my opinion of irish opinions

Over two years ago I signed up for Irish Opinions. They take all your details and areas of interest and in turn send you surveys to complete online. Each survey has an estimated completion time, cut off date and reward. They usually last anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes and the reward is usually from €0.50 to €2.50.

This has been an easy deal with the amount of surveys increasing from 1 in 2006, 10 in 2007 to 15 so far this year. I have earned about €40 which I can redeem for HMV, Tesco or Amazon vouchers.

The last few surveys had really annoyed me. I got one this morning that was the final straw!

I received an email as usual telling me there was a survey waiting for me. I clicked on the link, nearly as soon as the email appeared in my inbox. Standard first question pops up; Age and Sex. When I fill it in I get this response.

Thank you for coming through to our survey, unfortunately we already have enough responses for this survey.
We hope to invite you to other surveys in the very near future.
Please wait whilst we register your participation...

This wasn’t the first time this has happened to me, several surveys in the past couple of weeks I didn’t fit the criteria or the quota was already reached. I fired off an email to them asking why they sent me a survey they knew I wouldn’t be able to complete due my age and sex (which they already know). I was fobbed of with a generic reply about sometimes the quota is reached on a survey.

I’m fed up with them wasting my time asking me to do surveys that they would know I can’t complete if they looked at the details and surveys about myself I’ve filled out.

I have decided to cash in my rewards and just stop. Once I receive them I’ll be closing my account. Thanks for Isabel… if that is your real name!

P.S. I sometimes lied on those surveys when they got too long and I just wanted to finish!