Rewarded Opinions Review: a Real Paid Survey Site or a Scam?

There are countless number of paid survey sites out there, some scams and some legit. Rewarded Opinions is one of those sites claiming to be a legit panel backed by a real marketing research firm.

In today’s review, I am going to register with this site and then share my experience with you guys. So, let’s get started.

 

Some Background On Rewarded Opinions

Rewarded Opinions is a panel from UK that is part of ID Factor, whose owners are the Progressive Digital Media Group. ID Factor is a leading worldwide provider of panel solutions and online fieldwork.

The company offers a wide table of services to enable companies in meeting their marketing research requirements like sample provision, full service online fieldwork, survey support and customized research projects to advertise successful syndicated products.

The site was known as “Home of Research” in its earlier avatar with the name Rewarded Opinions being only a recent introduction.

I tried looking at the company’s profile on the Better Business Bureau’s site, but it seems like RO is not listed there. If and when this changes, i will make sure to update this page with the correct info.

Membership

This survey panel is not very different to others of its ilk such as eRewards.. You can register with Rewarded Opinions provided you are more than 16 years old and reside in the United States (the site also has a separate panel for residents of the UK).

You can sign-up without paying any money and in fact, you are paid 50 points as registration bonus. The entire process can be wrapped up in a matter of minutes.

Side note:

I hope you won’t be taken back by the extremely dull looking website of RO. My god, we are in 2013 and when you visit their homepage, you think you have traveled back a few decades!

 

Next up, ensure that you completely answer all the brief profiling questions thrown to you. Doing so ensures that you are invited to a higher number of surveys!

Once you register, an email is sent to invite you for the available surveys. I saw that the site sends out survey invites very rarely. This is most unlike a site like Toluna surveys, which often sends multiple survey invites on the same day. However, as is the case with a majority of survey panels, the frequency of your survey invites is directly related to your profile.

The payment range for their surveys is quite large at 25 to 500 points. However, in case your luck shines and you get an invite to a focus group (which again is quite rare), you have the chance of earning a maximum of 3,000 points for every group you are part of.

The worth of every point in USD terms is around $0.1. In effect, 100 points get you $1. So when you complete a survey with this site, you can make anywhere from 25 cents (25 points) to even $5 (500 points).

Looking at the time taken to complete most of Rewarded Opinions’ surveys, I’d deem the corresponding rewards to be quite fair although it’s no secret that I’d be glad if the site can do away with the points system in favor of cash.

This site’s survey subjects are typical run-of-the-mill stuff although the overall flavor is quite business oriented. As for the survey presentation, it can be called very professional and well branded, which is something I really prefer!

The site also have a referral earning system in place. For every person you bring to this panel, you are rewarded 75p.

 

Payment System

The site allows you to redeem your points for cash once they reach the 2,000 mark, which translates into $20. Users are allowed to choose between two reward methods, PayPal and check.

PayPal is something I always prefer although I didn’t like the rather long time the site took to dispatch the cash. The process took more than a month, which miffed me a bit. This makes me assume that checks might take even more time.

Also, the minimum payout limit is given at $20, which is something I consider a little too much for a panel like Rewarded Opinions as on average; I need close to a year to get to this figure.

Other Reviews from Around the Web

As is my habit with every survey site I review, whether its a known one like ValuedOpinions.com or a not so well-known one like YouGov, I searched around the web extensively to see what other people think and say about this panel. The result of that search is a string of complaints against the company by users whose points were revoked after the recent spate of upgrades the site went through.

This was when the company’s name was changed to “Rewarded Opinions” from “Home of Research”. I came across way too many complaints by members crying foul about how they lost points as the new website went online.

Here’s a collection of some of the points I came across repeatedly from members regarding the site:

• This company doesn’t inspire confidence in me. I was part of a focus group by them in the month of May and it was close to 12 weeks before I got the money. I had to send a lot of emails and when I did receive an answer a few weeks later, all they had to say was that they were apologetic for my troubles. Any which way you look at it, 12 weeks’ waiting time is unacceptable. I’ll be thinking twice over before committing to anything with this site again. I also found a lot of complaints similar to mine on their official Facebook page. So go ahead with this site at your own risk.
• Rewarded-Opinions.com, as the site’s new name goes, is a site to be avoided at all costs. Replies to your emails are non-existent and despite their assurances of a 4-6 week waiting time for payment to arrive, here I am 9 weeks later with still no sign of my payment. And yeah, I’ve also sent many emails regarding this. In short, a complete time waster is this site.
• Ever since the updated site went online, almost my entire point stack has gone bust. The site provides you with only one method of contacting it, which is through a form. I’ve filled out the same but still haven’t received a reply from the company. Does Rewarded Opinions still exist?
• “Under construction” is the message you are greeted with on trying to visit this company’s site to try and send an email to [email protected] for knowing your account balance. I don’t know what’s going on but in case this site has gone bust, I’m going to be very upset as I was about to cash out very soon.
• I’ve been part of this site for a fair while now but was surprised to see that all my hard earned 700 points were gone just because the site went through an upgrade. In fact, I wouldn’t even have remembered that I had accumulated 700 points if it weren’t for the fact that I had written them down in a notebook. I emailed the company and so far, there have been no responses. This is the situation even after I sent them close to 7 survey numbers, which were completed by me but are yet to be added.

 

Should You Join?

All in all, I think Rewarded Opinions is a legit panel. However, it’s hard to not feel as if the site has somewhat folded. This situation starts right from the site itself. It’s odd and doesn’t offer much by way of information. The FAQ section is laughable as all it has are 6-7 questions that are answered in a most unsatisfactory manner.

You’ll also be hard pressed to find an “About” page, which is usually used extensively by most companies to tell visitors more about them.

Additionally, their updates are hard to come by as well. Invites are pretty rare and I could put up many more issues but you must have got the gist of what I mean already.

Summing it up, I think this site is a strictly OK addition to your list of paid and legit survey panels. While it doesn’t rank among my list of top-paying panels, it makes matters worse by taking unreasonably long to deliver payments.

So, although I would register with Rewarded Opinions and lookout for survey invitations, I’d refrain from investing much of my time in this site.