites for weeks on end.

Having said that, in some cases, you need to be prepared to wait for at least a month to receive the same.

Problems With the Site

Although I don’t intend to be a fault-finder, I deem it to be a disservice to the faith reposed by my readers to not dwell on the shortcomings of Opinion Place or any other survey panel that I review.

Starting off, OP is anything but the perfect survey site. However, there should be absolutely no doubts about its authenticity or genuineness. Neither is the site going to siphon off your important personal information nor is it going to make you pay money in the name of dubious things like membership fees.

However, unlike frenetic survey panels like MySurvey and SurveyHead, this particular panel sends out invites on a highly irregular basis (like once per week!). In fact, I’ve vociferously put forward this point in my capacity as a member of Pinecone Research.

Is Opinion Place Legit?

If waiting for seven days to get a shot at qualifying for a survey before taking it is not an issue with you, OP makes for a good survey site.

They don’t pay very high but are definitely reliable when it comes to payments. As such, they are a good source to earn money on the sidelines along with other survey websites.

But just ensure that after you sign up with OpinionPlace you bookmark the site and register for its emails in order to not forget it, which is quite possible considering its survey limit of once per week. I hope you find this review helpful.